Fire Country Season 1 Episode 11: Mama Bear

Sharon becomes eligible for a new kidney. She is so loved by her community that her news is put in the paper with an appeal for people to be tested as potential donors, and a fundraiser is held in her honor. Everyone wants to help Sharon, and her son especially wants to help. Bode knows he is his mother's best chance because he is her only living child, and he asks Manny whether he can go and be tested.

Manny is on the fence about it until Bode reminds him that Sharon's life is at stake and that Manny owes her and her husband — a reference to the cash loan that Bode had not known about but that his uncle Luke somehow did.

Luke shows up to support Sharon at the fundraiser; he is going to perform with his brother, since the two are in a band together, so he has no excuse to skip it. He should have skipped it. He knows he made a pass at his brother's wife, and Sharon shut it down immediately and has not told Vince because she does not want him upset. But Vince picks up on the strange energy between his brother and his wife and later asks Luke what happened. Luke tries to deflect by bringing up Manny, but eventually admits he made a comment he should not have.

Vince correctly guesses that his brother tried to make a pass at his wife and is about to fight him in the bar until their friend Paulie breaks it up, reminding them that everything has a time and a place. Vince listens and lets it go — until a biker gets in Sharon's face.

The biker is a former con from the fire camp who seems angry at Sharon, and Vince has to come off the stage to go fight the man. Others break up the fight and make the biker leave, but the whole thing leaves Sharon a little sad, and she wants to go home. She asks her friend Dolly to drive her motorcycle for her. Dolly is later riding it when she gets into a car accident, hitting another biker. She thinks her brakes failed, and Bode — driving back with Manny — comes upon the scene and rushes to her side while Manny goes to Paulie's.

They call for an ambulance, and their friends later show up: Jake and Gabriela arrive separately, except Jake arrives with Cara.

Cara is Bode's ex, and they broke up after he pushed her away during his accident, but she grew up with him and with Jake, Eve and Riley, so it is strange for Bode to see her again. It is also strange that Gabriela is there: she has just learned that her father borrowed money from the Leones and needs someone to talk to. She cannot turn to Jake, so she turns to Bode and tells him about her father's money problems; Bode says he could tell something was up with Manny, and everyone at the fire camp has noticed his behavior.

Everyone is worried about him — Manny seems permanently in a bad mood, and he has a gambling problem that he is making worse by continuing to gamble in the hope of changing his luck.

When a couple of bikers come by, Bode goes over to them. He has learned that one of them got into a fight with his parents before the brakes on his mother's motorcycle were cut, so he warns them that civilians are usually left out of it. The motorcycle gang agrees, and says that is why they kicked out Odin. Odin is a nickname; his real name is Owen Fletcher. He went to the fire camp hoping for early release, but he was a saboteur, even trying to get Manny drinking again, and he did nothing right, so he was booted from the program and sent back to prison.

He finished his sentence and was released, and he is now after Sharon for sending him back. He already tried to harm her, which got him kicked out of his biker gang — and now that he has nothing to lose, he sets fires instead.

Odin sets fires at the fire camp. Bode, already working himself into anger, wants to go after him when he notices the fires, and he and the other inmates rush to put them out, later helped by the rest of the fire department. But Bode notices someone moving in the woods nearby and follows, eventually coming upon Odin on his bike. They fight, and Jake steps in before Bode can truly hurt him; Odin is arrested and goes back to prison.

Gabriela comforts Bode, and Bode begins to draw her in his little journal — but Jake warns her that she runs toward people she can rescue, that she did it with her father and with him until he no longer needed rescuing, and that this is why she is so set on Bode: she wants to save him. Still, things improve: Manny cuts up his credit cards and finally admits to his daughter that he has a gambling problem, and Luke leaves town with a word to Vince that he will be back the moment they want him.

The Odin threat is resolved: he sets fires at the fire camp, is chased by Bode into the woods, and is arrested and sent back to prison after Jake intervenes. The episode ends on several upward notes — Manny cuts up his credit cards and admits his gambling problem to Gabriela, and Luke leaves town, saying he will return when he is wanted.

Other threads are left open. Sharon's kidney transplant is now a possibility, but no donor has been secured, and Bode's request to be tested is left as a step rather than a resolution. Jake's warning that Gabriela has a hero complex aimed at Bode is raised but not resolved, and Bode's growing anger — which nearly led him to seriously hurt Odin — is left as an unresolved concern for the people around him.