Blue Bloods is a rare find: a conservative-leaning show that appeals to viewers across the political spectrum.
Its central premise is family, not politics. This family loves each other and has one another’s backs no matter what.
Still, this show tends to lean center-right on any given issue, so its take on immigration reform during Blue Bloods Season 12 Episode 15 was surprising.
Danny and Baez’s case was different from the outset.
Usually, they investigate murders. If they take on a missing persons case, it’s generally a high-profile kidnapping where they have to race against time to stop it from becoming a homicide.
This time, though, the alleged victims were alive and well. They were just running from a deportation hearing.
Christine wasn’t trying to stay in this country illegally. She was caught up in a ton of bureaucratic red tape.
Her adoptive parents had failed to have her naturalized, which was what caused the issue in the first place, and then she didn’t receive her notices of a hearing, which triggered an automatic deportation.
Baez: What would you do in her situation?
Danny: I’d like to think I’d use the system the right way.
Baez: And if you didn’t trust the system because it failed you?
Danny: If push came to shove and I was going to lose my kid, I’d do the same thing. But that doesn’t make it right.
Danny and Baez were on opposite sides of this one, but their opinions were true to character. That’s what made this story work: it wasn’t preachy or annoying. It was just two cops with different life experiences disagreeing about how to handle an immigration snafu.
I was surprised that Baez pointed out that desperate people don’t trust a broken system and that this case pointed to the need for immigration reform. That’s more liberal language than I’m used to hearing on this show.
It made sense, though. I don’t know what specific experiences Baez’s family has had with immigration, but as a Latina woman, she may have had family that got stuck in similar bureaucratic traps.
I especially liked that Danny admitted he would have done the same thing to protect his kids if need be, yet still held onto his belief that doing so was wrong.
Danny is not a by-the-book cop by any stretch of the imagination, and I think we all know that he would break any law if it stood between him and his kids. It was fascinating that he couldn’t quite extend empathy to someone else who bucked the system for a similar reason.
But his belief in the system combined with Baez’s explanation of why Christine ran allowed him to make the impassioned speech he needed to make to get Christine to give up the idea of running away.
I didn’t expect Will to have been behind the disappearing immigration notices or to end up in handcuffs in the end, though.
Danny’s explanation made perfect sense. Will wanted to get custody of Emmy through illicit means. But I didn’t see that one coming, and I almost always solve these cases before the cops do!
In some ways, Jamie’s situation was parallel to Danny and Baez’s, yet it also was the opposite circumstances.
While Danny might have had a hard time understanding why Christine ran because he’d never experienced immigration issues, Jamie tried too hard to help a non-white officer who was being bullied on the job.
The officer and Jamie’s boss told him that he didn’t understand because he wasn’t a minority. Sadly, this felt all too realistic.
Officer Santos was afraid of making waves. He felt he had to go along with being the butt of everyone’s anti-Filipino jokes because standing up to the other cops would make things worse for him.
Jamie didn’t see it that way, and why would he? He had never been subjected to daily bullying based on his ethnicity.
From his point of view, he was helping by dressing down the officers who engaged in bullying and constantly asking Santos if he was sure he was all right.
Jamie made the same rookie mistake that many parents of bullied kids make: he thought that if he stood up to the bullies for Santos, it would put an end to their mean-spirited teasing.
The problem is, if an authority figure stands up for you, the bullies are going to think you can’t stand up for yourself and increase the abusive behavior whenever you’re alone.
No wonder Santos felt singled out!
Filing a lawsuit against Jamie was a bit extreme, but someone had to tell the well-intentioned Sergeant that he was going about this the wrong way.
I’m not sure I fully understood the point of Henry’s story about this. Still, if it helped Jamie realize he needed to make a department-wide policy instead of acting like the parent of badly-behaving teenagers, then I’m happy.
Anthony’s story was far weaker than these stories. It was predictable, both when he made the original threats against the suspect and when the guy fell down the stairs.
That was so predictable that I wondered if the suspect had set Anthony up by pretending to fall down the stairs.
At the very least, Anthony should have known better than to threaten the defendant in open court. No matter how angry he was, he didn’t need to make that kind of impression.
It’s a good thing the Deputy Chancellor of Education didn’t know about Anthony’s misadventure. She might have held his empty threats as proof that all cops are poorly disciplined, overgrown children.
School safety officers aren’t just cops. They have to be diplomats too.
Frank
I couldn’t blame the parents for wanting cops out of their schools when Fernandez admitted he treats the kids like hardened criminals.
His hostility was doing little to help the situation. It made parents view cops as their children’s enemies, and that’s a dangerous viewpoint to hold when you also depend on them to keep your kids safe at school!
Your turn, Blue Bloods fanatics. What grade would you give this week’s episode of Blue Bloods?
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Blue Bloods airs on CBS on Fridays at 10 PM EST/PST.
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.