Summary
Boston Blue remains a well-oiled procedural in “Teammates”, but it also feels dangerously stripped of meaningful conflict and friction.
My biggest question about Boston Blue is when things are going to start going wrong. I don’t mean in terms of its underlying construction, obviously, since it’s as well-oiled as a procedural can be in that sense. I mean in terms of some genuine conflict; characters properly falling out, cases really going awry, differences becoming irreconcilable. You know, drama. Episode 2, “Teammates”, lives up to its title so proudly and enthusiastically that it made me feel a bit nauseous.
There are two things of concern in this episode – the usual case of the week, which is the murder of a whistleblower in a Ponzi scheme, and the evolving dynamic between Sean and Jonah now that the former is back on his feet and the two are officially partners. There’s also a surprising third angle here, which is that the murder happened thanks to a patrol cop, whose job was to protect the witness, having abandoned her post early. The patrol cop, Sylvia, just so happens to be the former partner of Sarah, who is now faced with the responsibility of holding her accountable, despite her only having dipped out early to tend to her daughter, who she’s raising alone after the death of her husband.
Let’s start with the murder. It’s fine in its broad strokes; Danny – still technically on loan to the BPD – and Lena work the clues, interrogate the suspects, and eventually find out that the ex-wife did it. She hired her brother as a triggerman, and he also paid off a struggling patrol cop to abandon his post. This is the guy who was late to relieve Sylvia, which doesn’t exactly exonerate her but certainly helps to grease the wheels.
As well as all this works, Danny and Lena’s relationship is so obvious that it’s difficult to buy into. This is someone who is famously incompatible with partners, and yet she has accepted Danny, a blow-in from a completely different city, without any friction at all. On multiple occasions, she mentions his imminent departure for New York, teeing up the big decision at the end of “Teammates” when he decides to stay. Pardon me for not being enthused about this development, but we’re only two episodes into a show called Boston Blue, so it was pretty inevitable.
I thought this decision had been made in the premiere, truthfully, but I was presupposing that Sean’s recovery would take much longer. As it turns out, we don’t see his recovery at all. At the start of this episode, a month has passed, he has been through rehab, and he’s officially in the field. The only real concern is whether he’s ready for that – he is – and whether he can adapt to being Jonah’s partner instead of his best friend. Both Danny and Lena give their respective relatives remarkably similar advice, which leads to them clashing early, but they both quickly put that aside and find their own rhythm.
I get it. Danny and Lena were trying to exert too much influence based on their own experiences and not allowing Sean and Jonah to find their own way. But I reckon we could have stretched that out over a couple of episodes rather than resolving everything at such a pace. Everything feels too easy. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the subplot involving Sylvia.
On the face of it, this is probably the most interesting angle in Boston Blue Episode 2. Sarah’s caught between playing by the rules and doing her friends favours, trying to adapt her thinking now that she has graduated from the field to the hot seat. But she also provides the lens through which we get a sense of how the personal lives of an overworked and underfunded department inevitably bleed into the policing. I like how Sarah goes to her grandfather to try and pull some strings, and he refuses to do it, since it’ll hurt her career in the long run. That’s the right lesson, I thought. But then the fact that Sarah is Mae’s daughter magically allows her to fire Sylvia from patrol and then get her immediately rehired as an investigator for the D.A.’s office.
This is far too neat and tidy for my taste. The familial connection within Boston PD is manifesting almost exclusively as cosy family dinners – in which everybody politely listens to one another and offers sage wisdom – and nobody having to make a tough decision. It makes for a likeable demeanour, but so little meaningful conflict that I worry Boston Blue might pass by completely unnoticed.
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