Blue Bloods season finale: EP breaks down Danny’s gang problem, the mayor’s exit
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Blue Bloods finale! Read at your own risk!
In the Blue Bloods season 7 finale, “The Thin Blue Line”, Danny is targeted by a drug cartel for revenge after he confiscates millions of dollars, Frank grapples with Mayor Poole (David Ramsey of Arrow) and Jamie — following their instincts and acting on their own — investigate a serial killer attacking the elderly. Here to shed light on the season finale is executive producer Kevin Wade:
The person who stepped up to shed light on the season finale was executive producer Kevin Wade.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What are your goals going into this season finale?
KEVIN WADE: The scope of the story is larger, and even though we don’t have that kind of serialized storytelling and seasons where at the end of the season you’re wrapping up a series of episodes or stories that the audience has been following during the season, We try to give our characters something important that they have to deal with, whether it’s a change in their lives or, in Frank’s case, it’s basically losing his chief colleague who ran the city for six of the seven years we were involved. Mayor Poole finally broke under the pressure of senseless violence or impenetrable evil that a police officer faces several times a week – it finally got to him. I think it’s Frank also measuring how long he can do this. We’ve visited it a lot this season in a variety of ways, so here’s another way to look at it. With Danny, it’s about his character getting punished for all the times he steps out of line or crosses the line, which he does in pursuit of this corporate money, and what came back to him was the loss of his home and all his possessions. personal belongings and was clearly a mortal danger to his own family.
Danny struggles with the consequences of his actions, but his family is truly by his side. Can you tell us how they supported him during this difficult time?
I think the most important thing is that they are his [family] and support him because that’s what they do. Something similar like if you get a bad haircut – I have to say your hair looks great because there’s nothing you can do about a bad haircut. I think when something terrible happens to someone, even if they can be said to have brought their misfortune upon themselves, you wouldn’t really bring it up if you loved that person. That said, to Danny, it seems like he doesn’t believe it. He had incriminated himself enough in this that their sympathy arose more or less in him, right up to the end of the last scene – and he could not even say the word grace without hesitation and silence and they picked it up for him.
What does Mayor Poole’s retirement mean for Frank?
For Frank, watching that guy walk on the side of the road and succumb to the pressure I think would make him look in the mirror again and ask himself, “Do I still have it in me?” or “If I still have it in me, what is it that I can still do this? There must be something wrong with me,” I thought, which is always helpful for characters to visit because you can’t have the characters pat themselves on the back. No one will relate to that – they won’t want to see it – but if they say, “What’s wrong with me?” well, everyone does it every day. So I think that’s what he has to deal with. Then in the next season, we introduce a very different mayor, very different from David’s personality but also very different from Frank.
According to the actual Charter of the City of New York, if the mayor becomes incapacitated or resigns, it is the public defender who replaces them, which is a rather unfamiliar position that is generally held by a lawyer. accepted and usually filled by someone competent. forced sense of aristocracy about it. So we were looking at bringing in someone with a completely different economic and educational background, who found themselves sitting in the mayor’s office at city hall in New York City without really thinking to work there.
This will be very interesting for Frank because he will be collaborating with, as you said, someone very different from his predecessor.
Yes, and someone who is neither a career politician nor a community activist, which Mayor Poole is both of those things. If it was someone who really needed to rely on Frank, just for some basic things, then that could create some fireworks.
Turning to Jamie, how does the story of hunting down a serial killer targeting the elderly play out and why is that something you’re interested in in this episode?
Well, Ian Biederman — who wrote the episode, a wonderful writer — and [I] often talk. Especially since it was the season finale, we had been talking at least a few months in advance. One of the things when we first started talking about it was this absolutely horrifying Facebook stream about kids in Chicago torturing that defiant kid and we kind of went, what is that and you What will you do with it? You cannot prevent it. You can’t profile it. It was just something terrible that happened, and we thought, maybe that’s the key to the two stories. It’s for Jamie to step up, take another step into the shoes of a detective and more or less solve the problem with his instincts. Also, that became the straw that broke Mayor Poole’s back, so we’re just looking at the terrible things that happen every day. It’s usually buried on page five and a few inches long, but if you’re anywhere near it in your life, you’ll probably lose a lot of faith in the world.
Looking ahead to season 8, what can we expect?
I’ll start with Frank. Because we will have a new mayor and introduce a new main character, we will probably give him more episodes, more stories based on the scope and burden of managing an existing city. nearly nine million people and spread across all ethnicities, all economic statuses, everything. I think because the new mayor won’t be a career politician, he’ll probably work more closely on politics and community relations than he did in past seasons. before. It’s not like I’ve outlined these things. The strike was only over for about nine or 10 hours, so I think that would have been the main motivation for him – at least when we departed. For Jamie and Eddie, I think it’ll be detective or perhaps a covert operation that we do over a number of episodes, which is a bit of a stretch. As for Donnie, I think it will deal with some family issues due to them basically losing everything and it’s probably something I won’t get into now, but it could be a surprise at the beginning of season 8 .
[Editor’s note: Wade called in on Tuesday, shortly after the writers agreed to a new contract and thus avoided a strike.]
You mentioned potential strikes. How do you feel now that it’s being avoided?
I’m so relieved. I just emailed Michael Winship and Lowell Peterson to congratulate them because it was very clear that the problem, the things we were asking for were not… luxury items. Those are the [things] the union really needs and has earned. I haven’t seen the details, but the biggest takeaway from this is that they got a lot of what they asked for. Above all, I think for the six or seven of us who worked at Blue Bloods and were members of the Writers Guild, we all wanted to avoid having to tell 160 other people that we were quitting. , “Well, we have to do this.” So that’s a really big comfort to me and honestly, just knowing that we’ll be able to get back on schedule and do another season. Sure, it feels like a win-win for everyone.
