The Blue Bloods Season 9 finale should have been a controversy-free hour, since Eddie and Jamie finally got married. But fans were understandably upset that the show faded to black before they exchanged vows, and star Tom Selleck said there was a good reason for it.
For about the first 50 minutes of “Something Blue,” the episode played like a standard Blue Bloods hour and it was only until the last 10 minutes that we finally got to even see the rehearsal dinner, which took place of the traditional Reagan family dinner scene.
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The last five minutes was reserved for the wedding, with a scene of Eddie (Vanessa Ray) convincing Frank (Selleck) to walk her down the aisle since her own father is in prison. As Eddie and Frank walked towards the church altar, the camera cut to Jamie (Will Estes), who smiled at his beautiful bride. The episode faded to black on Jamie’s smile.
During an interview about the finale published after it aired, Deadline asked Selleck why Blue Bloods rarely ever ends a season with a cliffhanger like so many others do.
“When we did our final [Magnum, P.I.] episode, we finally could get genuine jeopardy to Thomas Magnum because he could die. Then and now, what I like to work on is giving audiences a lot of credit for being smart rather than stupid, they know what’s going on, Joe 6-pack and his wife are trying to figure out what’s really going on here, and that comes out of the subtext of the scene,” Selleck explained. “So, in a season finale, because everybody does it, you’re really saying somebody’s going to die.”
Selleck said Blue Bloods is not a show like that. Aside from the death of Danny’s (Donnie Wahlberg) wife Linda Reagan and the pre-show death of Frank’s son Joe Reagan, the main conflict in the series is between characters. It’s why they argue at the dinner table.
“You can get momentary jeopardy to a character and a tense life-threatening situation, but you can’t even hang a whole show on that,” Selleck told Deadline. “What you can hang it on is an audience’s sense of anticipation based on what they want and what appears to not be happening.”
In other words, fans could see the wedding was happening. Selleck later said they figured if they could not beat the “splendor” of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding, they did not have to show it.
“[Showrunner Kevin Wade] and I have talked quite a lot about Magnum, the final episode and things like this. We’re pretty much in sync all the time. That’s why in this season’s finale, we don’t show the whole wedding ceremony,” Selleck said. “How are we going to beat Charles and Di splendor or pomp? So you need some sort of conflict or concern or something to make that kind of scene work like with Eddie and Frank or something else.”
Earlier in the interview, Selleck said one reason why “Something Blue” focused so much on other stories before the wedding is that CBS heavily promoted the nuptials and they needed plots that would not be given away in the commercials.
“In this case, there’s a wedding but there are still a lot of other wrinkles going on, and things outside the church that Kevin worked very hard on,” Selleck explained. “It puts a dynamic to the wedding other than just sweetness and light, you know?”
Blue Bloods will be back for a 10th season in the fall on CBS, with Selleck back as the Reagan family patriarch.
Photo credit: CBS
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'Blue Bloods' final season. Credit: CBS
