Blue Bloods season 9 and the series’ greatest continuity question

Blue Bloods is a show that has been on the air for a solid eight seasons now, and anytime you have to sustain a story that long, it’s always easy to get things mixed up here and there. It’s with that in mind that occasionally, you do run into continuity problems.

We’re not sure that there is a larger question out there than the age of the late Joe Reagan. Last night, we wrote a piece discussing how the CBS series can better utilize him as a lead-off for some great stories in season 9 — we also recorded a video about it, which you can also watch below.

The funny thing is about this debate is that really, there’s no wrong answer to it given that Blue Bloods makes the case through its timeline that Joe is the third-oldest Reagan child, older than Jamie and younger than Erin. (There are some references to that here and there on the series.) Yet, there are also other moments that suggest that he was the first child of Frank and Mary Reagan. Let’s look at both angles.

Joe as the third-oldest child – This is the theory we personally subscribe to, as on the CBS website it explicitly states that Danny is the oldest child.  Beyond that, if you follow the birthdate on Joe’s gravestone and correspond it to when Erin celebrated her 40th birthday in season 6, that would make her around a year and a half older than Joe. We know that Danny is older than Erin, which brings us to this conclusion. There are also references here and there that also support this. Joe was a detective before his death, but as the third-oldest child he still had plenty of time to rise through the ranks.

Joe as the oldest child – There are comments via Frank occasionally in the series that certainly suggest this, as well as the storyline with Joe’s badge number that was a part of the show reasonably recently. There’s enough of a case on-screen that suggests this, and if you subscribe to this theory, you can easy make the case that the gravestone and the timeline are just some mathematical errors on the show’s part.

Like we said, we don’t think that there is an incorrect way to look at this, but if we were in the writers room, this is certainly a question that we would ask to get it cemented one way or another. While it is a detail that is irrelevant in some ways to the series, Joe’s age may impact the sentiment that some of the characters have to his passing.

How do you perceive Joe as a member of the Reagans? Share in the comments below!

(Photo: CBS.)