JACK: “He didn’t listen.”
VIC: “Yeah, we know.”
ANDY: “And why is that? Because our Captain put you out in the field with someone who recently smashed your face in.”
MAYA: “That’s my call. I stand by it.”
ANDY: “You stand by it? Vasquez could be dead right now, and you stand by it?”
MAYA: “They said they could work together.”
ANDY: “But, Maya, you’re the Captain. You decide who can work together, not the other way around.”
MAYA: “Herrera.”
JACK: “Andy!
*Andy turns to see Jack shaking his head to tell her not to say another word*
This isn’t her fault.”
ANDY: “Everything is the Captain’s fault. Good or bad, that’s the job.
*Andy turns to Maya and points*
The job that you wanted. The job you fought for. The job you took!”
MAYA: “That’s right. It’s the job I took. You have all been disrespectful and insubordinate. You have questioned every single one of my decisions, which costs us lives and costs us time. You don’t like that I’m your boss now? Request a transfer. But every single one of you needs to get in line or get the hell out of my station. Are we clear?”
VIC: “Yes, Captain.”
TRAVIS: “Yes, Captain.”
JACK: “We’re clear.”
*Maya looks to Andy and Andy nods*
“Herrera, contact Rigo’s wife. Gibson, try to get me an update. The rest of you get back to work.”
Look, she’s not going about it in the best way, and I acknowledge that because she wouldn’t based on how she feels, but Andy is right. Maya should have all eyes and ears on everything that’s going on all the time as the Captain. Now she only has one pair of eyes and ears so the only way she can do that is to get her team to do it with her. And she’s not doing that. She’s making them do as she says rather than as she does. She’s not thinking like a leader who knows how to delegate tasks to her team. She’s thinking like an individual team member that has to do everything and get everything done, leaving her team to figure out what to do for themselves when they need guidance.
The worst decision Maya made was to put Vic in danger in agreeing with her to clamp that gasoline pump so that the vehicle with the fuel tank attached that was irresponsibly left by the driver and was generating heat from the burning gasoline was less likely to cause an explosion. And because she was overseeing that site all the time she was unable to keep an eye on Gibson and Vasquez in the other site, who she paired up together, probably in the effort to have them work out their differences and giving them an opportunity in which to do that. It was admirable to put that trust in them but not sensible because she couldn’t be sure what was going to happen with them without her there to actually oversee the same site. All she could do was trust that they could work together. Putting that trust in them blindly in something as important as a call was also a bad decision given how Gibson wouldn’t leave Vasquez alone and Vasquez was prone to violence which distracted them from dealing with the small fires and resulting in Vasquez not listening to Jack and in a critical health condition.
Andy was right to immediately assess the situation to figure out what they were actually dealing with which is something Maya should have done the moment she stepped on to the scene because decisions cannot and should not be made until they knew what situation they were actually dealing with. She said to let Search and Rescue figure it out. Andy realized that it can’t be an aircraft explosion because there was no aircraft there which was an obvious tell it was something else entirely that was going on. That’s why an assessment had to be made before they did anything to work on the situation. The leftover debree Andy picked up instead were parts from a rocket and so she knew immediately from that that the situation was much worse than they originally thought it would be when the call came in. That it was a terrorism attack they were dealing with and the vehicle with the fuel tank attached was left on purpose to supersize the explosion. Andy never questioned Maya to start with, she was just simply giving her information that Maya should have been listening to and taking into consideration. She only started questioning Maya’s decisions because she knew those were not the right decisions to be made after the assessment she made of which Maya completely ignored because her distrust in Andy made her refuse to take her concerns and complaints seriously, resulting in not knowing what was really was going on and therefore unable to prevent the critical damage that was caused from not listening to her team and not delegating her team.
Andy’s emotions are running high. She feels angry, she feels betrayed and she feels like she’s being overlooked. But despite all of that she’s still able to assess what’s going on even before the Captain does. The fact Maya didn’t delegate tasks to the people she had with her that she knew the tasks would be best to be delegated to and she didn’t immediately assess the situation they were in before they started working on it is what cost them lives and time, not the fact they were all questioning her because her decisions were questionable, and if they weren’t questioned even more things would have gone wrong and even more lives and time would have been lost. In actual fact, the questioning was necessary to prevent the situation of a premeditated terrorism attack from being even worse than it should have been with them there.
I’m no firefighter and I’m certainly not a firefighter Captain but what I believe Maya should have done was split overseeing duties between her and Andy. She should have let Andy oversee the site with Vic and Travis since Andy was the one to assess the situation and figure out that the fuel tank was left there on purpose, and then went over to the other site herself and maintained eyes and ears on Jack and Rigo to see if they could work together as they said they could and they would have avoided all the critical damage.
Simply put - Maya is too inexperienced, too hot-headed and too impulsive to be Captain at this point. She should step down and let Andy or Jack take over because she really doesn’t know how to be a Captain and she’s letting both the pressure and her pride get in the way of doing what’s right by the team and by the general public of which the team is there to protect. A lot of lives and time are going to be lost under her rule. As an individual team member, or a lieutenant, she’s always fine because delegation isn’t something she needs to think about. But as a Captain, it absolutely is, and she doesn’t have enough experience in doing that and in thinking that way. Andy does even when she doesn’t have to and she makes it a priority to step in and delegate and give out orders if it’s necessary to. And it was necessary then because Maya didn’t know how to do the former and she couldn’t admit to it. She couldn’t admit to her questionable decisions and to making mistakes and to not listening to her team. She’s acting as the boss of her team without being a leader of and to it because she doesn’t have the experience or the knowledge to see the difference.
Andy is picking up on very important things that Maya is not even thinking about looking for in the first place even when Andy is going through a really tough time - proving that she can work just fine being as under pressure as a lieutenant as Maya is as the Captain and the answer as to why is obviously because she has much more experience and knowledge as a leader. Andy doesn’t get stuck in one place thinking about only one thing. She pays attention to and focuses on the big picture, swapping her position and her mindset according to what’s happening as a whole. Somebody that can do that should be in charge of the entire team that’s obligated to take on that objective. Leaders don’t and can’t act and think as an individual member when they’re responsible for a whole team.
Maya is not a leader. I’m not saying she can’t learn to be a leader, but her disposition at the moment is somebody that does not act or think like a leader despite being the boss because she can’t get a handle on what to do when she needs to be more than that. Meanwhile Andy just instinctively goes there. Falls into that state and position of a leader naturally. It’s actually infuriating for me to watch this show right now when I’m noticing Andy showing so many leadership skills and qualities, 100% knowing what she’s doing at any given moment and Maya does not. It really does show you how easily teamwork fails when the people in the team are not in the right roles.
A lot of it has to do with Andy and Maya’s individual pasts and backgrounds. Andy has spent her whole life watching her father be a great Captain for many years and Maya has been brainwashed by her father to put herself first above all no matter what. Instinctive and natural disposition is based on their individual pasts and backgrounds with their fathers for the most part, but the other percentage of it is in how they’re trained. Maya and Andy have been trained no differently. The only difference is Andy has had more time and opportunity to act as a Captain would than Maya has so Andy can spot discrepancies Maya misses because she doesn’t know that she needs to look for them and she won’t communicate properly with Andy, who can teach her all of this if she was willing to listen to her.
It’s not entirely Maya’s fault that so many things go wrong under her rule, I can see that. It’s mostly just inexperience. The narrative is showing us Sullivan was wrong in choosing Maya as Captain because you should always choose the person with the most experience and that is willing to listen and learn.
