I have not watched Fire Country. I want to be up front about that, because what follows is a strong opinion about a TV show I haven't seen, which I'm told is a proud internet tradition.
Here's what I know. It's a CBS drama that premiered in 2022 about a young convict who joins California's Conservation Camp Program, where incarcerated people fight wildfires alongside career crews. That's a real program and a real story, and someone should tell it.
But I spent a season on a wildland crew in Oregon, and I can tell you where the drama actually is. It isn't in the fire.
The fire is the least dramatic part
Fire is dramatic the way weather is dramatic. It's big, it's powerful, it doesn't care about you, and there's nothing to argue with. A show can make it look incredible. It can't make it interesting for more than one episode, because fire doesn't have motives.
People do.
The real show is the twenty people in the truck.
The set
About half my crew lived in the bunks at Mackenzie Bridge. Six dollars a night, a small clean room, two bathrooms shared between six firefighters and trail crew. The other half lived in Eugene or in the small towns along the highway, and often just stayed over rather than drive back.
Out there, there's a ballfield, a volleyball court, a gym, the river, two bars and a gas station. That's the whole set. When that's the whole set, your coworkers stop being coworkers pretty fast.
There were bonfires at the fire pit behind the bunks. The image I'd open the pilot on: one of the guys from the fuels crew, mid-celebration after a fire, standing at the fire pit and chipping a golf ball into the sand of the volleyball court. No context. No explanation. Roll credits.
That's a pilot. Nobody's even been near a fire yet.
The episodes
The best episode would be a slow one. A fire that goes on for weeks near the edge of the forest, where the crew doesn't evacuate but stays and lays hose around the businesses and the hot springs, and it's quiet and strange and almost pretty. The gas station starts giving you free soda and coffee. People you've never met buy you lunch.
Wildland firefighters are fucking heroes, and sometimes they get treated like it. If only the government could recognize that fact.
The crew goes home at night and sleeps in their own bunks while the fire is still burning, which feels wrong. People from other districts crash on your couch. Nobody knows how long it's going to last.
That's a season arc, not a set piece.
The worst day I ever had on a fire wasn't dramatic at all. It was crawling up a hill on my hands and knees in smoke with a fuel can, resupplying a sawyer who was cutting alone. Nobody would film that. It's just a guy on a hill. It was the hardest physical day of my life.
Where I'm probably wrong
To be fair to Fire Country: I haven't seen it, the conservation camp story is its own thing, and CBS renewed it, so somebody out there likes what it's doing. Maybe it has all of this and I'm yelling at a trailer.
And to be fair to TV: the real version would be hard to film. The drama on a crew is small. It's who gets the good seat in the truck, who dug more line, who got picked for the saw team, who got talked about after a bad day. Some of that drama was my fault, and that's a post of its own.
But that's the show I'd watch. Twenty people, one truck, two bathrooms, one fire that won't go out.
Somebody should make it. I'd consult for free soda.