When Fire Country hit the CBS fall lineup in 2022, it quickly blazed to the top of TV ratings and attracted a massive cult following.
Then, there was the disastrous sophomore slump of the shortened second season.
Will Fire Country Season 3 continue burning out until it’s just a pile of ashes? Or will it blaze into a heated inferno that continues to ignite for seasons to come?
With a great first season and a weaker second season amid writers’ strikes and filming delays, fans are optimistic that a blazing-hot third season will rekindle our Fire Country passion.
We were halfway through Fire Country Season 2 when we got confirmation of a third season.
And a series spinoff. Thank the film Gods because the season finale ended with things pretty messed up.
So now that we know we’re getting more of CalFire and Three Rock, fans have had some things we want to see done differently for Fire Country’s junior season.
Resolve the Bode-Gabriela Relationship See-Saw
Most fans supported the evolving relationship between good girl Gabi and bad boy Bode during Fire Country Season 1.
Until things fell apart at the end of the season when Bode told Gabriela to move on with her life without him.
In typical girl fashion, Gabi made a drastic life change.
But instead of a life-altering hairdo or body modification, Gabs revamped her career.
She’s still with CalFire, but now she’s a paramedic.
And she’s got a new beau — handsome and thoughtful Diego Moreno, her paramedic partner. Technically, her superior?
Despite being in a new relationship — they were at their wedding in the second season finale, for Pete’s sake — we still got stuck in Bodelia’s relationship drama.
There seem to be two types of people in the Bodelia war: those who support their relationship and those who oppose it.
Go ahead and pull out your pitchforks, folks, cause I’m on Team Let It Go.
Cue the snowflakes, ice storm, and goofy snowman sidekick. I’m beyond ready for Bodelia to go Bye, Bye, Bye.
That’s not to say I’m Team Diego. But at this point, whatever it takes to end the Bode Gab nonsense for good works for me. And he sure is a sexy thang.
Keeping the drama taut between Gabriela and Bode was probably a smart play for the second season, considering there were only ten episodes.
It would be hard to play off Bode finding another suitable partner for him to fall in love with while he’s been incarcerated and isolated on a prison campground.
As much as I love long hair, big muscles, and tattoos, I’m not sure I’d risk becoming a Bode-lover, given how his last two romantic interests turned out. Dead. That doesn’t bode well for Gabriela’s future.
But Bode is out of prison and back in the dating pool.
Since Fire Country Season 3 should go back to a format of having a full season of 22 episodes when it comes back on in the fall, Bode has plenty of time to find a new romantic partner.
However, the second season ended before we saw Gabriela and Diego swap vows.
We currently have a did they or didn’t they situation.
Be sure to hop into our comment section and weigh in on whether you want Bode and Gabriela to have another chance.
Or are you on Team Diego and hope he’s living in marital bliss with Gabi?
Show More Stories Revolving Around the Prison Camp
During our Fire Country Season 2 reviews and TVF roundtables, we often complained about how much was happening in each episode.
The writers had to cram the entire season’s storyline into a shortened format, meaning they neglected a lot of stuff.
For some of us, the writers really dropped the ball on familiarizing viewers with Three Rock.
It’s hard to care whether the camp stays open or closed now that Bode is gone when we don’t know the other characters.
Even the focus on Cole, Bode’s new sidekick, wasn’t as developed as Freddy’s storyline from the previous season.
It’s frustrating that we spent half the second season watching Eve, Bode, and Manny battling against the higher-ups to keep Three Rock open.
And yet, we only met a few of the inmates in detail. The rest were background faces.
Since we’re getting a full third season, it would be great to see the writers focus more on character-driven episodes.
Fire Country works among its competition because it gives fans a redemption story mixed with adrenaline-pumping action.
So, let us get more personal with the guys at Three Rock trying to redeem their convict ways.
What good is a prisoner firefighting show if we don’t see more about each prisoner instead of just Bode and whichever inmate he’s interacting with at the time?
It will be interesting — if not stressful — to see how the story handles stories revolving around the prison camp now that Bode is out of prison.
Will the show focus more on Bode’s life outside the prison camp since Thieriot is the main character?
Or will the show stay with Three Rock as the focus, maybe with Bode as a counselor?
This viewer is pulling for a new inmate to come into the camp to keep us emotionally attached. Manny ended the second season in handcuffs.
Could the ex-con become the re-offended and take Bode’s place as the fire camp’s star firefighter inmate?
And what role will Jared Padalecki play during his guest appearance?
We know his character arc could lead to another spinoff, turning Fire Country into another series that branched into a franchise.
Stop Repeating Used Storylines
Another frustration most of us had during Fire Country’s sophomore season was the show’s rinse-and-repeat method of rehashing the same storylines.
The strained relationship between Sharon and Vince was a significant focus for the first half of the shortened second season.
The second half of the series focused on Vince having a significant life-threatening health condition.
If the drama sounds familiar, that’s because we dealt with similar storylines in the first season. Sharon seems to stay in crisis mode.
Sharon spent the first part of the freshman season dealing with fatal kidney failure.
The second half dealt with her need for an organ transplant. And her stubbornness to accept help.
In the first season, she and Vince dealt with some trust issues when Vince’s brother, Luke, tried to make a move on Sharon.
In the second season, Sharon returns from a hiatus of campaign firefighting with an emotionally attached drone firefighter in tow.
For a marriage as strong as theirs, it’s aggravating that they keep adding trust issues to the mix to create tension, especially when we’ve been given zero reasons to think either person would stray.
Luke was a bad guy in the show’s first season when he made a move on his sister-in-law behind his brother’s back.
And he re-enforced his asshole status again in the second season when it was revealed that he was the cause of the campaign to shut down Three Rock Prisoner Conversation Camp.
An action that resulted in a tussle between him and Manny, which consequently caused Manny to get arrested on the day of his daughter’s wedding.
We’ll enter Fire County Season 3 with Sharon ready to reclaim her rightful role as CalFire Division Chief from Luke.
She gave up the role after undergoing a kidney transplant and going on an extended hiatus.
There might be some drama as the two struggle with a power struggle.
It’s unlikely that we’ll see many people side with Luke over the badassery of Sharon.
But he’s a slippery snake, so he may have some cards up his sleeve.
Focus More on Character Development
The first two seasons of Fire Country have been action-packed and blazing hot, with enough drama to combust your TV screen spontaneously.
But it’s been light on character growth. Let’s use Bode as an example.
When the show started, he was a selfish, recovering addict with a chip on his shoulder and major family drama.
As the episodes progressed, so did Bode’s redemption story.
We saw him living up to the family hero legacy worthy of the Leone name. Until the end of the season, when the writers went stupid and let him go back to prison.
And that’s where I feel the issues started when the show returned for its short season.
Because you see, Bode returned to prison as an act of self-sacrifice to protect Freddy.
But just as fast as he went in, he was back out, and the storyline quickly resolved faster than a short story written to word count in freshman literature class.
We were back where we had started, with Bode acting like he was in charge of the camp.
This time, we had the typical best friend-in-charge situation instead of having someone in charge keeping him in check.
Bode was constantly breaking the rules and doing stupidly heroic things that were risky to himself and others.
However, after seeing how foolish and stubborn Vince was about his health, we totally understand where Bode inherited his martyr tendencies.
Throughout the second season, we only saw Bode getting worse with his decisions and impulsive actions.
For it to end with him getting rewarded for his impulsive behaviors with an early release from prison might’ve been the negative reinforcement he needed to keep doing dumb shit under the claim of helping someone.
He’s traded one addiction for another, and now that he’s fed his habit for a rush of adrenaline from fighting fires, chances are he’ll continue getting more brash as he tries to reclaim that feeling.
It seems to run in the family. The writers alluded to his attraction to the dangerous side of firefighting when they put Three Rock in the middle of an extended campaign fire.
But he wasn’t the only one excited about being in the bubble.
While other firefighters were getting burnt out from fighting the same out-of-control inferno for months, it energized Sharon.
Her overexuberant reaction to being on the scene of something so risky was what you’d expect from a junkie when they score a big hit.
We expect firefighters to love what they do.
But after spending so much time in the first season focused on Sharon’s health, it was strange to see her so daring with her life after getting a second chance.
You’d think after getting an organ transplant, she’d want to take it a bit easier on her body to prevent wear and tear.
Not risk her life with careless decisions like speeding around on a motorcycle, driving through a blazing fire in a fire engine truck, or going on dangerous fire call missions that weren’t part of Station 42’s jurisdiction.
With her reckless behaviors, does she have room to get mad at Bode or Vince for their actions? Yeah, Vince ignored a life-threatening health condition. But so did Sharon.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Viewers have no doubt how much Vince cares about his wife — and now Bode since they’ve reconciled.
He’s been a great guy since the show started and someone we can admire for doing the right thing.
But the way he acted towards Gabriela after she saved his life put a damper on his golden status.
Every hero has a flaw, I guess. Seeing him be so manipulative and secretive with his health turned him into the show’s biggest hypocrite.
So, as we await the upcoming third season, I’m left to wonder if those negative traits are a permanent part of their character development.
Or were writers rushed to create compelling storylines and drastically develop their characters to add tension?
I’m one fan who won’t be happy if they keep all the characters in their current state of chaos.
With a full schedule to fill, there’s plenty of time to see each of them redeem themselves.
And we’re not just focused on the Perez and Leones’, as dysfunctional as they are. The show has caused flawed characters all around in the second season.
From the floundering Eve, who’s now Captain of Three Rock, to Jake’s ticking inner biological clock and sudden desire to be a father to Genevieve, the daughter of his dead fiance — Cara (Bode’s ex-girlfriend).
No one escaped the sophomore slump funk without some lasting trauma.
Let’s just hope they learn how to process that trauma like the rest of us and move on with their lives instead of letting it turn their characters into the stereotypes we hate.
Will Fire Country Season 3 Burn Us?
Fire Country burned through the competition during its freshman season, but the heat died down by its second term, dampened by the freshman series Tracker.
The curse of the strike also had a major effect on the show’s progress, leaving things an awkward mess.
But things aren’t burnt past the point of redemption yet.
Fire Country still has time to save itself from overcooking.
With a full season, there will be plenty of space for the show to rekindle itself from the burnt-out ashes of a flamed-out second season like a glorious phoenix.
However, there is plenty of space for the series to burn out in a blaze of flaming fireballs if the show tries to go too big too fast.
I’ve told you what I think the show needs to rekindle my passion.
But now, I want to hear what you want and need from Fire Country Season 3.
What needs to change to bring the show back to its glory?
Let us know in the comments. Do you think there’s enough meat to make the show successful for years?
How about supporting a series spinoff, like Sheriff Country, coming in 2025?