Fire Country Season 1 Episode 22: I Know It Feels Impossible

Bode's drug test comes back positive, and Manny is so disappointed in him. Manny will not listen to Bode as he tries to explain that Sleeper was somehow sabotaging him: he says there is no way an inmate could orchestrate a state drug test, and he reminds Bode that time and again he has put his own reputation on the line by trying to protect him.

Manny believes Bode took the drugs, and he tells Bode why — because he once told his little girl that the money she had been saving up for had been stolen by someone who broke into the house, when in truth it was Manny who stole it, at the height of his addiction. Manny says Bode is like him, that the Sleeper story sounds far-fetched, and that the simplest reasons are usually the right one.

Bode's parole hearing is not cancelled because of the bad test; the parole board wants him to explain why he was using again. It does not matter that he was not using — he is a known drug addict, and they are all going to believe he was. The one person he can depend on is Freddy, who knows for a fact that Bode was clean: Freddy was at the fire camp before Sleeper as well as after, and he knows Bode never touched drugs and was serious about staying clean.

Bode and Freddy work out that his urine sample was swapped out with someone else's at the camp; they just have to find someone who should have tested dirty but got a clean bill back.

They are discussing it when their unit is called to the scene of a massive mudslide. The mudslide has taken out a bunch of vacation homes on the mountain, and one of those rentals holds Freddy's family. His fiancée Cookie had come up a day early with their baby daughter Janey, because she and Freddy are getting married: they both know he will probably serve his full sentence for the remaining two years, and they wanted to marry now so they could at least enjoy conjugal visits. Cookie came up with her best friend Eloisa and was trying on her wedding dress when the mudslide hit.

Cookie saw the mudslide coming and tried to run for the baby, and that was the last Eloisa saw of them. Eloisa is rescued first, and she runs to Freddy to tell him about his family. Freddy panics and tells Bode, and Bode forgets his own problems to help look for Cookie and Janey.

Bode had told his loved ones about testing dirty, and Gabriela believes him in an instant — but his parents had not wanted to believe him, thinking his addiction was acting up again. Then Sharon has a medical situation and needs to be taken to hospital as her kidney situation gets worse. Thankfully she does not have to wait around for a kidney: her brother-in-law is a match. Luke got tested at the same time as everyone else but told no one, because he was persona non grata with the family at the time after trying to make a move on Sharon.

He heard Sharon was not doing too well and contacted her to say he was a match, and she told him she would not accept a kidney with strings. Luke says the donation comes with no strings and that he is fully prepared to donate, and Vince is so happy to learn his wife is getting a kidney that he forgives Luke for everything.

Vince is hugging his brother when Freddy finds his family. Cookie had protected the baby, and the baby is rushed to hospital with Eloisa; Cookie has to be dug out because the lower half of her body is buried in soil. Then a second mudslide comes, and Bode and Freddy rush to save Cookie and keep her safe when it hits.

Bode is contacted by a State Attorney right before his parole hearing. She says she knows he got rid of Sleeper because Sleeper was running a rival drug ring and Bode wanted to get rid of the competition, and she says she will not let Freddy out of prison until Bode admits to taking drugs. Bode wants to protect his friend, so he lies: he tells her he did take drugs. He goes back to prison, and his own family is shocked to hear his confession. Bode tells them to forget about him. Freddy is let out of prison — but he knows someone got to Bode, and he is going to keep fighting for his friend.

And Jake hears something: Jake learns from Bode's ex-girlfriend that she had a baby when she was nineteen that her mother passed off as her sister. Her little “sister” could be Bode's child. She does not know for sure.

The mudslide rescue succeeds: the baby is rushed to hospital, Cookie is dug out of the soil and kept safe through a second mudslide, and Sharon's transplant has a donor in Luke.

The season ends on unresolved threads rather than answers. Bode has told a State Attorney that he took drugs in order to protect Freddy's appeal, and he has been returned to prison; whether the swapped-sample theory is ever established is not confirmed in this episode, and Freddy says only that someone got to Bode and that he will keep fighting. The paternity claim Jake hears is explicitly unconfirmed — Bode's ex-girlfriend does not know for sure whether the child is his. And Bode's instruction to his family to forget about him leaves his relationships where the season opened them: unsettled.