There are plenty of questions that need answers from the latest episode of the CBS drama.
Season 3, Episode 13 of Fire Country, “My Team,” is a balanced episode that finds things to do for a good portion of the cast. Bode (Max Thieriot) squashes an old beef but faces some old demons in an inconclusive way. Sharon (Diane Farr) and Vince (Billy Burke) get a surprise in their marriage. Jake (Jordan Calloway) makes a love connection, and Manny (Kevin Alejandro) and Eve (Jules Latimer) deal with tragedy at Three Rock. The episode is organized around the principle of “Forget the last play,” the Leones’ high school baseball coach’s zenlike mantra. It means to let go of the past and move forward.
It’s a busy episode, so let’s get into everything that happened on this week’s episode of Fire Country.
Bode’s pain
Bode is having nightmares about Rafael, the man he couldn’t save from a rockslide in Episode 12. Rafael’s death reminds him of his sister Riley’s death, because he also couldn’t save her. Gabriela (Stephanie Arcila) and Luke (Michael Trucco) can tell that something is up with Bode emotionally, but Bode doesn’t want to talk about it. Also, Bode’s old knee injury that started his descent into pill addiction is acting up, and that’s stressing him out, too. Bode is struggling, and he’s not talking about it, which always leads him to trouble. He’s been clean from pills for a long time, but he’s not doing the things that will help him continue to stay clean.
Bode’s already on edge, and a chance encounter with an old nemesis threatens to push him over. During a call to put out a fire in a dugout before the annual, much-anticipated “County Clash” high school baseball game between Edgewater and their rivals Eel River, Bode runs into Drew (Luke Humphrey), who was responsible for the knee injury during the County Clash their senior year that ended Bode’s promising baseball career and started him down the path that led to him getting locked up.
Drew is now Eel River’s coach, and the years have not mellowed him out. He antagonizes Bode to the point where they almost get in a fistfight. Luke, who’s filling in for Audrey (Leven Rambin, absent in this episode) for one last shift in Edgewater before he moves to Japan, is concerned about his nephew’s behavior. Luke sees that Bode not talking about what’s going on with him and then acting out—almost getting into a fight with someone he’s held a resentment against for 15 years—is evidence that Bode is slipping back into his old, destructive ways.
“This pattern of behavior took baseball away from you and I don’t want it to take firefighting away from you, too,” he says.
The incident
Then Bode and Luke get a call that there’s a kid trapped in a drainpipe. His name is Nolan, and he’s Eel River’s starting pitcher. He was trying to sabotage the field so that he didn’t have to play, because Drew’s harsh coaching style makes him feel like a loser when he makes mistakes. He accidentally set the dugout on fire while setting off smoke bombs and went down to the drainpipe to hide, but he got impaled on some rebar and can’t get out. Drew is called in to talk to the kid, and at first he’s hard on him. But then Bode makes a positive choice, and decides to connect with Drew on a man-to-man level. He tells Drew that his guidance could help Nolan reach his potential, and his scorn could harm him. “Don’t let Nolan go down the same path that I did,” Bode says. “Coach him through it.”
With Drew and Three Rock’s help, the firefighters manage to get Nolan out, and Bode and Drew have a newfound respect for each other. They may not be friends going forward, but they’re no longer enemies. Drew says he noticed that Bode’s knee was bothering him, and as an ignorant way to say “thank you,” gives Bode a baggie of painkillers, saying they help with his shoulder injury. We do not see what Bode does with the pills. We just see him holding the baggie and looking at them, considering what to do.
The Leone way
In Bode’s final scene of the episode, he plays catch with Luke. Bode says he’s not going to let losing a patient take firefighting away from him. Good, Luke says, because it’s going to happen again.
“I didn’t realize it would take me out like it did,” Bode says. “You and my parents make it look so easy.”
“Well, that was a disservice to you,” Luke says, “And I’m sincerely sorry if we made it seem that way.”
Losing people is hard for them, too, and the only reason they can get through it is because they rely on and support each other. “Pick your poison, Bode, because you’re going to have to lean on someone,” he says. “Otherwise this job’ll eat you up alive.” (It’s odd that he combines the sayings “eat you up” and “eat you alive” into “eat you up alive.” But that’s what he says.)
Even after all that, Bode does not tell Luke about the pills. So something is going on with Bode. It’s concerning, because a relapse could take away everything he’s worked so hard to rebuild. He forgot the last play with Drew, but he’s having trouble forgetting the last play within himself. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with Bode’s new secret.
Sharon and Vince’s shakeup
The Leones are at the bar getting ready for the game when they run into Renee (Constance Zimmer), Vince’s high school ex-girlfriend, a globetrotting musician who’s back in town for a gig. Sharon and Renee have never met before, and Sharon is excited to hear stories about young “Vinny” before she knew him. She invites Renee to come by the firehouse to hang out. Vince isn’t into this development, because Renee is his past, and he wants her to stay there. Having her involved in his present is unnecessary and potentially a problem for him.
When Renee comes to the firehouse, the problem comes to light, as she reveals that Vince asked her to marry him back then and she said no, which Sharon didn’t know. Renee is embarrassed and leaves, and that’s it for Renee. Zimmer, of Entourage and UnREAL, is more famous than most Fire Country guest stars, and is surprisingly underused in the episode. She’s only in two scenes and doesn’t have a complete character arc.
Vince proposed to Sharon more than 30 years ago, but it’s still a shock to Sharon’s system to find out. She doesn’t understand why Vince didn’t tell her, and she’s shaken by the fact that Vince proposed to her so soon after his relationship with Renee ended. She wants to know if she was a “rebound.”
“You were not a rebound,” Vince says. “You were my partner in the rebuild into what I am today.”
Vince explains that he thought he and Renee loved each other, but he wanted to stay in Edgewater and she had other plans. And when he tried to talk to his dad about his pain about being dumped, he was told “real men don’t show weakness,” so he never talked to anyone about it again.
“The way I see it, Renee prevented me from making the biggest mistake I was ever going to make, because she took off and let me find you” he says, as Sharon climbs on top of him. It’s a romantic moment for Edgewater’s strongest couple, who are still deeply in love after all these years. Vince should have told Sharon about Renee all those years ago. But it seems, after that momentary bump in the road, the two are eager to forget the last play.
Jake gets his mojo back
Jake has been understandably depressed and lacking in confidence since the death of his girlfriend Cara in Season 2 and her daughter Genevieve, who he planned to raise as his own, went to live with her biological father. But he’s taking baby steps into the dating world again, and his first foray ended in embarrassing rejection. But then someone walks into the firehouse and just like that, things are looking up for Jake.
A high school cheerleader who has been superglued inside of a mascot uniform as part of a prank and her older sister come into the firehouse for help, and there’s an immediate spark between Jake and the sister, Violet (Nesta Cooper). In the course of conversation, Jake shares what he’s going through, and Violet does, too. She recently got divorced and moved back in with her parents and has a mountain of student loan debt, but she’s ready to find love. She asks him out, but he panics and avoids answering her question.
After running into the sisters’ later, and fixes his mistake from earlier. He reintroduces himself to Violet, and gets her number. He’s forgetting the last play in a big way.
Tragedy at Three Rock
Manny has a strained relationship with another Three Rock resident, Birch (Jeff Gladstone), who he clashed with over Birch’s manufacture and consumption of prison wine in an earlier episode. But Birch has been sober for a few weeks now and is trying to stay at Three Rock and not go back to prison. The problem is, he has a respiratory illness and is getting sicker. He doesn’t want to go to the prison infirmary because he’s afraid he’ll lose his spot in camp while he’s away, so Manny promises to help him stay.
Manny advocates for Birch to Eve and the cop who guards the camp to treat Birch there, but when Birch takes a turn for the worse, Eve decides to send him to the infirmary. Before they can get him on the bus, however, he has a seizure and dies. Birch was trying to forget the last play, but he didn’t get a chance to. Now Manny and Eve will have to deal with the grief and guilt of trying to help him and doing what turned out to be the wrong thing.
That’s two episodes of Fire Country in a row that have featured the tragic death of a minor character whose death will have big repercussions for major characters. What will Birch’s death mean for Eve’s leadership at Three Rock? And how will Manny move forward after this devastating setback?
