Danielg342

What I will say is that I do appreciate that this episode gave some normally peripheral characters some meaningful things to do and meaningful storylines, especially Rocker and Hondo Sr. There were also some nice characters moments like with the Harrelsons and the Hickses, especially the latter as Robert Hicks came around on his old school relationship thinking. It was also great to see Laura James (Molly) again. That was it about the positives. This was, generally, a slog as you pretty much just waited around all episode for the inevitable to happen. Sure, there were some tense moments, but almost all of them were undone by the predictableness of the episode. I mean, did anyone really think Andre was going to be shot at the end there? Next week, the final episode. Which will also be tough to get through because, even in its lowest moments, this show has been a fun ride which will be sad to see end.

Perhaps the only redeemable part of this episode was Deputy Chief Bennett coming around on Hicks. All it took was Bennett being a damsel in distress and conveniently so. Can't have Hicks re-earn his job the conventional way. Overall, I just watch this episode and think the writers have already checked out. It was just dull and plain throughout. Plus, I found it rather ridiculous that six inmates who had been planning a breakout for months just happened to be conveniently placed at the same prison work space, which they could not have planned to do. Unless the idiot warden was a part of that...which the show never explained. Still, even with an explanation it doesn't change the fact everything was stilted and everyone just seemed bored. Even the usually reliable Shemar Moore seemed to be phoning it in today. How many more do we have left? *sigh*

I find that Tia Napolitano (the showrunner) to be very wishy washy. She seems to fancy herself as some kind of visionary, when the reality is she's nothing more than an egotistical dreamer who is out of touch on just about everything. Honestly, I can't think of a single arc or any kind of storyline that Fire Country has done that felt well-plotted, well-planned, well-paced and had a payoff that didn't just deliver, it was earned. The closest may be the Oxalta storyline that just passed but even that storyline was nonsensical and it was rushed. Yeah, I'm not going to discount the issues that executive meddling presents, and I'm sure not happy that it may have been the suits who forced Billy Burke out. However, plenty of shows can navigate handsy executives, and I doubt there's a TV show on air (especially one that has lasted more than a season) that hasn't dealt with executives having their imprint on the show. So if FC goes off the rails next season or in the years afterward, I really don't know how the writers can do anything except look in the mirror. They're the ones who have consistently made a mess of the show, one that relies too much on shock value and one where the characters have no appreciable growth at all. If Burke had been written out with a well-told story that honoured his character and his legacy to the show, I might be able to accept it. If the show had proven itself capable of developing storylines and characters properly instead of just relying on shoehorning and constant swerves, maybe the cliffhanger doesn't rankle me so much. However, Burke was essentially written out at the last minute, with the character basically tossed away like garbage with the audience unable to anticipate it or given a narrative that respects his character at all. All for a "shocking swerve" that means that Burke may not be able to come back at all. That's not just disrespectful, that's reckless. If Burke's treatment is any indicator, then I don't know if I want to be a character on this show. Because the writers are so clueless and bereft of ideas that their characters are so cheap that they can be disposed of on a whim. Meaning there's no point in getting invested- since the writers don't care about the characters, neither will I.

The real thing about Billy Burke's impending exit is that the show already had a storyline ready for when it needed Burke to step aside. Remember when Vince had heart issues? Heart issues that were so serious, it could have- and maybe should have- cost him his career as a firefighter? Why wasn't the decision made then to make him a recurring character? Why wasn't that storyline used as a justification to bump down his status for S4? What really stinks about this whole situation is that it's highly likely that Billy Burke is never coming back because the character is dead. That's just not something I can accept. If there was a chance that Burke could come back, maybe there might a sliver of a reason to continue on with this show. Yeah, I wouldn't see him every week, but at least there's a chance I'd see him every few episodes. (Honestly, that might have been a better use of Vince since the character is best to provide the well-timed zinger and/or the emotional grounding that the other characters sometimes need) ...but... The showrunners made their choice. I am with you, @possibilities, that this show seems to minimize the things I like about it (I, too, liked the Three Rock/Black Creek (the female camp) dynamic) and maximize the stuff that I don't (like Bodiella). Maybe I stick with it because I've been there since Day 1 and Minute 1. However, if there's nothing worth sticking around for, what's the point? @buckboard, I thank you and appreciate your kind words. They mean a lot. I never sought to be someone people look to but I'm glad my words have that kind of effect. If I don't come back for next season, I still had a lot of fun dissecting this show with you and everyone else.

I think this just confirms I'm not coming back. No way I'm enduring this trainwreck.

To be honest, I watched the end of this show and I'm not sure how excited I am to want to continue with it. S4 faces the prospect of losing three main characters- Sharon, Vince and Jake- as well as the prospect of losing two regularly recurring characters in Walter and Audrey. Three of those characters- Vince, Sharon and Audrey- are my three overall favourites for the series (aside from Freddy). So the thought of losing those three doesn't sit very well with me. That said, there was far more wrong with this episode than the prospect of the show sacrificing characters I like. The main problem is that the show is up to its old tricks again with plot contrivances galore, with characters either acting stupid or doing very little of value at all. We also had an episode that moved slower than a snail. I'm not going to go into everything that went wrong because I'd be here all night. I will highlight something that really rankled me in this episode and compare it to how another show treats the same concept differently. By now, we all know Bode's got a thing for heroism. We also know he's impulsive and doesn't hesitate to go rogue. The show keeps painting Bode's rogue tendencies as very bad, but Bode never faces any consequences for them. So I don't know why, three seasons in, the show still insists on having this stupid game where Bode's superiors tell him not to do something and Bode does it anyway. It's tiring at this point, and Bode's more than proven his effectiveness. Meaning that if the show is never going to made Bode's recklessness have anything meaningfully negative happen, the show's characters ought to start treating him with respect. On S.W.A.T., which airs after Fire Country, the dynamic is different. There, the main character- Hondo- is also known to be a bit of a rogue. One of the early season storylines involved Hondo's own commander- Robert Hicks- trying to reel him in. However, as the seasons wore on, Hondo more than proved his effectiveness when he made the decision to take matters into his own hands. How does S.W.A.T. handle this situation? It doesn't do it by continuing with Hicks trying to rein in Hondo- it evolved to a point where Hicks and Hondo develop a mutual respect and a mutual trust with each other. Hicks doesn't try to keep Hondo on a metaphorical leash, and Hondo doesn't abuse that trust by picking his spots wisely. It's the kind of thing that I wish FC would do more often with Bode. Now, I'm not sure about the wisdom of Bode charging, head first, into a burning building with no supplies and no gear. I'm not sure there's a firefighter alive who is that stupid. However, that's more on the writing staff deciding Bode needs to be stupid to create drama, which is more indicative of the inherent problems with this show. After three seasons, I'm not sure any character has any real, appreciable development. Yes, I know a Hollywood serial- especially one produced by Jerry Bruckheimer- doesn't typically have a lot of character development anyway, but FC's lack of growth in just about anything is really jarring. We're three seasons in and the show is still recycling storylines from S1, only with slightly different character arrangements. The show may have altered the settings and the landscape of the series, but can we really say that any of the characters themselves are any different from when we first met them? It's no wonder this show relies on cheap drama to fuel plots, because the writers couldn't be arsed to do the work needed to develop the characters and develop newer conflicts as the characters progressed. I may still miss Dianne Farr, Billy Burke and Leven Rambin if they're gone from the series for good. Then again, maybe it's for the best so they can evacuate this sinking, rudderless ship.

I'm not talking about making Oxalta sympathetic. Or Finn, for that matter. When it comes to Finn, I believe the story choice was, ultimately, wrong. Gabriella's relationships on this show have been breaking off a serious relationship with Jake and breaking off the wedding with Diego, before going back into the dating pool and meeting stalker Finn. I really don't understand why the writers couldn't have written Finn as someone Gabby had no compatibility with- just two people who had a spark but little else. That would have been a far more interesting story- and more realistic. Besides, whenever there's a character who goes through a frustrating dating conga of incompatible exes, it's usually a male character. So it would be nice for a female character go through that for a change. As for Oxalta, what bothers me most about them is that their actions are patently unrealistic, needlessly cartoony and downright unbelievable, and their lawyer seems to have been directed to play his part as if he was playing The Joker. First, a company can't use a non-disclosure agreement to stop people from reporting downright criminal behaviour. Poisoning a well and doing so out of outright, willing, negligence is criminal behaviour. Secondly, Oxalta has done this numerous times. How they don't have the DOJ, the FBI, the EPA and any other alphabet soup organization breathing down their necks is beyond me. NDAs don't destroy physical evidence, after all. Thirdly, sending out spies and harassing people to stop them from flipping on their NDAs is also illegal. Now, I don't know if this was something Oxalta has done before or if it was just shady lawyer guy doing it, but if they've done it before, there's no way the company escapes legal consequences. Fourthly, J. August Richards was directed to play Merriweather as if he was playing The Joker (and a bad imitation of that). I'm not faulting the actor- the actor can only do the job that is asked of them, and Richards did that. The real problem is that Merriweather came off as incredibly one-dimensional and cartoony, as if the director was so worried that unless Merriweather was "obviously evil" we wouldn't hate the guy enough. That's the wrong way to think. I brought up the WWE in this context because it fits. I said a cartoony villain in wrestling can work and work well, and this is because the goal in wrestling is not to sell a complex, long-form story, the goal in wrestling is to simply sell a match you'll get to see on a pay-per-view. This doesn't always mean that cartoon villainy works all the time in wrestling, but, if you've got a performer that can pull it off (like Richards did), you can use that as the hook for the match. Sometimes you may even have to do that because a wrestling show usually has many different storylines at once so a simplistic story is a logistical necessity. On a TV show the dynamic is different. TV shows, supposedly, have the time and energy to prepare stories beforehand and develop those stories and characters. They don't have the chaos of wrestling where audience reactions change week-to-week and maybe even during the show itself. Shows also don't have 40-50 characters to write for all at once. They may have to juggle a half dozen storylines at once, if that. So I expect Fire Country to do far better than give me a one-dimensional story for Oxalta, because they're not dealing with the chaos of wrestling. FC is supposed to be better planned and better structured, and it should be better developed. Ultimately, though, the real issue with Oxalta? How many times have we seen this exact story play out before on other TV shows and movies? A super shady company doing super shady things and being completely shady about it is a story that's been around forever and done hundreds of times before. Heck, Animaniacs did the story much better with the elevator button company...and that story was far from perfect. You know what I would have done? Oxalta poisoning the Three Rock well should have been a one-time thing. An accident. One the company can deny or at least argue "it's not our fault". One where a company throwing all kinds of lawyers and specialists around to find some way to escape accountability not only makes sense but is also realistic. You can still have Vince's ex prodding around and trying her very best to expose Oxalta's negligence, only to encounter several roadblocks along the way. ...and Merriweather can still be the guy who throws them all up. He might even still propose a legal settlement that provides compensation but it's not enough and would still come with the company not claiming any wrongdoing, while still cleaning up the well. There would be no NDAs because there wouldn't need to be. Just the tension of Sharon wanting to taking the deal- because she'd just want the problem to go away- and Manny wanting to fight. Oxalta would even welcome this fight, because they know they have far deeper pockets than Three Rock does and they believe they can throw up an infinite number of roadblocks. They would just underestimate the resolve of Manny and Vince's ex. This would still be an arc where Oxalta is clearly evil. They committed a crime and don't want to face accountability for it. The difference is, they're not cartoony, they're not one-dimensional and this stuff happens all the time. Litigation in the Exxon-Valdez spill lasted almost twenty years, for example. Ultimately, I'm not against someone being portrayed as evil- I just don't want cartoon villains. Give me someone believable and well-developed.

I could go on the usual screed about how terrible Hollywood is at writing about prostitution in general, because the beats are always the same (the women are exploited and practically prisoners, their customers are self-entitled jerks and their handlers are abusive control freaks). ...but... I'm not sure that was the worst part about this episode. I'll be honest, I might have missed writing this review because I fell asleep briefly and my brother woke me up. Imagine that. S.W.A.T., the show that's all about action, excitement and "edge of your seat" stuff...was so dull that I felt like taking a nap instead. The main problem was this episode was a classic case of the writers jamming way too much into one episode and thinking it makes for a "complex" case, when all it created was a mess. Instead of maybe focusing on one thing- a shady producer recruiting women with promises of movie roles only to force them into prostitution (which is a sad reality) or the team having to race against a vigilante group to rescue a missing woman- they combined both and then added several other things to it that added nothing to the case. I mean, halfway though the episode, it seemed like the writers forgot the vigilante group even existed. I guess Tan really had to have that moment with the scared girl, and the show had to do the silly posturing about "finding evidence so they can confront shady producer guy" when knowing shady producer guy was the last one to see the missing woman alive was all the evidence they really needed for a search warrant. Then there's Hicks...so, is he gone for the rest of the series now? Also, is Hondo as SWAT Commander really such a bad thing? I hate to say it, but I'm glad this is wrapping up. It's a mess.

Honestly, I don't really know where to begin on an episode like this. This sounds like the collection of very bad ideas that someone thought would make a great episode when it doesn't. For starters, the Oxalta storyline was already ridiculous because NDAs would not get them out of some clearly criminal activity. Criminal activity that would have sunk the company long before this arc could even happen. Criminal activity they continued to do in this episode. Secondly, as much as I liked J. August Richards' performance as Attorney Merriweather, writing and directing him as a one-dimensional villain is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, we're not getting Merriweather vs. Bode at Hell in a Cell, so making Merriweather play a poor man's version of a WWE heel just doesn't fit a TV show. Sure, the Oxalta storyline had a very WWE ending with Merriweather getting recorded and admitting to the harassment, but it still doesn't change that the storyline itself was patently ridiculous. As far as the "Creepy Finn" storyline went...it was already cringeworthy. Now it also benefits from plot contrivances. So fortunate- or unfortunate- for Finn that Vince brought Gabby along in the first place and made her ride with him. Otherwise, we'd have no drama. Lastly...the Jake storyline. Unless we're headed for a major cast shakeup for S4, I'm not sure what the point of this storyline is. They sure are not developing it much, that's for sure.

Maybe it's just me, but I thought Heather was more cutesy than threatening last week. Well, having befriended a few receptionists, I'm thinking that they might actually like to have one...