“It’s like he’s used up so many of his nine lives like a cat,” Max Thieriot says of his Fire Country character, Bode Leone, who’s going into Season 4 about to suffer a major loss. The trailer has already revealed that his father, Vince (Billy Burke), dies in the fire that caused a building to collapse on him as well as Bode’s mother (Diane Farr) and grandfather (Jeff Fahey).
“There’s so many different states of grief, and each person, those stages look a little different, especially for somebody who is a recovering addict,” Thieriot tells TV Insider. “The things that he’s already faced in his life, in a way, are sort of compounding, but in a way, he has different mechanisms for himself that he uses to cope with these things because he’s had to. But I think clearly he hasn’t experienced a loss like this probably since [his sister] Riley died, if ever.”
But the star, executive producer, and co-creator wouldn’t say that this brings up past stuff for his character. “It’s certainly going to be sitting there pushing him, trying to push him over the edge, which is scary for someone like this. And I think the troubling part is that the way he’s trying to cope with it is he’s trying to put on this face of, ‘I’m OK, everything is OK,’” Thieriot explains. “And as Bode does, he internalizes things when really he desperately needs to be letting it out in some way. And so he’s battling with himself over trying to be the man that his mom needs him to be and that the station needs him to be and his community needs him to be, while inside, there’s a little boy in there that’s really hurt and is really crying inside.”
Bode will be “at the edge of not being able to put one foot in front of the other,” he continues. “I think we see him really sort of at his breaking point constantly, but because of that — and this season is really about rising from the ashes and overcoming — his journey will be one that, people always say, ‘You have to get knocked down to get back up.’ And this is really sort of the epitome of that for him. I mean, you can’t really get knocked down any further. And so I think while there will be a lot of that, by the end, we see probably more growth than we’ve ever gotten to experience Bode have in this series.”
Bode will be leaning on different people, but based on the trailer, it doesn’t look like one of them will be his best friend, Jake (Jordan Calloway). The other firefighter keeps him from entering the burning building to get to his parents, and Bode warns him he’ll never forgive him.
“It’s one of those things where when you’re dealing with loss and grief like that, I think everybody knows it’s no one’s fault. But I think it’s one way of letting out that pain is by blaming everyone, right?” points out Thieriot. “By blaming everybody else around you, by questioning every decision that everybody makes because all you really want is that person back and to be able to change the past and you can’t. And I think that’s part of just them sort of coping with the reality of the situation that they’re in. So many of these relationships have a journey ahead and have a lot of healing to do.”
If you ask us, it’s the perfect time to bring Jared Padalecki back as Camden. After all, he lost his brother in a fire, Bode just lost his father in one…
“We’ll have to see,” is all Thieriot will say.
What are you hoping to see from Bode this season on Fire Country? Let us know in the comments section below.
Fire Country, Season 4 Premiere, Friday, October 17, 8/7c, CBS (Regular Time Period Premiere, Friday, October 24, 9/8c)