My favorite Catholic cop family is back at it for the sixth season. The first episode was a gripping take on terrorism in New York City … that felt like we’d been there and done that. But the second episode found Danny (Donny Wahlberg) pursuing a serial killer who had escalated to a frequency of devastating proportions. When the cops find the ‘killing field,’ where the killer dumped his victims, it sets Danny in a crash course with the villain.
While we’ve seen this sort of set-up before, where Danny gets obsessed with stopping someone, taking his work home, internalizing, and making it personal, we’re seeing a cost. Danny will (of course) ignore Baez and enter the villain’s lair alone, he will aim at near judge/jury/executioner status, and put himself in harm’s way. But we see something in Linda, Danny’s wife, that speaks to a future problem. And I’m not even talking about the open-ended treatment that the killer’s story gets.
Danny and his family have been putting their lives on the line for awhile (six seasons-plus) and it’s bound to take its toll. Both Danny and his father, Frank (Tom Selleck), seem to be nearing a breaking point, whether it’s from the stress of the violence and danger, or the constant politicking necessary to do the job of commissioner. Both men have sacrificed much, but it feels like we’re being prepared for one or both of them to exit stage left.
While the Reagan family celebrates weekly family dinner – following Catholic mass – this episode briefly zips through it, showing that Danny is troubled and that his family chooses to leave him alone. There’s no banter, no working out of the issues, no real fellowship. And the end result is that we see the fractious nature of their situation, that they are breaking, fraying at the edges.
One has to wonder if this won’t be played out throughout the season, and if it’s not a warning to us to be diligent in the way we explore fellowship with God and each other. When we’re not checked in, when we’re not growing our relationships horizontally and vertically, we tend to get lost, putting ourselves in more and more dangerous situations. Maybe we’re not serving on the front line of crime, but we’re all on the thin line between good and evil.
Blue Bloods airs on Fridays at 10 p.m. on CBS.
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