'Blue Bloods' series finale: Powerful, satisfying

This story contains multiple spoilers about the series finale of "Blue Bloods."

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Well, there's certainly a lot to unpack with "End of Tour," the 293rd and last episode of "Blue Bloods," which ended its 14-season run Friday. Obviously, this unpacking must necessarily begin with NYPD Officer Luis Badillo (Ian Quinlan).

MY SAY Fans of any beloved cop procedural coming to end, as "Blue Bloods" just did, fully expect and maybe even deserve catharsis — or in plain English, that punch to the gut that forces them to reach for the nearest box of Kleenex. Quinlan's Badillo, who joined the show back in 2021, was shot and killed in an ambush set up by the gang Ace Double Tres — a particularly hard gut punch.

"Eddie [Vanessa Ray] gets a hostile new partner" is how Badillo was first described in loglines back when he joined in the 12th season. At first, he didn't exactly ingratiate himself to Eddie Janko nor to viewers. That all changed as we learned he'd been struggling with PTSD after the death of his previous partner, and (in a recent episode) had been taking the son of that partner fishing every year. Badillo even declined to go to rehab to avoid suspension for smoking pot — which also helped with the PTSD — so that he could stick with the fishing date.

Episode after episode, Badillo grew on Eddie, and he grew on us. The beat cop who stands up for his partner, and stands behind her. A regular guy who can't make ends meet on a cop's salary. A family man denied his own family but watches out for a dead partner's son instead.

 Badillo was in some sense the essential message "Blue Bloods" wanted to convey over these last 14 years — during which 15 NYPD officers were killed in the line of duty. This is a dangerous job performed by fallible humans. Badillo was just such a cop. It's hard to make the case that this death was "necessary" but in the context of "Blue Bloods" — or deep within this show's emotional core — it sure was.

Then, there was the timing of "End of Tour." The plot involved gangland-style hits on a judge, the mayor and other cops — outlandish and melodramatic in just about any week other than the one this finale landed in, when a CEO was assassinated in Manhattan and the NYPD launched one of the biggest manhunts in recent history. "It's all hands on deck out there, and we got way more deck than hands," Joe Hill (Will Hochman) tells Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) as they mount a frantic search for the killers. Nice line with real world resonance, wouldn't you agree?

Meanwhile, there were a couple of developments you could see coming from the next county over — Janko and Jamie (Will Estes) are about to start that family of their own (she's pregnant), while Jack (Peter Hermann) and Erin (Bridget Moynahan) are going to get re-hitched. Of course the best scene landed towards the end, in that unnamed upstate prison where Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) goes to put the squeeze on Lorenzo Batista (Edward James Olmos), the gangbanger serving life whose son, Alejandro, was behind the hit on Mayor Peter Chase (Dylan Walsh).

There they were, two heavyweights, face to face, eye to eye. Who would blink first? It was the shootout scene in "High Noon," and no one needed to be told who was playing Gary Cooper.

But what made this scene so special — beyond the fact that both Selleck and Olmos are A-listers who've spent long careers nailing scenes exactly like this one — was the family card that Frank ultimately played. "I had a son who was killed by the cops," he said, and "he was about Alejandro's age." Frank then closed in: "I'd be eternally grateful for the chance" to have him back, "because I know the cold, dark."

Guess who blinked?

Finally, with immediate and extended family gathered together for that one final Sunday meal around that most iconic of TV dinner tables — with a few extra leaves added — "Blue Bloods" left viewers with the most resonant message this particular series possibly could: Family matters more than anything.

"I gotta say, I couldn't be more proud or grateful," said Frank.

BOTTOM LINE Good job, Commish. Good wrap, too.