[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Fire Country Season 1 finale “I Know It Feels Impossible.”]
Just as things were looking up for Bode (Max Thieriot) with his parole hearing just days away, everything comes crashing down in the Fire Country Season 1 finale.
Bode fails the drug test. He knows Sleeper (Grant Harvey) is behind it, but while Gabriela (Stephanie Arcila) believes him and Vince (Billy Burke) wants to, Sharon (Diane Farr) sees it as him falling back on old behaviors and Manny (Kevin Alejandro) looks to the simplest solution.
Read on for the major moments from the Season 1 finale, as well as insight from Burke, Farr, and Arcila.
Bode’s Parole Hearing Shocks His Loved Ones
Bode has a statement ready — and Manny’s on his side once again — when Mel, who works for the state attorney’s office (and hooked up with Eve) reveals that he is why Freddy’s (W. Tre Davis) wrongful conviction case has stalled. There’s a drug problem at Three Rock, and she thinks Bode is responsible. If he skirts justice at the hearing, he’ll be keeping Freddy’s case in limbo. If he accepts blame, her investigation ends and Freddy is free. Unsurprisingly, Bode chooses the latter, says during his hearing that he’s the bad guy at camp, and ends the season back in prison.
But what do those who mean the most believe? “I don’t think it matters to [Vince] whether Bode was lying or not,” Burke tells TV Insider. “He wants his son back.” This comes as his character struggled with optimism this season; we saw him readying for Bode to get out and come work with him just last episode. “Life’s f**king hard, but you got no hope, you got nothing,” Burke points out.
If you were surprised by how vehemently Sharon refused to believe Bode, you’re not the only one. “It was a pretty abrupt turn even to me when I first read it that she just said no, she was just done,” Farr admits, but she likens it to the mother of any drug addict, who first denies to see that her child could do anything wrong then can’t trust anything they say. “She’s run out of denial.”
But, she continues, “There are three people in Sharon’s marriage. She’s having her relationship with Vince, but Bode’s so in there. Her priority being Bode is so clear that it’s like a triangle that has to break.” With Sharon thinking that Bode was lying to her about the drug test, “she shut off for the moment.”
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As for Gabriela, who had been hoping to be able to finally start a life with Bode once he was paroled, “this is her first huge heartbreak,” Arcila says. “Knowing Gabriela and knowing who she is, I know that she doesn’t think that this is real. I know she doesn’t think that that Bode is telling the truth. There’s something off.”
She’s right, because no one knows what Bode did for Freddy. Burke thinks that when Vince finds out, “he’ll probably think it’s typical because that’s who Bode is. He didn’t allow himself to see that all along through all the stupid mistakes Bode made when he was younger. But I think that he will probably come around to realize that that’s who his son is at his heart. He’s a guy that will do anything for anybody.”
Farr, pointing out the entire show is about redemption, notes, “Bode’s Jesus, right? This is what happened at the Last Supper. This is the ultimate form of do you love me or don’t you love me? Can you love me despite the circumstances? I would hope that Sharon gets it because Sharon has told many a lie in her life to protect the people she loves. But as a mom, you always have a hope of who your kid’s going to be. I don’t know where her own ego and her own pride is going to land.”
Gabriela will likely think it “very commendable and very beautiful,” though she might wonder about the cost, according to Arcila, who is certain that her character will try to fight for the truth.
That Painful Walkaway
One of the reasons we started thinking Vince and Sharon’s relationship is one of the best on TV not even halfway through the season is because it’s not perfect. It’s messy. It’s real. And so having them end the season with him trying to get her to pull strings to get Bode out, her refusing because she already did that and thinks it made everything worse, and him walking away is painful, yes, but it leaves them in quite the interesting place.
For Farr, Sharon “shut off from him” in that moment, like she did with Bode earlier in the episode. “They’re in uncharted territory because for the first time, Sharon’s not believing in him, which I think is probably forcing Vince to stand up for his kid in a way that he never has before,” she says. “He’s clearly disappointed in me for not playing the same role I always have where I save Leone men.”
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But she loves that Sharon and Vince are “allowed to fight” and she “is allowed to be angry. We never see women angry on TV unless it’s over their boyfriend and they have to find a way back to each other,” Farr explains. “Billy and I have a rule in a scene. I never walk in and just kiss him like an easy by rote, we are a given for each other. Every scene we have to earn it, the way you see new couples earning it. Is it on? Is it off? Do they like me? Don’t they like me? We try to put that in every scene to make sure we choose each other. The end of the season is ‘I’m not choosing this version of you.’ They have to figure out if they will or they won’t.”
Burke is looking forward to seeing where that leaves the couple when Season 2 begins. “That’s what makes that relationship the heartbeat of the show: There’s always going to be a lot of turmoil, but that sort of inseparability of those two, that relentless super glue that they have to each other hopefully is going to hold out.”
Who’s Donating to Sharon?
The only real good news of the finale came with the reveal that Vince’s brother Luke (Michael Trucco) is going to donate his kidney to Sharon. (We still haven’t forgiven him for making a move on her though.) She’ll only accept if there aren’t any strings.
But Farr knows that’s pretty impossible. “I think Sharon’s just trying to get some control over [the situation],” she shares. “There’s going to be an interesting thing to play out that Sharon is always saving the other people in her life. Now this person is literally saving her. It’ll be very interesting to see what happens if Sharon is cared for by someone in a way she doesn’t even care for herself, how that becomes its own triangle between her and Vince and the brother.”
This just adds another complication to the brothers’ relationship. Whether or not Vince trusts Luke at this point doesn’t even matter, according to Burke. “His brother’s going to save his wife’s life. So no matter how he feels about his brother, there’s that gift, and I don’t think that their relationship is going to get any less messy. And personally I hope that it doesn’t because it’s way too fun to do,” he adds with a laugh.
The Twist Bode Doesn’t Know
Things got a bit awkward between Jake (Jordan Calloway) and new girlfriend Cara (Sabina Gadecki) when she found out the plan for Bode to move in with him after he got paroled. Before the hearing, Cara admitted to Jake that when she was 19, she got pregnant, went to Europe to have the baby, then came back and her mom pretended she gave birth. Cara’s “sister” is her daughter … and possibly Bode’s. She doesn’t know.
“When I read that, I was like, ‘What is happening right now?’” Arcila admits. “It’d be another bomb dropped on [Gabriela]. If it is Bode’s, he’s a good man at the end of the day, and I think he would show up.” But it would just make things even more complicated for these two couples, considering Jake and Gabriela are also exes.
Fire Country, Season 2, TBA, CBS
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
