Max Thieriot’s Bode Leone is no longer the only fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants firefighter in Edgewater now that Jared Padalecki’s Camden Casey has rolled into town.
Warning: Spoilers below from Fire Country season 3, episode 5.
During the Friday, November 15, episode of Fire Country, viewers got a taste of who Camden (Padalecki) is when he showed up at Smokies wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey, shorts and flip flops.
“That was intentional,” Thieriot, who plays Bode in addition to being the show’s cocreator, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, November 13, of Camden’s Southern California wardrobe. “[We] see the contrast between the stereotypical SoCal firefighter versus the NorCal firefighter.”
The actor — who said Camden was written for his longtime friend Padalecki — noted that although they all have the same job — fighting fires — Camden is not like the rest of the Edgewater crew Bode grew up with.
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Thieriot, 36, called Camden “a square peg in a round hole,” who makes it obvious from day one that there is an unspoken rivalry between the north and the south — a rivalry made clear by his Dodgers allegiance over his cohort’s love for Northern California’s own San Francisco Giants.
“I always joke in North Cal it’s like wranglers and Ben Davis shirts and SoCal is, like, tank tops and flip flops,” Thieriot said with a laugh, noting it’s, “Giants and Dodgers. That’s the rivalry.”
Camden might be rooting for the wrong baseball team, but he is a firefighter through and through. During his first scene at Smokies, Camden smacks a guy with his flip flops and throws salt and pepper in another’s eyes during a bar brawl after the men try to pick a fight with Bode.
Moments later, he realizes he’s Bode’s new training officer. Viewers quickly learn that Camden and Bode have many similarities.
“They both have a lot of the same instincts and a little bit of that wild side. They’re both sort of willing to just, like, jump into the fire in different ways,” Thieriot said of the pair. “They have this mutual respect and understanding of each other. They see each other a little better than everybody else does.”
While Bode and Camden fuel each other’s need to take big risks — Camden allows Bode to go on top of a crashed airplane to save passengers despite it being dangerous — not everyone in Bode’s life is OK with the new guy’s tactics.
“He kind of constantly ruffles everybody’s feathers, Jake included,” Thieriot told Us of Camden, noting that Bode’s BFF and fire captain Jake Crawford (Jordan Calloway) is worried about the reckless side of his new boss.
Thieriot explained, “It’s work and it’s also personal for Jake. There’s a lot of different layers to it.”
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He also teased that throughout Padalecki’s three-episode arc, fans will see Camden and Bode “butt heads a little bit as well,” noting, “It’s not always going to be easy.”
In time, viewers will also get to see how Camden became a firefighter as he becomes a “big part of shaping Bode” in his own career.
“By the end of this sort of arc, the two will leave a lasting impact on each other, which I think is the one thing that Camden didn’t expect,” Thieriot added.
Fire Country airs on CBS Fridays at 9 p.m. ET.
