Light spoilers are ahead for Season 2, Episode 2 of Fire Country. If you haven’t seen the latest episode to air on the 2024 TV schedule, you can stream it right now with a Paramount+ subscription.
With experience directing Lucifer and Fire Country, Kevin Alejandro is very aware of everything it takes to make an episode of television. So, while watching Episode 2 of Fire Country Season 2, his comments on this topic and the incredible number of people it takes to make the CBS drama really sunk in.
In Episode 2 of Fire Country's second season, the incident of the week happened in a cavern, and the crew had to save two girls who were stuck in it. To rescue them, Gabriela had to swim under a bunch of rocks with diving gear. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew was putting out a bunch of bonfires. Overall, it was a lot to handle, and during an interview with CinemaBlend, Alejandro, who plays Manny in the FC cast and directed this episode, told me the shocking number of people it takes to pull sequences like this off:
I've done a little bit of action prior to this, but I'd never done anything to this level. And honestly, it takes all 200-plus people that we have on our crew and cast in our team to make it happen. You know, there is no loan credit here. I rely on the camera guys, I rely on my DP, I rely on the producers to explain to me what they need. It is a legitimate 100% collaboration.
That’s incredible! The action in Fire Country is no joke, from using real fire on occasion to creating events that look like mudslides and other natural disasters, a lot of work goes into moments like these from week to week. In the case of this cavern sequence, Alejandro knew it would take everyone to pull it off, and he continued to explain why teamwork made the dream work, noting:
I directed episode 202 of this season. And the same thing, it gets big, it's huge. I thought the bridge was complicated and hard. And now we're, like I said, since we're upping everything, just sort of come out with a bang. It's complicated. And, once again, it wasn't me, it was everybody around me that had my back. And they knew that I had their back. So we accomplished it together.
Alejandro’s co-star Billy Burke is on the same page. When CinemaBlend interviewed him, he also sang the crew’s praises, telling me:
First of all our art department and set builders are fucking phenomenal. I mean that we walk on a set sometimes that I just go ‘You guys built this in two days?! Really?’ It's unbelievable.
He continued on, and referenced Alejandro’s episode specifically. As the director/actor said, it takes their entire crew of over 200 people to pull off stories like this, and Buke gave an example of why as he said:
This season, and I never even saw it because I wasn't involved in this storyline, but we built an entire tank. Like a massive stage-size underwater tank for this cavern sequence where Gabriela’s gotta swim through this, I don't wanna give too much away, but we built this thing, and now it's gone. Like, we built it for a couple of weeks. That was it. So, yeah, no shortage of talent in those departments.
Overall, Episode 2 of Fire Country’s sophomore season really hammered home these points made by both Kevin Alejandro and Billy Burke. Now, as I continue watching CBS’s hit drama, I’ll be thinking a lot more about the sheer number of people working on the show and how “phenomenal” they are.
To see how all this work pays off, you can catch new episodes of Fire Country every Friday at 9 p.m. ET on CBS or the next day on Paramount+.
