Spoilers for Season 4, Episode 2 of Fire Country are ahead! Read with caution, and stream the show with a Paramount+ subscription.
The death of Vince is looming large as Fire Country’s fourth season gets going on the 2025 TV schedule. Every character is grieving, and for some, old demons and struggles are making their way back to the surface. For Max Thieriot’s character Bode, he’s been tempted by his addiction twice now. So, after he almost took pills in Episode 2, I’m thinking about the showrunner’s comments regarding Bode being a “recovering addict,” and how that will impact him as everyone moves forward.
In Fire Country’s Season 4 premiere, Bode is in possession of pills that he says he’ll flush. However, he doesn’t do that; he keeps them. Then, in the final minutes of Episode 2, he takes a pill and then immediately throws it back up. It’s clear that Bode’s addiction is challenging him more now than it has in a long time.
So, I asked showrunner Tia Napolitano about it and how addiction will impact Max Thieriot’s character as Season 4 goes on. In response, she told me:
That’s right, but Bode is a recovering addict, and this show, in particular, part of our DNA is our characters aren’t perfect. You know, when you meet him, he’s in orange, he has a past. He struggles with addiction, and that struggle becomes very real when his father dies. And so we want to remind the audience that that’s a real part of his life.
That reminder certainly hit hard at the end of Episode 2. While it was good to see Bode not go through with taking the pill, it was still terrifying to watch. He’s put in so much work to move away from the troubled parts of his past, and in that one moment, he (almost) reverted to old ways.
Also, the episode ends before we can see what he does with the rest of the pills. So, as far as we know, he still has them and can take them. That’s a scary thought, and it reiterates how challenging living with addiction can be.
However, Napolitano made it clear to me that while this will be something Bode has to deal with this season, he has good people in his corner. Explaining the team that will help him weather this storm, the showrunner said:
We’ll bring forward that struggle a little bit and really sit and root for him at home to choose angels over demons. Audrey will be a very big part of that, in terms of someone in his corner. Manny will be a very big part of that. You’ll see all of our people step up to sort of help Bode, hopefully, to succeed.
For the past few seasons, we’ve seen Bode take on firefighting as a way to recover. Now, I think it will take more than his job to get through this battle he’s having with addiction.
Thankfully, we’ve already seen Manny be there for him, and hopefully, the rest of Station 42 and others from Edgewater, like his cousin Skye, will be too. While the death of Vince is an insurmountable loss, this village will get through it together, and hopefully, that means they’ll help Bode stay on his road to recovery as well.
To see what happens after this near-scary decision, you can catch new episodes of Fire Country every Friday at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.