Fire Country Season 1 Episode 3: Where There's Smoke...

Bode is still haunted by the night his sister Riley died; in his dreams he relives the car accident that killed her, and the fact that his father, Vince, told him to leave town and never come back afterward. Vince has not forgiven him, and he assumes Bode punched Jake simply out of jealousy. What Vince and Sharon do not know is that Jake and Riley had been dating before she died, and that Jake had cheated on her — the reason Riley was so upset on the night of the crash. Bode has already told Eve the truth; only his parents remain in the dark.

Sharon, meanwhile, keeps visiting Bode and keeps her illness to herself, talking instead about the future she still hopes he will have in Edgewater.

Manny tells Bode that he can run and hide or he can be the man Manny and his mother know he can be, and Bode — who rarely opens up — tells Manny what his father said to him after Riley died. Then Manny takes the inmate crew to Maynor Mountain, known to firefighters as “Mayhem Mountain” because of the hippies and marijuana growers who use it. A teenager comes running out of the fire, on fire himself, and the crew douses him and saves his life. He tells them a friend is still trapped up on the mountain, and Vince and Jake head up to search.

Vince and Jake find the missing teenager in a pit: he had tried to steal marijuana from a grow site and fell into one of the grower's traps. Before they can free him, the grower, Mojave, arrives with his men. Mojave is anti-authority and has set traps around his crop, and when he finds the firefighters he takes them hostage at gunpoint. His men had already let Vince and Jake get a distress call out, so word reaches the crews below — including Bode, who realizes his father is one of the hostages. Bode knows Mojave from his drug-using past; they were friends and drug buddies.

He convinces Manny to let him go up the mountain after his father.

The trip up takes time, and Bode removes his mask to show Mojave that it is him, then argues that Mojave still has a future after prison. With a fire raging around them and neither Mojave nor his men wanting to die, Bode persuades Mojave to let the hostages go; Mojave and his men surrender, and everyone drives off the mountain in a van, briefly catching fire on the way but escaping without serious injury. On the mountain, Vince overhears Bode say that he at least owns his mistakes — a remark Vince does not raise with Jake at the time.

Afterward, Vince finally visits Bode, and Bode tells him the truth: that Jake broke Riley's heart on the night she died. Bode also says he is tired of being the scapegoat in his own family and that he had not planned to come back to Edgewater once his sentence was finished. Sharon, after learning that Manny let Bode leave the crew to go up the mountain, warns him not to go rogue again.

The Maynor Mountain standoff is resolved: Bode persuades Mojave to release Vince and Jake, and Mojave and his men surrender as the fire closes in. Everyone escapes by van without serious injury.

The episode's personal thread leaves the family conflict unresolved. After the rescue, Vince visits Bode and Bode tells him that Jake broke Riley's heart on the night she died and that he is tired of being the family scapegoat — a confession whose consequences are not resolved within this episode. Sharon also warns Bode not to go rogue again, and she has still not told him about her kidney disease. Whether Vince believes Bode, and how the revelation about Jake changes the family, is left open at the end of Episode 3.