Blue Bloods season 8 episode 11 review: The war on drugs
For Frank, his central dilemma at the heart of this episode was figuring out how to resolve a crisis with Erin and the D.A.’s office about moves they were trying to make in order to ensure that treatment was preferred more to jail time for many non-violent drug offenders. They wanted to figure out a way to help these people and clean out prisons. Meanwhile, the NYPD stance was more along the lines of law and order. Everything for Frank became so much more complicated the moment that someone spliced together video footage of him to make it seem as though he had a viewpoint more in line with Erin’s.
The mission for Tom Selleck’s character within this episode was therefore twofold. For starters, he had to figure out a way in order to ensure that he found the responsible party for making the footage; to go along with that, he also had to get some sort of compromise worked out with Erin as to how to handle drug cases in the future. That’s really what most of Blue Bloods is about: Characters working together in order to achieve a common goal. Rarely ever do both parties get everything they want, but in the end a reasonable conclusion is reached.
As for what else we ended up seeing in the episode, we certainly had an opportunity to see an interesting Danny Reagan case! He found himself roped into what he thought at first was a wild goose chase over Edwin, a man who has spent the past fifteen years in prison. Yet, a filmmaker on the other side was absolutely convinced that he was innocent and did what she could to help him — even though he didn’t want said help. By the end of the episode it was more than clear as to why that was: Edwin’s daughter Lauren was actually the person responsible for the initial murder and he was trying to protect her. Before the police could eventually apprehend her, Lauren took her own life.
Was justice served? Maybe by the letter of the law, sure, but Edwin certainly does not feel that way. Instead, he explicitly blamed the filmmaker for putting himself in this position in the first place where he has to go and bury his daughter. He may be free, but it’s not the freedom that he wants. Both the filmmaker and Danny tried to do the right thing in their own way — he compromised with her by investigating — but the twist at the end of the episode was just sad.
CarterMatt Verdict
We were rather sad to have yet another Blue Bloods episode without Eddie, and one where the role of Jamie was limited to just a family-dinner scene at the end. Still, at least Blue Bloods season 8 episode 11 addressed some surprisingly timely issues while also showing that having the best of intentions does not always lead to a favorable outcome.
(Photo: CBS.)