'Blue Bloods' Misses Mark Badly, Dangerously with Restorative Justice Episode

Julian Spivey
I’ve been a fan of CBS’ crime drama “Blue Bloods” ever since the show premiered in the fall of 2010. For the last five seasons the show has been one of the most underrated dramas on network television, especially in the packed crime procedural field.

A big reason why I’m such a fan of the show is it’s one of the most moralistic shows on television in an era where such a thing rarely exists. And, in an era of television that’s touted and revered for its anti-heroes, Tom Selleck’s New York City Police Commissioner Frank Regan harkens back to the days of Marshal Matt Dillon on the long-running CBS Western “Gunsmoke” as the type of moralistic heroic figure who’s always going to do the right thing no matter what. I’ve even said more than once in conversation with people that Frank Regan would make a good candidate for President of the United States – both on television and in real life.

But on “Bad Company,” the most recent episode of “Blue Bloods” that aired on Friday, March 13, the Frank Regan storyline featuring restorative justice rubbed me the wrong way. It rubbed me the wrong way because it almost scoffed at the serious subject of mental illness and did so in a horridly dangerous manner.

You can watch the episode here, but the storyline in question features a young woman, Sarah Grant (played by Amelia Rose Blaire), coming to Regan’s office with a letter from the killer of her entire family. He wants to meet her as part of a restorative justice program that seeks to rehabilitate the incarcerated by giving them a chance to apologize to their victims or victims’ families face-to-face. Regan and the girl go back most of her life as he was the one on her family’s case. He’s also been tasked with walking her down the aisle at her soon-to-be wedding.

Grant doesn’t want to meet with the killer of her family at first, but later changes her mind saying it will eat her up inside if she doesn’t do it. The audience thinks she’s going to forgive him, because this is how these clichéd storylines typically go. What happens next starts out as something refreshing before ultimately delving into something rather infuriating and borderline dangerous on the part of showrunner Kevin Wade and writer Bryan Goluboff.

Grant, with Regan by her side, meets the killer of her family and immediately tells him that she cannot forgive him for murdering her entire family – her parents and five-year old brother. This was quite refreshing. I didn’t really feel like seeing this young woman forgive someone who brutally murdered her entire family in what Regan had called the most disturbing crime scene of his long career.

Unfortunately, the scene didn’t end there. The killer tells Grant that he doesn’t expect her to forgive him and that he can’t forgive himself either. He tells her he tried to kill himself, but was unsuccessful as the guards caught him before he died. Then he tells her how he found religion and it changed who he was. This is where it seems she will relent and accept his forgiveness, but again thankfully the show doesn’t go cliché. However, cliché probably would’ve been a whole lot better than what actually comes next.

The killer tells Grant that finding God and being locked up helped him realize that he had mental illness. It helped him get the medication and help he needed to deal with his disability. It stopped the voices inside his head that made him do the truly horrific things he had done.

The scene takes its turn for the worse when Grant doesn’t care about the man’s mental illness. You can’t really blame her for that, but she turns on him telling him that the only way he can make things better would be to commit suicide and do it right this time. The scene gets even uglier when we get a close-up of Regan responding to her response and there really isn’t one. In fact, it’s almost as if he’s scoffing at the mental illness as an excuse by the look on his face. I almost expected Regan to step up and say “enough” when Grant suggested that the killer of her family commit suicide. Even though he has a close relationship with her she surpassed a moralistic barrier that I didn’t believe Regan or the show would pass. The scene ends there and Regan soon walks Grant down the aisle at her wedding.

The entire scene made me feel very uncomfortable because of its treatment of mental illness. It led me to believe that the show doesn’t have a high opinion of mental illness being used as defense or excuse for committing crimes, even though it is something that comes into play every day when crimes are committed. For the scene to turn on mental illness and use the suggestion of suicide as a means of fixing one’s mistakes caused by it was simply an incredibly dangerous and ignorant stance for “Blue Bloods” to take. The show could’ve taken a good stance on helping those with mental illness, but instead has us questioning whether it really believes mental illness can cause someone to commit atrocities, even though professionals will tell you it can.

“Blue Bloods” is a show that often walks a fine line on moral issues (and I’m glad that’s a focal point of the series), but this is the first time in its five seasons where they’ve completely missed the mark – and they missed it by not just a mile, but about 100.

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