2 out of 5

Created by: Max Thieriot, Tony Phelan and Joan Rater

covers season 1

Maybe I caught the firefighter procedural bug from the 9-1-1 series, and found an interest in actor Max Thieriot from his part in Seal Team, further encouraging me to check out CBS series Fire Country, as Thieriot had a co-creation credit. But it seems without the spectacle of 9-1-1’s Murphy, Falchuk, and Minear productions, and without the deeper range of in-built drama inherent in Seal Team’s premise, a firefighting procedural doesn’t offer much over any given weekly drama. While some of the actual comparative mundanities of running a rural department are interesting – FC is set in the California wilderness, and the incidents often require managing the fires more than putting them out – the writers seem more hard-pressed to dress this stuff up instead of leaning into it, really piling extra pointless dramas onto any given episode’s flaming threat, otherwise we’ll just be watching trees and cabins burn each time.

One way to liven things up is by the internal drama, of course, but things get off to a clunky start, and continue to pile on with all those eye-rolling TV crises shortcuts – characters turning on one another in an instant; sparkless relationship triangles; medical or emotional maladies that flare up whenever you need a cliffhanger… Good writing can salvage this stuff; Fire Country’s writers may be better on other projects, but every script comes across as a thin idea and barely-there characters being propped up on as many tropey tricks as possible. And unfortunately, this saddles a lot around Thieriot, who seems quite lost when portraying Bode, a felon who has returned to his hometown – where his mom and dad work for the fire department – as part of a rehabilitation program that lets prisoners train as firefighters. It’s a part that requires a bit more emotional lifting than Thieriot seems capable, though it may be that he’s surrounded by a lot of one-note characters who also speak almost soley in tropes.

Bode’s folks, played by Diane Farr and Billy Burke, get to be one of the reliable anchors of the series, helping to make it more or less watchable. They’re pitched as the level-headed ones in all matters – the parents of the series, in a way – and so the show isn’t in such a hurry to force them through tired plot ideas (though of course they have their own eye-rolling moments and questionable arcs, but they’re within the tolerable limits of television). When Farr or Burke have center stage, things settle a bit. The inclusion of the prison firefighters is, theoretically, the main hook of the show, but it falls away to a minor detail about partway through, and there’s the thought that a show focused on, simply, a family firefighting practice might’ve been stronger. But, y’know, TV’s gotta have a better elevator pitch.

I’d say some of the most obnoxiously generic / illogical story arcs fall away as the first season goes on, but that doesn’t necessarily improve the overall quality of the scripts, or find better focus for Theriot’s acting style. Fire Country is certainly a valid premise for a procedural; unfortunately, using that premise to establish a memorable identity seems to have been a sum far greater than could be achieved by its parts.