Summary
Boston Blue leaves Danny and Baez’s relationship at a crossroads in “For Those Who Weren’t Heard”, a slightly confusing hour that doesn’t entirely work.
The network procedural crossover is a thing of occasional beauty, but also one of often confusing annoyance, especially when it isn’t technically a crossover. Such is the case in Boston Blue Episode 15, which reunites Danny and Baez for a cross-city investigation despite Blue Bloods not even airing anymore. “For Those Who Weren’t Heard” isn’t one of those crossovers that are split in half between two shows, like the recent Sheriff Country example, but it is very much a servant of two masters, designed to appeal to long-time fans rather than those who just jumped aboard with this spin-off.
The A-plot is pretty good, but it’s clearly of secondary priority to the relationship drama. In that regard, mileage is going to vary here. If you’re very invested in Danny and Baez’s long-distance relationship, despite it barely having been touched on here, then you’re in for a treat and a sour ending. If you’re not, you might end up a little lost and confused. And dare I say it, bored?
The tropes don’t help. Danny can tell something is up with Baez from the jump, but she deliberately avoids talking to him about it. After finally confiding in Lena, she then continuously tries to talk to him about it, and they keep getting interrupted before they can have the conversation. This doesn’t quite work, since we already have a very good sense of what Baez is going to say. She’s unhappy maintaining a long-distance relationship, and it’s obvious that their respective careers and circumstances aren’t going to allow them to do anything about it.
Curiously, a new element is thrown in here, mostly to ensure that Baez can’t relocate as Danny has. Her mother has Alzheimer’s Disease, so she couldn’t possibly leave New York, but she also wouldn’t allow Danny to leave Boston, since I’m sure CBS executives would have a thing or two to say in that case. It creates an impasse, but the dilemma isn’t handled well. Danny not knowing about the Alzheimer’s diagnosis is weird – aren’t these two supposed to be close? – and feels too much like a detail thrown in out of nowhere to keep this relationship in a kind of stasis.
But that denies the audience from knowing what’s really going on. Is this the end? Is it a temporary stopgap? Impossible to tell, and if that were to be the end of a very beloved fan-favourite relationship, it’d seem super weird and unsatisfying. Not a fan.
Everything about Baez’s involvement in Boston Blue Episode 15 feels similarly weird. It’s like a classic two-show crossover that proceeds as if the first half happened somewhere else. But it didn’t, so it ends up being confusing, with Baez just doing briefings in the Boston PD office and exposition being used to fill in the gaps. Once it all gets going, it’s satisfying; there are serial killers and Irish gangsters and shootouts and all that jazz. But it can’t shake the feeling of being half a story.
As ever, there are B-plots, and these are arguably better since they’re not undermined by that weird crossover feeling. On the one hand, you’ve got Sean and Jonah, who were arguably given a bit too much to do last week, dealing with a woman named Nadine trying to shoot her gaslighting father, who insists she’s a psychopath. This also ropes Sarah in, too, which is a good way of keeping her logically occupied. This is a much better use of Sean and Jonah because it’s not asking too much of them, and the turnaround with the dad really being the bad guy is engaging.
Mae also has a dilemma about jurisdiction and the death penalty that puts her at odds with Seth, of all people. This feels like the kind of story that could have stood to be the focus of the episode instead of being consigned to the margins, since it grapples with big questions about capital punishment and whether some people really deserve to pay that price. How justice trickles through public policy and political initiatives is a complicated thing and needs a bit more space to be explored properly. But you can’t have everything, certainly not all at once.
Boston Blue does regularly try to have everything, of course, which is one of its problems. If you look at Edwin’s surprise 80th birthday party, you’ve got that, Seth’s proposal, and the big moment between Danny and Baez all sharing space. It’s too much for each aspect to resonate. And it leaves things, especially for Danny and Baez, on a slightly confusing, unsatisfactory note.
