Blue Bloods season 8 episode 7 review: Vanessa Ray’s standout episode

Blue Bloods season 8

Television writers do at times have an eerie ability to come up with stories before headlines happen in real time. When Blue Bloods season 8 episode 8 was written, it was long before the Harvey Weinstein story broke or before women were coming forward and started taking their power back against horrible men who harassed or, in some cases, assaulted them.

Yet, this episode has to be one of the most relevant of the entire year — it told a traumatic story revolving around Eddie Janko’s past and what she was willing to do in order to fight back. Not only did a horrible pig-of-a-man (Skip) put her in a humiliating position while she was in college, he then spread around naked images of her for other people to see. A part of herself was taken in those moments, which caused her tonight to fight back and arrest him when given the opportunity. The problem? The charges were trumped-up and a way for her to get vengeance. It wasn’t a guarantee that she would be able to get these charges to stick — Jamie knew that. This is why he encouraged her to try and find another way that wouldn’t hurt her career.

Did Eddie want to listen? Not entirely and understandably so. Yet, she didn’t have much of a choice here. He eventually was let go, and by the end of the episode there was something that some may feel as karmic retribution. Skip was beaten up by a group of guys; what was interesting was how it happened. He stood up for women who were being groped within his bar. Maybe this was Skip learning something, but it doesn’t excuse what he did.

Before moving forward, let’s just say that this was the best performance we’ve seen from Vanessa Ray this season. We hope that we’ll get a chance to see more stories like this coming up for her in the future.

What happened with Danny

Basically, he was just doing whatever he could in order to stop the streets in Brooklyn from bleeding out. After a group of guys moved in who had many similarities to White Supremacists, he had to find a way to get them out of there before things got bad … and at one point, it appeared that he did that.

However, at the end of the episode Danny learned that it was not the case. The group of bigots still got into battle in the streets and many of them, including their former-cop leader, ended up dead.

Frank’s challenge

A well-decorated and high-ranking member of the force found himself facing some trouble over some marijuana use — at first it appeared as though the cop was going to lose his job, but after some controversy with the Mayor (who else?), there was somewhat of a compromise. The big problem was that Dutton was much more pro-marijuana than Frank was, who remained very by-the-book in his approach. It wasn’t so much that he never wanted anyone to smoke ever, but rules were rules. This cop broke those rules and he did have to pay for it. He’ll get to keep his jobs but with provisions.

CarterMatt Verdict

Like we said, this was eerie. The Danny storyline was one the writers could pull from the headlines; as for the Eddie one, it was rather unfortunately prophetic but very compelling to watch.

(Photo: CBS.)

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