Blue Bloods season 8: Linda Reagan’s death chokes up Donnie Wahlberg, Jenny McCarthy

Linda Reagan’s death is probably going to continue to be a key component of Blue Bloods season 8 for many weeks to come. It certainly had an emotional impact when the premiere aired on CBS this past week, and we’re not sure talking about with the average viewer. Even Donnie Wahlberg’s own wife Jenny McCarthy had a tough time say goodbye!

In the video HERE you can see McCarthy’s reaction to the events of the Blue Bloods premiere, where Danny Reagan reflected upon the death of his wife. She passed away months before the present action in a helicopter accident, and this came a very brief amount of time after his house burned down in the season 7 finale as an act of retaliation.

If anyone is having a really bad 2017, it’s clearly Danny Reagan. You don’t just get over losing your wife and having to start over quickly. This is going to take him some time and he has all of our sympathy as he does his best to recover, but he’s lucky (as McCarthy points out) to have the support of all of his family at his side. They know a thing or two already when it comes to how to handle grief.

This video below is emotional just because McCarthy clearly does care about her husband and his work; meanwhile, she like anyone else has an attachment to Danny and it has to be hard to see him in such an emotional state. He’s also confirmed in social media that some of the tears in the therapy scene were real; he’s worked with Amy Carlson since the beginning of the show and it was really sad to know that she wasn’t going to be coming in to work anymore. (We already reported that it was Carlson’s decision to leave the show, as her contract was up at the conclusion of the seventh season.)

For the record, we’re still not sure enough has been said about Wahlberg’s performance over the course of this episode — it was gut-wrenching, emotional, and lost in the way you would want from someone who was experiencing this sort of deep trauma and hurt. It was a performance that we’re going to remember for a rather long time and it sets the pace for where the remainder of the journey could go with Danny this year. We’re excited to watch it all unfold and; while what happened to Linda is devastating, we do hope that the show does also continue to focus on this as a key element of the story to come.

(Photo: CBS.)