S01.E05: Get Some, Be Safe

[jewel21]

Quote

A vegetation fire gets complicated for the crew when a panicked horse refuses to evacuate a burning barn. Vince’s brother Luke, the Cal Fire communications director, makes a surprise visit in town.

Airdate: 11/04/2022

[Maverick]

 OMG this is such a soap.   Vince's brother, who also works in the family business, popping up?  It's like when Alexis dragged Blake's brother Ben back to Denver to wreak havoc.

[Danielg342]

There's a really good show in here somewhere...the show just has to find it.

How many times do I get to write that before:

• I realize it'll never happen and this show will then be irredeemable,

OR

• The show actually does become good

What defines this episode the most are just the amount of pointless dramas that the episode engages in. Did Freddy's hand have to be a bigger deal than it was? What's the point of Sharon's kidney drama when we know she's a main character and we're not in Sweeps yet? Why promote Bode to First Saw only to demote him again, knowing full well that he'll be back in that position in no time? What was that silly business with Jake and Gabriella's phone (a violation of her trust, which she completely ignored)? How is Jake the voice of reason between Gabriella and Manny?

Oh, and would there be any doubt that Bode would rescue that horse?

Also, what was the point of Luke, Michael Trucco's character? The press release made his appearance to be a big deal, but he did absolutely nothing except hug Sharon and anger Manny. Maybe he'll be back in a later episode and actually get to do something substantive.

Still, I see moments like Gabriella and Bode at the end and Vince and Sharon together trying to hold it together after the kidney news and I see a show that can have some magic.

They just- still- need to figure out how to make the most of that.

[possibilities]

The horse's people didn't think of luring Henry with sugar cubes, but Bode is more of a horse whisperer than they are. 

[Danielg342]

4 minutes ago, possibilities said:

The horse's people didn't think of luring Henry with sugar cubes, but Bode is more of a horse whisperer than they are. 

Yeah, exactly. Supposedly Bode, who knows the horse for all of about five minutes, knows about sugar cubes but the mother and daughter who presumably raised Kevin the horse and cried "what are we going to do?" have no clue about them.

The fridge logic with this show is growing into something larger than at the beer store.

[Dowel Jones]

Hey, fire department, here's a hint.  Make a deal with the property owners to put FD locks on the gates so that you can, you know, unlock those gates. That 'Cool Hand Luke' method of chopping through the links is just a waste of time, especially if you saw the captain's first swing missed the chain completely and he hit it with his handle.  Oh, and you want to find water on the property?  Ask the owners, duh.

Just out of curiosity, can you make a collect call to a cell phone?  I don't know one way or the other.  In any case, Jake, stay in your lane.  Do not mess with other people's property.  Your dick's way too hard.

Wow, Three Rock is a cool camp.  You get to go swimming in the lake after dark, and hang out with women without any supervision?  Why exactly does Bodie want to transfer to another camp?

[buckboard]

From an article on why horses are sometimes blindfolded: 
"Blindfolding horses during emergencies is also appropriate. Horses can be quite emotional and only loosen up around the people they trust. For instance, should a fire break out in the barns and they are hesitant to move, blindfold them to reduce the nervousness and have them move."

Although I'm not a horse person, I've seen owners do this on the news to get their horses to move when there is fire danger.  I would think Cal Fire personnel would be aware of this, even though the owners never seem to have heard of it.  Seems worth a try and more plausible than finding a few stray sugar cubes in a barn that is about to implode.

[Danielg342]

2 hours ago, buckboard said:

Although I'm not a horse person, I've seen owners do this on the news to get their horses to move when there is fire danger.  I would think Cal Fire personnel would be aware of this, even though the owners never seem to have heard of it.  Seems worth a try and more plausible than finding a few stray sugar cubes in a barn that is about to implode.

I thought about the blindfold too, since I saw it work on Due South way back when.

I think what's more implausible is that Bode, who barely knew the horse, knew how to handle it and take it to safety while their owners- who should know their own horse- had no idea. If Bode can find the sugar cubes, why can't the daughter or the mother find them? Perhaps- perhaps- I might give the daughter a pass because she's still a kid and kids when they're in terror don't think much (if it all) but I'd expect the mother to have a bit more sense and thought. It can't be the first time she's calmed her daughter down.

[amarante]

I am fairly sure I knew that you blindfolded horses to lead them out of a barn when I was eight and read Black Beauty.

It is a ridiculous plot point that the owners who ran a farm were unaware of how to deal with their own horse's anxiety.

Any show that has to consistently place one person as the superhero is just ridiculous.

[cuppasun]

9 hours ago, buckboard said:

From an article on why horses are sometimes blindfolded: 
"Blindfolding horses during emergencies is also appropriate. Horses can be quite emotional and only loosen up around the people they trust. For instance, should a fire break out in the barns and they are hesitant to move, blindfold them to reduce the nervousness and have them move."

Although I'm not a horse person, I've seen owners do this on the news to get their horses to move when there is fire danger.  I would think Cal Fire personnel would be aware of this, even though the owners never seem to have heard of it.  Seems worth a try and more plausible than finding a few stray sugar cubes in a barn that is about to implode.

6 minutes ago, amarante said:

I am fairly sure I knew that you blindfolded horses to lead them out of a barn when I was eight and read Black Beauty.

My first thought exactly, especially since the horse seemed very approachable as long as no one was pulling on the halter rope. Grab a rag, throw it over the horse's eyes, and guide it out. I don't get fussed too much about manufactured drama in shows where that's the point, but in this case the drama doesn't preclude the entirely reality-based and sensible solution that gets the horse safely out!

[mythoughtis]

On 11/4/2022 at 9:08 PM, Danielg342 said:

What's the point of Sharon's kidney drama when we know she's a main character and we're not in Sweeps yet?

Because Bode will be a perfect match for a donor kidney? 

Luke is there to add additional drama because Sharon will need to be off work for dialysis and Luke wants her job. Gabriella’s dad ( can’t remember his name)  saw this coming already.   

I really really do not want Bodriella, Bobriella, Gade…. Or any other version.   

[Danielg342]

2 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

Gabriella’s dad ( can’t remember his name)

Manny.

3 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

Luke is there to add additional drama because Sharon will need to be off work for dialysis and Luke wants her job. Gabriella’s dad ( can’t remember his name)  saw this coming already.   

I must have missed that bit of foreshadowing. I still don't think Luke did enough in this episode.

4 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

Because Bode will be a perfect match for a donor kidney? 

I should have figured that. We'll get a big dramatic episode where Brode broods about donating his kidney before he decides to actually go through with it, and then the dramatic episode where Sharon has her operation and everyone worries about her. Then a lighter episode afterwards where she recovers.

I guess I know what's happening come February.

[possibilities]

Bode can't be a firefighter with only one kidney, can he? Or does it not matter?

[Raja]

Is "get some" real firefighter or Cal Fire slang? I associate it a more sinister usage as Vietnam War slang.

[Danielg342]

5 minutes ago, possibilities said:

Bode can't be a firefighter with only one kidney, can he? Or does it not matter?

In real life, I suspect he couldn't be...but on this show, they wantonly disregard reality so I'm betting Bode with one kidney will still be allowed to be a firefighter.

8 hours ago, cuppasun said:

I don't get fussed too much about manufactured drama in shows where that's the point,

I think the issue for me is more how much idiocy is driving the plots and how useless the other characters seem to be without Bode doing things for them. I mean, if Freddy thought for maybe one second he might have realized that the worst that was going to happen to him because of his injured hand would be he had to sit this case out- Manny wasn't going send him back to Lancaster because he hurt his hand. Instead, Freddy had to be a petulant child and not only got himself into trouble, he got Bode into trouble- bigger trouble than Freddy did, arguably.

Bode, too, isn't blameless here because he could have easily been the "voice of reason" and realized the same thing, ignoring his friend's unreasonable cries and gone to Manny himself. Instead, both of them have to create this unreasonable mountain out of a molehill and wind up with some unnecessary drama and hardship- all because neither Freddy or Bode could be bothered to think rationally for even just one second.

I'm not, inherently, against the idea of the "Drama of the Week" kind of storytelling, especially in the early part of the series where you still need to set things up. Where this show is failing is that, apart from maybe Manny, there's no other character who is shown to be competent and- more importantly- complimentary to Bode. There's taking centre stage and then there's "he's doing everything himself", and Bode needs to be more of the former.

Where the show is also failing is that it's crafting it's plots so that either only Bode knows how to find the solution (such as dealing with Mojave) or other characters' idiocy fuels the drama (like Freddy did here). We're not talking about plots like Sharon's kidney disease where a beat like the progression of the disease into something more serious is a completely natural development and a reasonable problem for the show to tackle.

Instead, we're having characters behaving like kids (or, rather, acting how the plot needs them to act) just to "get things moving", which is just lazy writing. Sure, people in real life do stupid things and that makes drama- but it's not satisfying TV. Stupidity is annoying- as much as we expect people in real life to use their brains, we expect the people on TV to do the same. Since we hold TV characters to a higher standard than we do for real life people, when the people on TV don't use their brains, it's very unsatisfying.

[Dowel Jones]

49 minutes ago, Raja said:

Is "get some" real firefighter or Cal Fire slang? I associate it a more sinister usage as Vietnam War slang.

Maybe among some of the older firefighters who may have heard it from Vietnam vets and such.  I never heard it that I can remember; more common was something like  'cheat death and injury to save useless brush and grass.'

14 minutes ago, Danielg342 said:

I mean, if Freddy thought for maybe one second he might have realized that the worst that was going to happen to him because of his injured hand would be he had to sit this case out- Manny wasn't going send him back to Lancaster because he hurt his hand.

IRL this would be somewhat accurate.  An inmate who suffers a significant injury which entails a hospital visit goes back to the Center (Jamesville, not Lancaster) and waits to heal.  It's not the preferred outcome, and so inmates will hide their minor injuries to avoid being taken off the crew.  In this case, he doesn't have a choice since medical intervention is called for.  

[mythoughtis]

25 minutes ago, Danielg342 said:

if Freddy thought for maybe one second he might have realized that the worst that was going to happen to him because of his injured hand would be he had to sit this case out- Manny wasn't going send him back to Lancaster because he hurt his hand.

First, I will reference the post above mine from Dowel about what happens in real life. 
 

Second, Freddy is an inmate.  One whose every minute of life has been controlled by someone else since the day he set foot in prison.   It’s not all that far fetched for him to be terrified  of being sent back when  one inmate already had been. 

However Bode knew what he needed to do and he didn’t do it. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by mythoughtis

[possibilities]

I thought the fear of being sent back to prison was actually the more reasonable/realistic conflict of the episode, but stuff like "only Bode can save the horse" was too much Marty Stu, and "brother in law is a two faced asshole who wants to take Bode's mother's job" was guilding the lily. 

[Danielg342]

49 minutes ago, Dowel Jones said:

IRL this would be somewhat accurate.  An inmate who suffers a significant injury which entails a hospital visit goes back to the Center (Jamesville, not Lancaster) and waits to heal.  It's not the preferred outcome, and so inmates will hide their minor injuries to avoid being taken off the crew.  In this case, he doesn't have a choice since medical intervention is called for.  

Freddy referred to going back to Lancaster, hence why I used it.

Thanks for the input. Do these fire camps not have their own first aid centres and equipment? It seems strange to me that the camp wouldn't have a medic that could handle minor injuries and recommend alternate duties- either at the camp or on the field- for the injured inmate. If, at the end of the episode, Manny was willing to reassign Freddy to kitchen duty while he recovers, how was that not an option in the beginning?

42 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

Freddy is an inmate.  One whose every minute of life has been controlled by someone else since the day he set foot in prison.   It’s not all that far fetched for him to be terrified  of being sent back when  one inmate already had been. 

However Bode knew what he needed to do and he didn’t do it.

Fair point, and maybe this could have been a better character-building moment for Bode and the focus of the episode as opposed to that horse. Bode could have been the guy that gets Manny to let the injury slide and/or find some way to keep Freddy in the field (or at least not get a trip back to the penitentiary) after some treatment. We've already established that Manny was once one of them and Bode knows that. He should have used that to his advantage, because his relationship with Manny could actually be beneficial to the other inmates.

Something like that would have been far better to establish and opens a lot of doors for plots down the road than what we did get.

[Dowel Jones]

1 hour ago, Danielg342 said:

Do these fire camps not have their own first aid centres and equipment?

Not really.  The CalFire personnel are often trained to EMT level and can attend to sprains and bug bites, but it's probably the liability involved that requires at least a visit to an Emergency Dept.  Minor injuries could be returned to the base camp, but something requiring stitches or worse merits a stay somewhere else.  Base Camps , like Edgewater, don't really have space for slack work unless one of the other crews are shorthanded.  On large fires, CDC does establish a separate medical team to treat inmate injuries.  Mentioning Jamestown was a reflex action on my part, sorry to nitpick.

[buckboard]

19 hours ago, possibilities said:

Bode can't be a firefighter with only one kidney, can he? Or does it not matter?

I looked it up and there were examples of firefighters as both recipients and donors who went back to work. Recuperation for physical occupations takes a little longer than desk jobs, but it is doable.

Maybe Bode can work in the kitchen with Freddy until he's recuperated from the donation.  

[jabRI]

Timing was weird as usual.  They got there sometime in the daylight,  a few hours, still daylight, they heard the kid was likely in the barn looking for the horse.  They 'breached' the barn in pitch black nightime.  How long does it take to get to a barn door? Especially if they think a kid is in there?  Willing to hear reasonable explanations.

[Linderhill]

I'm so glad others wrote about blind folding the horse.  That is something I read about as a child, (it could have been Black Beauty or another of the many animal stories I read) but I always thought that was common knowledge so why didn't these knuckleheads didn't know this.  Especially the horse's owners.  This show is getting into soap territory so I'll give it a couple more episodes to see if it improves.

[Danielg342]

On 11/6/2022 at 3:42 AM, Dowel Jones said:

Not really.  The CalFire personnel are often trained to EMT level and can attend to sprains and bug bites, but it's probably the liability involved that requires at least a visit to an Emergency Dept.  Minor injuries could be returned to the base camp, but something requiring stitches or worse merits a stay somewhere else.  Base Camps , like Edgewater, don't really have space for slack work unless one of the other crews are shorthanded.  On large fires, CDC does establish a separate medical team to treat inmate injuries.  Mentioning Jamestown was a reflex action on my part, sorry to nitpick.

We're cool on the nitpick, I was just saying it was the writers' fault. Unless I missed the part where Freddy explained why he ended up in Edgewater while serving time in Lancaster.

I guess the question still remains about kitchen duty- I don't know why Bode couldn't have taken an injured Freddy and negotiated with Manny to let him do kitchen duty instead of having to go back to prison. If Manny was willing to do that at the end of the episode, why didn't anyone think it was an option during the episode?

On 11/6/2022 at 6:43 PM, buckboard said:

Maybe Bode can work in the kitchen with Freddy until he's recuperated from the donation.  

I have a strange feeling this is going to happen in the coming weeks or in February when the show ultimately decides on the kidney donation story.

[Daff]

On 11/4/2022 at 11:16 PM, Danielg342 said:

Yeah, exactly. Supposedly Bode, who knows the horse for all of about five minutes, knows about sugar cubes but the mother and daughter who presumably raised Kevin the horse and cried "what are we going to do?" have no clue about them.

The fridge logic with this show is growing into something larger than at the beer store.

I picture these script writers/story developers as immature book (tech) worms who have no, NO life experience other than what turns up on Google searches. Moreover, I think they believe everyone else in the world is just like they are. (I was being too generous with “book” up there, wasn’t I?)

[Daff]

On 11/6/2022 at 3:42 AM, Dowel Jones said:

but something requiring stitches or worse merits a stay somewhere else.

Yes. Not just CalFire, or California. I believe every trained first responder in the US  is obligated to move the injured on to a higher level of care as safely and quickly as possible. ABC, stabilize, move. 

[NJRadioGuy]

At the locked gate why didn't they just bust out a set of bolt cutters or a K-12?

I'm not so sure that Sharon is going to make it out of this season alive. She's the one pulling for Bode. If she's gone it's just Vince, which would really amp up the draaaaahma. But I really love them as a couple. Too few older happy couples on scripted series and these guys are great.

[Daff]

12 hours ago, NJRadioGuy said:

At the locked gate why didn't they just bust out a set of bolt cutters or a K-12?

I'm not so sure that Sharon is going to make it out of this season alive. She's the one pulling for Bode. If she's gone it's just Vince, which would really amp up the draaaaahma. But I really love them as a couple. Too few older happy couples on scripted series and these guys are great.

They did try bolt cutters, but the lock and the chain were too thick for the pair they had on the truck.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Daff said:

They did try bolt cutters, but the lock and the chain were too thick for the pair they had on the truck.

The thing is that I have been TV trained for them to pull out some sort of power assisted tool since Emergency in the early 70s. It is the action hero who beats steel into submission 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Raja

[possibilities]

Bode should have just breathed fire and melted the chains right off there! Him being revealed to be a dragon would take his superhero status up another notch.

[Daff]

4 hours ago, Raja said:

The thing is that I have been TV trained for them to pull out some sort of power assisted tool since Emergency in the early 70s. It is the action hero who beats steel into submission 

I’m in the “work smarter, not harder” school and really appreciate hydraulics and power tools. When all else fails, take a page from “Tim Taylor”. Everything I need to avoid sprains, strains, and broken bones I learned in elementary school-simple machines. 

[NJRadioGuy]

On 11/11/2022 at 10:25 AM, Daff said:

They did try bolt cutters, but the lock and the chain were too thick for the pair they had on the truck.

Obviously the writers never went to a high school that had lockers. Any 3-foot set of bolt cutters will go through a typical padlock even if they're dull. Because physics. The K12 would have been more efficient, but it would take an extra 5 minutes to get it out of a compartment, prime it, start it, use it, and stow it back. But use any tool you have that is not a risk for injury to a crewmember first. That axe should have been the tool of last resort. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by NJRadioGuy

[callie lee 29]

On 11/5/2022 at 11:41 PM, possibilities said:

Bode can't be a firefighter with only one kidney, can he? Or does it not matter?

Possibly. I knew a firefighter who had CF. As long as he met the minimum requirements with the respirator he was good. I can't find NFPA 1582 (the medical standards most departments use) online, but I don't remember any time against it when I worked with firefighters (this was a few years ago).

[CoyoteBlue]

Watching the 9-1-1 episode where a death row inmate wants to donate his heart to his kid - CA prisoners apparently CANNOT donate organs, either after death or live donations like liver/lung/kidney. So, Bode is a moot point until he serves his time.

[The Wild Sow]

We just watched this ep in reruns (missed it the first time around.) And all we could think of was "Bode's definitely gonna come out of that flaming barn riding the horse!"  LOL so disappointed that he only led Henry out with sugar cubes.

And you just know, if that episode with the horse had been a little later in the season, he would have ridden Henry out of the fire!  Cause he's SuperBode!

Yeah, putting a cover over the horse's head would have actually been appropriate.