Fire Country Season 1 Episode 21: Backfire

Manny is going to take a job with Nozzle, and his girlfriend has convinced him it is the best decision for his career: he gets to choose his own hours, he gets the very best equipment money can buy, and it gives him the chance to bring in his own people. Manny has been running the fire camp for a while and wants to hire many of the ex-cons he helped train, to help them start over the way he did. He has been where they are and knows how much a second chance will mean to them. What is stopping their progress is Sleeper, and the fire camp has not been the same since Sleeper's time there.

Sleeper was a virus who infected everything. He came in with drugs and privileges and offered the prisoners their greatest dream, and it did not matter to them that it would affect their parole or that they might get sent back to prison for testing dirty — Sleeper offered them status, and they got used to that rather fast. They wanted to throw their lives away to follow him, and they hated that Bode broke the chief rule: Bode ratted them out, told Manny to test them, and told Manny that Sleeper had drugs. Sleeper was sent back to prison, but the damage he caused was still there after he left.

Some of the other prisoners turned against Bode and messed up his bunk with cheese, saying rats like cheese. Bode tried to remind them that they were brothers before Sleeper arrived and that they could not risk jeopardizing lives by being high on drugs.

All that hard work was undone when they went to a fire in wine country. Nozzle had started a fire to protect their client's vineyard, and they did not care about anyone else's vineyard — they only tried to protect the people who hired them. Cal Fire showed up to deal with the problem, and the fire was more than they could handle on their own, so they called in the fire camp. The camp arrived not long after Manny's girlfriend Faye revealed that Manny was coming to work for Nozzle. She also told Sharon and Vince that Manny was bringing Bode along.

The couple had initially wanted to offer Bode a chance at working for Cal Fire, but it would take months to go through, while Bode's parole hearing was in two days. He needed a legitimate job offer to show the parole board he was serious about turning his life around, and Nozzle offered him that. Bode had not accepted the offer — he needed time to think — and Faye was stirring up trouble.

She had overheard the firefighters call her the “Head Nozzle” and got offended, then tried to rub their noses in her success by mentioning that even their own son wanted to work for her, and that their best guy was coming with him. Manny had told the Leones nothing about leaving, and nothing about offering Bode a job; the news got out anyway.

The other prisoners claimed Bode was only taking firefighting so seriously to look good for his fancy new job. They also talked about escaping out in the open, saying they could not make it if they went back to prison, and someone noted there were no fences at the fire camp or at the vineyard. Manny had wanted to leave them behind, but Bode vouched for them and convinced Manny to let the guys come along. Then they were separated during the chaos at the vineyards as the fire spread, and Nozzle accidentally created more fire by cutting down power lines.

In the midst of the chaos, three of the prisoners went missing, and Freddy told Manny they had been talking of escape. Manny ordered all the prisoners back to the truck. Only Bode would not believe those prisoners had run; he checked the nearby fires instead and saw a home coming under risk from the fire. He ran in with just Freddy as backup and found the missing prisoners — they were all trying to protect people. Bode had been right about them. They saved a family from the burning home, and then it started to rain, and the rain dealt with the rest of the fires.

Manny turned down the Nozzle job offer. Faye became so upset that she ended things with him: she had never judged him, but she felt he was judging her by passing on Nozzle. It did not help that Bode had also passed on Nozzle — Bode wanted to work for Cal Fire and was willing to wait for it. Earlier, a man died at Smokey's while Gabriela was there; she tried to offer first aid, but it was not enough to save him, and it left her wanting happiness now rather than later. She snuck into the fire camp and found a room alone with Bode, and they celebrated being alive.

But later Manny told Bode that he had tested dirty, and that Sleeper had somehow drugged him, which meant Bode could go back to prison. And Freddy was not getting out any time soon: Eve had found concrete evidence proving he did not commit the crime he was locked up for, but the lawyer said he would not be released for at least two years because of a backlog.

The vineyard fire is resolved when rain puts out the remaining fires, and the missing inmates are found innocent of any escape attempt — they were protecting a family at a burning home, exactly as Bode said.

The episode closes on unresolved threads. Manny tells Bode that his drug test came back dirty, and the suggestion that Sleeper drugged him is not established within the episode, so whether Bode loses his parole is left open. Bode has turned down Nozzle and is waiting on Cal Fire, but his parole hearing is two days away and the dirty test now jeopardises it. Freddy's exoneration is also incomplete: Eve has concrete evidence proving he did not commit the crime, but the lawyer says a backlog means at least two more years. Gabriela's reaction to the man's death, and what it means for her and Bode, is left open as well.