Somewhere in the annals of TV movie history, there’s probably a biopic with less dramatic frisson than Firefighter — maybe an early ’90s TNT original called Not Without My Dry Cleaning, starring Delta Burke as a desperate tourist who enlists the help of the American Embassy to liberate her captive chiffon blouses after misplacing the receipt. But I’m hard-pressed to think of one that takes as compelling a story as Cindy Fralick’s bid to become L.A. County’s first female firefighter and reduces it to yuk-yuk suspense over whether its heroine will ever learn to cook.
Nancy McKeon (Strange Voices), who plays Fralick, appeared in Afterschool Specials grittier than this (Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom and Schoolboy Father), but it’s easy to imagine that in 1986, only three years after its subject made history, a realistic depiction of the harassment faced by women in male-dominated fields was verboten. Instead, Mod Squad director Robert Michael Lewis and screenwriter Kathryn Montgomery (herself the co-author of two CBS Schoolbreak Specials) gave viewers and fire department spokespeople alike exactly they wanted: a kumbaya tale in which even the worst-behaved men aren’t that bad, and are handily outnumbered anyway by those who root for her success.
So resistant are Montgomery and Lewis to portraying anything but the most superficial sexism that we’re assured it’s a coincidence when Cindy’s husband Lance takes off shortly after she announces her desire to pursue firefighting. He is played by Whip Hubley (who, like his sister Season, selected a stage name by flipping through a Betty Crocker cookbook) and his departure isn’t unwelcome — it’s unclear why he habitually peers into the refrigerator and complains “You know, we could start a penicillin factory. There’s nothing to eat here!” without removing or replacing the expired food himself — and paves the way for a new fireman love interest (All My Children’s Vincent Irizarry) whose support of Cindy’s career is tested when she reveals the scale of her ambition.
Firefighter’s lack of conflict eventually creates a strange sort of suspense: when will something terrible happen? In the absence of sexual harassment or professional sabotage, we cast a suspicious glance toward Marilyn (Amanda Wyss, My Mother’s Secret Life), Cindy’s best friend, whose demeanor is more detached than her comforting words after Lance requests a divorce. But nothing untoward happens there, either: in Cindy’s hour of need, the already supportive Marilyn pulls out all the stops to keep her dreams alive, even training her for the agility test that’s stopped every previous female applicant in their tracks. This is what watching too many telefilms reduces us to: anticipating betrayal at every turn.
Firefighter gets a little less interesting when Wyss exits a scene to make room for Irizarry, who mostly seems to exist so we don’t doubt that Fralick’s heterosexual. Similarly, McKeon’s biggest dramatic test comes when Cindy is ordered to cut her hair short and remove her earrings in adherence to male grooming standards. It’s believable in a general sense and the real Fralick might well have sobbed about it 40 years ago. But the combination of McKeon’s hall-of-fame mullet history and what we’ve seen of Firefighter’s Cindy — the softball prowess, kinesiology degree and exuberant wheelie-popping on her moped after passing the agility test — leaves us skeptical that she’d be so broken up about it.
If you accept it for what it is — a celebration of barrier-breaking so egregiously sanitized that it’s like the filmmakers aimed a raging fire hose at sexism, blasting it clear off the screen — Firefighter is a quaintly enjoyable amalgam of Hallmarkian values and Emergency! mischief with a Lifetime cast. A more serious exploration of the loneliness Fralick must’ve felt as the only woman in the room would’ve given McKeon and viewers more to chew on: this is a story ripe for a more candid retelling. Supporting standouts include Barry Corbin as a fire captain and Blu Mankuma (A Mother’s Justice) in another too-small role that again boils down to “Hello, I’m black.”
… But wait, there’s more!
Firefighter ends with a statistic: “As of 1986, female firefighters employed throughout the United States still constitute less than once percent of all firefighters.” Not much has changed since then, though that number is now cited as between 4% and 5%. You can check out this 2018 article to hear the perspectives of several women firefighters, including Fralick, now known as Cindy Barbee.
Impressively, Barbee went on to achieve each of her three stated goals from the movie: to become a paramedic, engineer and then captain. Nancy McKeon returned to a first responder role in 2001, with Lifetime’s The Division, a popular series about women in law enforcement. And yes, it was difficult to make it through this review without referencing The Facts of Life and questioning whether the fire at Edna’s Edibles was caused by figurative, or perhaps even literal, sexual friction between Jo and Blair. Fans of the pair might want to check out my review of Twirl, Lisa Whelchel’s baton-twirling drama, and make it a double-feature.
Streaming and DVD availability
Firefighter is available on DVD-R and returns to Tubi, a free streaming site, in May. It’s in and out of rotation there so catch it when you can.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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