Fire Country Fans Are Fed Up With The Writing After Eve's Accident

CBS' "Fire Country" has certainly turned viewers' heads during its opening season. It's understandable why. The show tells a simple but potentially exciting story, which could probably be best summed up as wildfires, the convict recruited to fight them (Bode Donovan, played by Max Theriot), and the past he is forced to confront in the process. That's a decent premise, something that, on its face, plenty of people will want to watch. Critically, however, the show has received a rather lukewarm response. "Fire Country" currently has a 50 percent critical response on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score is slightly worse, coming in at 47 percent.

For some viewers, it simply comes down to the writing, not necessarily in terms of dialogue or character development, but in basic truth to the premise of the show. For example, after firefighter Eve Edwards (Jules Latimer) is pinned under a tree — later to be rescued by the rest of the crew — some wondered how it was that a professional firefighter didn't know how to run from a collapsing tree. On the r/FireCountry subreddit, u/JohnnyAK907 asked "why did Eve pull an Alien Covenant move and try to laterally outrun a GD falling tree?"

What they are essentially asking is why, as Eve saw the tree about to fall on her, she ran along the direction that the tree was falling on. Rather than running perpendicular from the tree's path, she essentially tried to outrun it. "I enjoy this show," they continued, "but I want to find the writer and just slap them because that was stupid/lazy beyond all measure."

Other viewers seem to be souring on the show's writing. "Between the constant monologues, mumbling, bad CGI, and bad writing I just can't anymore," wrote u/jamaicahereicome1975. Concerning the writing, folks seem to be most irked by what seem like holes in logic during firefighting scenes. Though most in this particular thread focused on this seemingly amateurish move for a highly trained firefighter, at least one other example, from a since deleted account, seemed to ask why firefighters were sawing down random branches instead of whole trees during a wildfire. 

It might be easy to dismiss much of this criticism as coming from people who very likely have never had to fight a fire themselves. But other, far more credible voices have taken issue with "Fire Country." Months before its premiere on CBS, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — known as Cal Fire for short — released a statement denouncing the show for its inaccurate portrayal of both the firefighters themselves and the firefighter-inmate release program that Bode is involved in. 

"This television series is a misrepresentation of the professional all-hazards fire department and resource protection agency that Cal Fire is," said Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler. According to Cal Fire, these misrepresentations weren't just inaccurate but harmful. Even the union representing Cal Fire's firefighters tried to take legal action and get the show pulled from the air.