Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
4.5
Blue Bloods did it again, delivering another amazing episode.
It was hard to focus, knowing that at this time next week, I will be trying to see through my tears well enough to put my thoughts together about the series finale.
But Blue Bloods Season 14 Episode 17 didn’t give off a single sign that it was the penultimate episode. It just delivered the strong stories and family moments that make this show so special.
Danny Got Teased At Sunday Dinner While Dealing With A Heartbreaking Case The Rest Of The Week
Danny and Baez had to do one of the most difficult things cops ever have to do: comfort a woman who lost a child to suicide.
Gabi’s mother desperately wanted to believe that one of the girls who bullied her daughter also ended her life, and Danny wanted almost as badly to give that to her.
It got me when he promised the woman that they would find Gabi’s killer.
They say never to make promises you’re not sure you can keep, and ultimately, what Danny uncovered was proof that Gabi did take her own life.
At that moment, that woman needed to hear that he would fight for the truth about her daughter. Sadly, that truth was not what she wanted it to be.
It was heartbreaking all around, and that made me love the family dinner scene even more than usual.
During the Reagan family dinner, everyone teased Danny while Sean tried to share the good news that he had enough credits to graduate from NYU a year early.
Their good-natured teasing gave Danny — and the audience — a break from this intensely sad case, and we all needed that more than ever.
Sean’s news could have made Danny think about the case since the girl killed herself in a dorm room. She lived at a high school, not a college, but it would have been easy to draw a parallel.
Instead, Danny got to celebrate his son’s achievement, joke about how much NYU cost, and take some good-natured teasing in stride.
I agree with Danny that a year abroad probably wouldn’t cost more than NYU. Manhattan is expensive in general and a well-known university in the city is probably doubly so.
By the way, as a trans person, I feel obligated to say I was not offended by Henry joking that if Sean changed his pronouns, Henry was out.
Some people could have taken the joke as being anti-trans, but it wasn’t about that at all. Everyone was teasing Sean about what his news could be, and Henry knew Sean wasn’t going to make that kind of announcement.
I also believe that if Sean, or anybody in the family, came out as transgender or anything else, they’d be loved just as much, even if their family members didn’t fully understand, because that’s how the Reagans roll.
I thought it was strange that Sean had no idea what was coming next. He had to have majored in something, and most colleges offer guidance on figuring out your first job or your career path.
When new graduates get great jobs, it looks good for the school, so they’re usually eager to help.
Still, it was sweet that Sean wanted his family’s advice about figuring out his future. I wonder if this will play into the finale at all or if his early graduation is how his character’s story wraps up.
Eddie and Jamie’s Blue Bloods Season 14 Episode 17 Story Was Strange
I wish Eddie and Jamie had been able to collaborate on the squatter story instead of being at odds.
They don’t get enough screen time, and with so little left to the series, I hated the idea of wasting precious minutes on Jamie wanting Eddie to back off his CI and Badillo throwing a fit about it.
I got why Badillo was annoyed, but his accosting Jamie wasn’t helping anything. It was a lucky break that the CI got attacked before Badillo said or did something he couldn’t take back.
The whole story was strange.
By law, if someone has lived somewhere for a certain amount of time, they’re considered a tenant, and Vince didn’t have the money for an eviction suit (though he was able to travel extensively for business.)
Still, there are tenant rights associations who offer pro bono help for situations like this.
Vince: How is it you’re arresting ME?
Eddie: Let’s see, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief…
Vince: I was hitting the windows.
Badillo: You could have killed someone with your crappy aim.
Throwing rocks at windows accomplished nothing except getting Vince in trouble.
Strangely, he disappeared after he asked the cops to help him until he got his apartment back in the last scene.
I’d think a guy like Vince would be at the precinct every damn day, bugging them about when they’re going to do something about his issue.
Erin Was Smiling, But Did Something Happen Off-Screen That Should Have Been On-Screen?
Erin and Jack appear to be back together unless I’m misreading the body language.
They were walking arm in arm with huge smiles and Erin said she wanted to set Anthony up with that Deanna person because she wanted to spread the wealth now that things were going so well for her and Jack.
I suppose she could have meant in their friendship, but that doesn’t seem likely.
Erin and Jack being back together is big news, so why did it happen off-screen?
Based on what Bridget Moynahan has said in interviews, I was expecting them to become official during the finale, so it was shocking that it seemed to happen when no one was looking.
That’s also not cool.
Little to no hints have been dropped about how Blue Bloods will wrap up, and if Jack and Erin are endgame, we should have had more than one family dinner on Blue Bloods Season 14 Episode 11 and one happy walk in the park.
This should have been an actual story, one we could debate and take sides on all season long.
Erin’s matchmaking story was cute, but I wondered why she had nothing better to do.
I wasn’t that interested in whether she succeeded in pushing Anthony and this woman together.
I agreed with Anthony that dating someone who was a witness until a few minutes ago was a bad idea, and I would have rather Erin had one more case to deal with before the finale.
Frank Tried To Help The Governor, But Did He See It?
I’ve never been a fan of the governor. His personality seems to be somewhere between shady and weird.
If he had been willing to co-sponsor legislation that Frank wanted passed regarding bail reform (or, more aptly, bail un-reform since Frank wants the looser bail regulations reversed again), Frank should have taken the opportunity to get his priorities in front of the legislature.
Frank is the opposite of political, but I wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve by complaining about the governor’s wife’s bad behavior on Blue Bloods Season 14 Episode 17 instead of accepting the help.
Still, that wife was a problem, getting drunk in public and embarrassing her husband. She deserved to be arrested, and it should be a wake-up call for her, but will it be?
Frank warned the governor that this was the last favor he was doing for him related to this.
If only there was another season, the governor would probably pop up again, trying to undo that.
Over to you, Blue Bloods fanatics.
How did you feel about Blue Bloods Season 14 Episode 17? Would you have felt differently if we were headed toward the end of the season instead of the end of the series?
Vote in our poll to rank the episode, then head to the comments to share your thoughts.
Blue Bloods’ series finale will air on CBS on December 13, 2024 at 10/9c.
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