‘Boston Blue’ Episode 8 Recap – The Best Outing of the Season Thus Far

I’ve been moaning about Boston Blue’s lack of meaningful conflict. But I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the real thing that was missing was depth. There’s no reason a procedural can’t have that. The weekly cases have worked well enough, and they’ve usually offered a passing comment in the direction of a wider issue or character dilemma. But the show’s tendency to have everything resolve in the most happy and risk-averse way possible was frustrating. Episode 8, “In the Name of the Father, And of the Son”, is a nice reminder that the cases of the week can really inform the character dynamics by resonating on a deeper level.

This is the first episode where I really felt like things were going wrong in a meaningful way. We’ve had a little bit of this, but not in quite this way, and the most recent episode found itself slipping back into bad habits. But there’s all sorts going on here, and very little of it is good. It won’t be a case of just sweeping it all under the carpet; every character, every subplot, is rippling with genuine sentiment, and the whole show’s so much better as a result. I’d comfortably call it the best outing of the season thus far.

Given the title, you’d think the entire hour was going to revolve around Danny’s relationship with Sean, and to be fair, there is a bit of that reflected in the investigation of a young father’s murder. But it’s more than that. The themes of family and parenting are everywhere, as are those of truth and consequence. It sometimes comes from unexpected directions, looping back to subplots from previous episodes. There’s an emotional contour here that simply hasn’t been present in previous episodes, even some of the better ones.

Of course, Danny dwells on his responsibilities to Sean. But it’s tinged with the specific concern of being a father to a cop, someone constantly in danger in the line of duty, and someone who is also, as here, potentially embroiled in a departmental scandal. Sean and Jonah are on the hook for arresting a well-respected fire chief who was drunk and got physical with them. The brass want the whole matter to go away since the fire chief is going through a messy divorce, but Sarah doesn’t think that’s just, and she’s right. But her refusing to back down puts Sean and Jonah in the firing line.

Sarah’s also grappling with her own personal issues. As implied in previous episodes, she’s struggling to navigate a relationship with her step-daughter, a rebellious teenage girl who is going through that phase of testing the boundaries, but her unwillingness to be the bad cop at home is straining her dynamic with her boyfriend, who seems to be relishing the idea of being an over-the-top disciplinarian. It’s later revealed that he had a problem with alcohol addiction in his youth, and is fearful of his daughter going down the same path. You don’t need me to tell you how this reflects on Sarah’s approach to dealing with the fire chief problem, especially when it’s revealed he was known as the firehouse drunk long before his divorce.

Boston Blue Episode 8 is surprisingly satisfying in how it knits all these things together. It does it again in the murder subplot, which ropes in Edwin, seemingly just to compel the suspect to confess by appealing to her on religious grounds. But in the process of that, he also reveals a pretty dark family secret – Mae’s mother didn’t die in a car accident. She took her own life. Edwin has kept this secret for years, continuing to allow Mae to believe in the idea of a random tragedy. At some point, he’s going to have to tell her. Or is he? Either way, the new information recontextualises a lot of scenes in this episode, specifically, and the season in general. And Ernie Hudson is really fantastic.

Not that Mae doesn’t have secrets of her own, since she still hasn’t told Lena and Jonah about the mole in her office, which you’ll recall may result in their father’s killer walking free if all of his previous cases are thrown out. As usual, “In the Name of the Father, And of the Son” resolves a bunch of these subplots in pure plot terms, but the emotional implications can’t be squared away that easily. The chickens are going to come home to roost sooner rather than later, and at this point, that’s the best thing that could happen to Boston Blue.