#you can see at the team jacob meal that tommy had bonded with chim and is kind of going after sal for not hating twilight

[firehose118]

rewatching Hen Begins

sal is definitely the one who took the initiative on reporting gerrard, right?

at the infamous Team Jacob meal, gerrard says he’s worried about putting his life and the lives of “his men” in the “hands of someone who isn’t up to the job”

and sal gives him this long, evaluating, critical look

this is before hen thinks quickly to save the woman in the mudslide

this is before hen puts together the clues that there was another car in the accident and saves a drowned child

this look might be about female firefighters or about black firefighters but it is NOT about hen’s as-yet-untested abilities

i think sal sees gerrard as “someone who isn’t up to the job”

i think sal doesn’t trust gerrard with the lives of “his men”

we see later how gerrard dismisses hen’s ideas even when those ideas save lives. he chastises her for having them at all. does he listen to anyone else’s ideas? does he listen to sal?

how many people have died or been in unnecessary pain because gerrard has been too stubborn to listen to anyone but himself?

i think sal has wanted gerrard gone for a long time now

does he sense an opportunity in hen’s arrival? we know from Bobby Begins Again that sal wants to be captain. the easiest path to that for him is to take over from gerrard

gerrard has his say about women and leaves the table. sal kind of rolls his eyes but looks at tommy and nods for them to both leave with him

he looks almost regretful? like he doesn’t want to follow gerrard but knows he and tommy have to stay on his good side

maybe that’s the only way to get gerrard to listen—to make him see you as an extension of himself

so sal is still playing the game, still playing along as a card-carrying member of the Straight White Boys’ Club (and plays it so well that it wasn’t until my 5th rewatch with my saltommy goggles on that i even noticed this moment of evaluation at all)

throughout the episode, tommy follows closely at sal’s heels. sometimes tommy will look to gerrard for approval instead of sal (cutting out the middleman), but if sal goes somewhere, tommy is only a step behind him

sal knows how to play the game. tommy knows how to follow along. to hide in plain sight under the wing of someone who will guide him

i think sal said “let’s report this guy” and only had more and more justification as time when on—as hen proved herself more than capable and gerrard only got nastier in response

once their mission was set, tommy sent in his own reports. so did chimney, of course. who knows how many others sal recruited to report gerrard en masse

yes, hen is a great firefighter. but gerrard leaving the 118 was a coup, and it started before she set foot on her first call

this was a coup—and an unsuccessful one

gerrard was gone, yes. but sal did not replace him

i think this casts sal’s Bobby Begins Again insubordination/meltdown over being passed over for captain yet again into a more interesting light

after all sal has done for the 118? he got gerrard kicked out. he saved hen’s career—one of the smartest and most determined firefighters he’s ever worked with. he’s held the place together and run scenes as their string of retiring captains bumbled through calls

and then this random guy from minnesota is chastising sal for saving a kid trapped in a burning building? he thinks this is his house?