‘Fire Country’ EPs on Bode’s Situation After Premiere, That Engagement & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers from the Fire Country Season 2 premiere, “Something’s Coming.”]

Well, it didn’t take long for Bode (Max Thieriot) to find his way back to a position where he’ll be fighting fires on Fire Country. He just had to save Sleeper’s (Grant Harvey) life during an earthquake—after the other inmate promised to ‘fess up to the role he played in that doctored positive drug test.

But he has just returned to Three Rock, the fire camp for inmates, and is already grappling with one surprise—that he may have a kid, Genevieve, with his high school ex-girlfriend Cara (Sabina Gadecki) she never told him about—when he gets hit with another. Gabriela (Stephanie Arcila), whom he’d told to forget about him, bursts in to tell Eve (Jules Latimer), now leading Three Rock, that she and Diego (Rafael De La Fuente) are engaged after both proposed. (Six months passed between seasons.)

TV Insider spoke with executive producers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater about the premiere surprises and what’s to come this season.

Would Bode have gotten out of prison as quickly as he did if you had a 22-episode season?

Joan Rater: I think so. We knew we didn’t want him to be there too long because having him be in Edgewater and having Three Rock stories is so key to our series, and we think that we got him out in such a great way.

Tony Phelan: But we also wanted to see a different side of that character, and it also gives us a little preview of what he was like before he got to Edgewater again. And I know Max was really excited about the challenge of what six months in prison has done to Bode.

He’s back at Three Rock, but it’s also with Eve in charge, and he had that time back in prison. How is it going to test him?

Phelan: The news of Genevieve is the thing that motivates him this season.

Rater: The struggle with all of these guys, and Bode is no different, is, can they believe in themselves? Bode got out for Genevieve, but I think the journey is, can Bode learn to live for himself, not for his parents, not for his friends? Can he show up for himself? We really do want to show that kind of growth that he’s gone through.

How will Eve handle that? They’re friends, but she’s also now in charge.

Phelan: Eve’s journey through the season is going to be about becoming that Three Rock commander and having a very different style than Manny [Kevin Alejandro], and how well is that going to go over with the other inmates, and how are Bode and Eve going to negotiate their friendship through that?

What was exciting for us as writers, and I know for the actors as well, was we really attempted to start everybody in a very different place. The great thing about that first episode is you got to find your footing because everybody’s in a different place, doing a different thing, having different relationships, and obviously, the biggest one is what happened between Gabriela and this new character, Diego.

Gabriela seems to be all in with Diego. She was happy looking to their future, about the engagement, and then, of course, she walked in, and Bode was there. Why did you have Bode and Gabriela’s relationship end like it did and her at this point of moving on, or at least thinking she’s moving on?

Rater: Bode loves her so much that he was like, “Walk away from me. Go live your life. I’m doing this out of love.” And obviously, Gabriela has mixed feelings about that. We talked in the writers’ room about this character of Gabriela. She was an Olympian. This girl is used to being the boss and winning, and the Bode thing sort of knocked her back. What does she want? Who does she trust? And we wanted her to come in strong this season. She’s a winner. She gets stuff done. Let’s see this part of Gabriela who decides, I want somebody who’s there for me. I want these things. And Diego is these things.

But now, with Bode at Three Rock, those three are going to be interacting in very stressful situations. How is that going to go with all those complicated feelings?

Rater: We love the lights it will shine on Gabriela and what she wants. It’ll test all of them.

Phelan: It’ll also test Bode because the last thing he wants to do, if she’s happy, is get in the way of that, as painful as that is for him.

Bode’s relationship with his mom Sharon (Diane Farr) has been non-existent while his with his dad Vince (Billy Burke) is so much better than it was at the beginning of last season. How that Bode’s back at Three Rock, what does that mean for those three?

Phelan: We hear a little bit from Sharon about why she needed to go on this campaign fire and how she needed to get away and clear her head. She and Bode are in a somewhat enabling relationship, and to find her way into a more adult relationship with her son, she has to let him go a little bit, but it’s going to be painful for both of them to find that new place.

Rater: But they will.

The tension between Vince and Sharon hurts. They clearly have not been talking about everything they need to talk about. Now she’s back. So will they? And then there’s this new character Liam (Jason O’Mara) coming in who has a history with her…

Rater: Yeah, it’s somebody that she worked with. Vince and Sharon need to have some conversations, and they butted heads over what to do about Bode. All of that stuff with our favorite couple is going to be explored this season.

Phelan: These are parents who have had to deal with a lot of grief in their life, and so I think they were kind of on autopilot until Bode came back into town, and his being here and so close churned all that stuff up again. So there’s still a lot of stuff for them to work out about. How are they now the parents of an adult man? They’ve never really thought of themselves as empty nesters, but they kind of are now. They’ve kind of come to some awareness that Bode is going to live his own life. So what does that mean for them as a couple?

What’s going on with Sharon and her job? She told Luke (Michael Trucco) she didn’t want it back…

Rater: A lot changed for her when she went away, and she had some time to think. I think that being away, she really loved being in the middle of it and throwing herself into physical stuff, and we’ll explore that this season. Does she love that? Is that right for her?

Should Jake (Jordan Calloway) have told Bode about Genevieve possibly being his? It wasn’t really his secret to tell, even though he talked to Cara about it.

Phelan: Yeah, I think the desperation of the moment and the thought of losing his best friend forced him to kind of say some things maybe that he shouldn’t have said, and we’ll see the fallout of that. But we’re very excited by the fact that Jake and Bode do become much closer this season.

Rater: We’re excited to explore not only their friendship but also the three of them—Eve, Jake, and Bode, the high school friends.

What’s going on with Freddy (W. Tre Davis), and are we going to see what freedom is like for him?

Rater: That’s a really good question, and we don’t know yet, but we’ve been talking about the possibility—

Phelan: —of checking in on him, but we don’t have anything.

Rater: We’re very excited for Freddy that he’s out there. We assume he is doing quite well—

Phelan: —with Cookie [Katrina Reynolds] and with his new baby.

Is Sleeper really no longer an immediate threat for Bode? Is it just if he goes back to prison, or should Bode be worrying about Sleeper and who he may have at Three Rock?

Rater: Oh, wow. Well, you are sinister.

I always expect the worst.

Rater: [Laughs] I don’t know how to answer that.

Phelan: I think that Sleeper is going to be somebody who’s always out there that Bode needs to worry about. Right now, he might’ve gotten a temporary reprieve, but you never know.

How’s Cole (Tye White) going to be fitting in with everything?

Phelan: Cole gives us a character who’s new to Three Rock, and so we will see how Cole and Bode develop this friendship and how Bode can kind of show him the ropes, especially now that Bode is determined to be a different kind of inmate firefighter than he was last season—maybe a little less jumping into the middle of things without thinking about it, a little less hot-headed, because he’s got more at stake now.

Is there a dynamic you’re especially excited to see play out this season?

Rater: Yeah, you’re going to see some stuff with Manny that’s going to blow your mind. Now that Gabriela—

Phelan: —is going to get married—

Rater: —we are going to lean into their relationship and—

Phelan: —their history together, their family.

How are Manny and Bode doing? When Manny came to visit him in prison, Bode was not happy.

Rater: One of my favorite relationships in the series is between Bode and Manny. It’s something we’re going to continue to play. They get each other on a level the others don’t. They’ve made some big mistakes that have landed them in the situation they’re in. I just love the sort of surrogate father aspect of Manny, and we’ll continue to explore that.

Fire Country, Fridays, 9/8c, CBS