Blue Bloods Season 13 Episode 8 Review: Poetic Justice

Erin and Anthony are constantly crossing each other’s boundaries.

Erin has pissed Anthony off by running background checks on people he’s spending time with, and Anthony is never shy about his opinion of Erin’s relationship with Jack.

On Blue Bloods Season 13 Episode 8, Anthony irritated Erin by taking surveillance photos of Jack, only for her to realize he was right to be concerned.

I thought Erin had officially declared her candidacy long ago, but Anthony was worried about what would happen when she officially filed the paperwork.

Is that coming? Because otherwise, this storyline — which has been primarily nonexistent anyway — is a waste of time.

In any case, Erin should have realized without Anthony’s help that her relationship with Jack was likely political suicide. Jack is as shady a lawyer as they come; he’s bound to have a ton of skeletons in his closet.

And even if he weren’t having lunch with mobsters, which was a very on-brand thing for Jack to do, the press would still make a huge deal out of Erin spending a lot of time with the ex-husband who has a reputation for dishonesty.

That kind of personal crap shouldn’t matter; it’s irrelevant to how well Erin would perform in the role of Manhattan DA. But the media often fixates on stories like this, and it DOES matter to some voters.

Erin should have known that, but since she wasn’t thinking politically, Anthony helped her.

In real life, Anthony’s stalking Jack would have fallen firmly in the unacceptably creepy department. But it’s par for the course in his relationship with Erin, and she’s done similar things when she distrusted the women he was dating.

But was Anthony only concerned about Erin’s political aspirations? His speech about being too much for the few people he lets himself be vulnerable with and he and Erin agreeing they’re a great team could have doubled as a romantic proposal.

Erin refuses to discuss whether she shares his feelings or is even aware of them, but Anthony’s been smitten with her for a while, and he gets jealous whenever Jack is in the picture.

If Anthony and Erin were to get together, two of the three surviving Reagan kids would be in love with their work partner, while Danny and Baez would continue to toe the line between friendship and more. That’s not realistic, but it would be fun!

Was Erin right to ditch Jack? Probably.

His associations with mobsters aren’t good for anyone. Even if Erin wasn’t running for higher office, would she want to be involved with someone who’s practically an honorary mobster?

And what would happen if things went south? Would Jack be able to stop his mob buddies from getting revenge on Erin on his behalf?

Erin: It’s bad timing.
Jack: There’s no such thing as bad timing when you are running out of time.
Erin: You’re not running out of time.
Jack: We both are. We don’t have our whole lives ahead of us anymore. We have, at most, half a life ahead of us. So let’s not waste time.

Jack’s reasons for wanting to rush back into a relationship with Erin didn’t sit right with me, either. Yes, they’re getting older, but seizing the day doesn’t necessarily mean reconciling with the ex you dumped years ago.

It smacked of desperation as if he thought his only choices were to get back with Erin or die alone. He was so adamant about it that I wondered if he had cancer or some other disease driving his desire to recreate what he and Erin once had.

Meanwhile, Frank got into a new conflict with Mayor Chase.

Chase wasn’t wrong to want to be left alone, but his way of dealing with Officer Stokes’ harassment was inappropriate.

News stations were probably playing the clip 24/7 of Chase having a citizen arrested for protesting his policies . That couldn’t have been a good look for him.

As a public figure, Chase should expect a certain amount of harassment. The cop wasn’t threatening his life; he was being annoying. Chase only made himself look bad by going after him.

Unsurprisingly, the rank and file were pleased that Frank took Stokes’ side against Chase. Stokes looked like the victim here, thanks to his false arrest for harassment, and the mayor’s demand that Frank fire Stokes only turned Stokes into more of a martyr.

I’m not sure what Garrett was worried about. The mayor wasn’t going to fire Frank no matter what he said, and going to the Citizens Complaint Review Board only made the mayor look even pettier.

He came off as someone who couldn’t tolerate dissent and was using his power to silence a protester. That’s not the image he wants to project.

Chase still doesn’t know Frank very well. Frank doesn’t play games. He follows his own moral code to the letter. Chase is so busy playing political games of his own he doesn’t understand how anyone can be a straight shooter.

Jamie had to investigate Badillo, who turned out to be innocent.

It would have been better drama if he was a corrupt cop. Jamie would have been caught in the middle and not been allowed to admit to Eddie the extent of his role in Badillo being taken down. Eddie might feel betrayed anyway, and she’d be short a partner on top of it.

Instead, Jamie uncovered a drug dealer’s plot to get rid of Badillo by making him look dirty. That seemed like an awfully complicated scheme, not to mention how anticlimactic this discovery was.

Jamie didn’t have to deal with Eddie’s wrath once the case evaporated, but still.

Finally, Danny crossed paths with Sonny Le again. Sonny first appeared on Blue Bloods Season 12 Episode 7, where he helped Danny with a case involving a shop owner in Little Vietnam getting beat up. 

It seemed odd that Danny had no clue that the Vietnamese people in the park didn’t want to talk to him since the same thing happened during the last case. He might have forced Sonny to talk to him this time, but breaking up that game probably made him persona non grata among the neighborhood residents.

I figured Sonny would end up being someone’s CI. He’s probably more likely to listen to his new boss, who may also be Vietnamese, than to Danny, who comes from a different background.

Blue Bloods won’t return until January 2023. Did you think this winter finale gave you enough to talk about until the series returns?

Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know.

Don’t forget you can watch Blue Bloods online while waiting for new episodes to air.

Blue Bloods airs on CBS on Fridays at 10 PM EST / PST. The next new episode airs on January 6, 2023.

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Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.

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