14×02 Dropping Bombs

The scene begins innocuously but establishes why Edde is alone when she receives the critical information. (this is slightly reminiscent of the setup in Sins of the Father). However, it not only separates Eddie and Badillo for later conflict; would the victim have reached out to Eddie or caught her attention if Eddie had been with her partner?

I think the way Ms Davis reveals what happened is significant; her reluctance to talk makes her more believable to the audience, as it’s an established trope that someone making a false claim will be shouting their accusations to get as much attention as possible.

I love the framing of this scene; we’re taking it from Joe’s viewpoint, so we only get a brief establishing shot of the gang. That quick look is enough for us to recognise Quinn, giving us a good idea of who the obscured fourth person is. It means the audience is ready for the revelation before Jamie turns around (even if we haven’t seen the promo). Interestingly, everyone else stays in their seat, but Jamie starts running as the cops come through the door. That movement creates the space for Joe and Jamie to have a one-on-one moment in addition to the ‘surprise’.

With the presence of FBI agent Jeff Green, we get a call back to Joe’s storylines in The Reagan Way and Past History; in both those episodes, Joe’s tactics were said to put others at risk. 

I like Jamie stating how experienced he is; whenever he’s teamed with Danny or Anthony, they tend to treat him like he’s only just stepped out of the academy. While they both have more time on the job than Jamie, he’s definitely a long way past being wet behind the ears.

Also, I like the different demeanour from Jamie, he isn’t just snapping back at Joe; he’s also quite brusque in the way he talks to Sid. It speaks to how angry he is about the problem Joe created, but it also feels in keeping with the stress he’s under. When Jamie says he’s got to leave because the gang will get suspicious, you can hear the worry.

Eddie’s need to move quickly is justifiable; however, it sounds like there is no chain of command at the precinct due to McNichols’ insistence that Eddie should have found her. (Even if the sergeants are ignored because they’re the same rank as the accused, it looks like none of the lieutenants can be trusted to do their job.) McNichols never suggests they were any option but to report directly to her. As Captain, is there an expectation that she should be available every second of the day? From episodes like Handcuffs, we know Espinoza would attend meetings at 1PP, so should Eddie know McNichols’ exact whereabouts so she can go directly to her?

With the number of phone calls Eddie made, you have to question what Badillo was doing all that time. It’s long enough for Eddie to have contacted Anthony (not Erin directly, so what kind of advice was Eddie getting?), for him to relay that message to Erin, and for Erin to contact the precinct. Despite the justifications given later, I don’t think there’s a full explanation of Eddie’s decision to take this upon herself to deal with. I’m hoping this could be an idea that’s developed through the session.

It feels significant when Eddie says Jamie and Badillo are the only people she trusts at the precinct. It isn’t a ringing endorsement for McNichols, but is there more to why Eddie feels so isolated? At least she can be open with Erin and Anthony.

After ordering Hader’s death and wanting to kill the officer who Jamie trapped in his vehicle in Loyalty, it isn’t a surprise that Quinn has decided he wants to deal with Joe the same way. Joe is giving them too much attention, and with the gang only receiving minimal charges, he probably doesn’t think there’s a risk of them being considered responsible if anything happens to Joe.

Considering how quickly the gang seem to have identified Joe, who is the source of their information. If they’d traced back from his informant, they should know why the raid happened; is his pointing to them having a contact within law enforcement? If Joe’s informant asked questions of the wrong person, it would give them a trail back to Joe, but that feels very quick.

While Eddie recalls the events of Justice Served and how she dealt with her assault, there’s a split second when Eddie looks at Erin as she mentions her “partner at the time”. It could be that talking about Jamie causes her subconsciously to look at someone else who has a connection to him, or it’s because she’s wondering what Erin’s reaction would be. This is the last time Erin and Eddie are together before family dinner, so there’s no chance to see whether Erin offered Eddie any support after they left Ms Davis.

Once again, Anthony steps in and provides the outsider’s perspective on the family. One of the best parts was that Badillo felt Eddie being Mrs Reagan was all that needed to be said to explain her actions. As soon as Anthony made Badillo take a step back from his anger, we saw the same side of Badillo as we met in Smoke & Mirrors: the one who was the protector of his sisters.

Such a Reagan argument; who would be protecting who? It isn’t surprising that Jamie quickly reported the threat against Joe; he knows it’s serious. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Jamie’s safety was Joe’s primary concern when he didn’t run a location check that would have avoided putting Jamie in danger.

I do struggle a bit with understanding Joe’s motive; it could be because Joe doesn’t seem to understand or control his feelings. Does Joe want to protect Jamie as he doesn’t want to lose another family member? Is Joe thinking back to the events of Keeping the Faith and seeing Jamie fall to the ground protecting him? With Joe’s accusation against the family’s inability to save his father, it feels more like he’ll say and do anything to prove himself.

However, Joe does seem genuinely apologetic for suggesting no one did anything to protect his dad. Just like in The Reagan Way, Joe Reagan is what binds them together and how they can deliver the cruellest blow in an argument.

Was this supposed to be before the second conversation at the church, or is this an indication there’s a deleted scene? We never see Sid talk to Jamie or Joe again, so why has Frank told Sid to do something? It would make sense if that second meeting at the church was in response to Frank’s request and the new threat information from Jamie.

It appears the section about Jamie and Joe could have been cut from this scene, and we wouldn’t have noticed its absence. It feels even more superfluous when the dinner conversation implies that Frank did take action by asking Joe to bring the roast (we don’t need to see Frank being apprised of a situation to believe he would know about it, especially considering he did the same thing with Eddie).

We’ve just seen other officers purposely bumping into Eddie in the hallway. Despite no one else being in the locker room, you can see Eddie’s trepidation in the slow way she approaches her locker.

There’s no doubt that Jamie is angry with Joe as he attempts to teach him a lesson, but this differs from Erin’s attempt to tell Joe some home truths in On Dangerous Ground, which just sounded cruel. Jamie’s reprimand of Joe feels more closely connected to the pain of losing his brother; his voice conveys the pain of that loss. There’s also the difference between Erin trying to correct a personal insult while Jamie is speaking on behalf of the whole family and the fact that Joe hurts all of them every time he throws out this anger about his father’s death.

You have no idea what it was like to live through losing him.

(I don’t want to spoil the scene for anyone, but don’t look too closely at the headstones – for some reason, Mary and Betty have switched places. It feels like this scene was filmed quickly, so maybe no one had a chance to notice the mistake)

It was nice for McNichols to finally support Eddie; however, it does feel a little as though McNichols has only had a change of heart because Badillo suggested Eddie had protected the captain from being a target. If McNichols wanted the top job, she should accept everything that goes with it. (McNichols’ observation that Eddie won’t defend herself makes me think back to Collision Course and Jamie stepping in to deal with Stephens, but also how Eddie worked on Jamie’s problem in Tangled Up in Blue – it’s a reminder that Eddie and Jamie are very alike and it’s one of the reasons they look out for each other)

Eddie did the right thing for the victim, but we don’t know why she did it solo. Badillo and McNichols state what they think her reasons were, but Eddie never confirms they’re correct.

I still have to question why the sergeant thought Erin being a Reagan would automatically make her more sympathetic; I could understand it more if he didn’t have any direct contact with the family, but he’s based at the 29th precinct, so it seems impossible that he wouldn’t know Jamie’s reputation and that the officer who kicked this case off is also a Reagan.

Sadly, no emotional moment between Jamie and Eddie this week (oddly, no sense at all of the difficulty Jamie must have to get there – considering his comment earlier in the ep about the gang getting suspicious if he’s gone too long. Maybe they’ve got some free time before they get a new group of girls). Also, the camera angles meant we couldn’t see much interaction between Jamie and Eddie. I can understand that they couldn’t repeat what happened in Loyalty; however, nothing in this scene suggests it’s onerous or unusual for Jamie to attend family dinner.

I’ll admit that I will put up with those niggles when the main characters of this scene are Joe and Jamie, especially when Joe says, “Uncle Jamie”. Previously, he’d always called his aunts and uncles by name without the familial title. It makes sense that Jamie is the first to get that recognition in light of the deleted scene from The Reagan Way where Joe told his boss that Jamie was his uncle.

The dinner scene wasn’t quite the end of the episode. It may have felt like the normalisation of Jamie’s attendance at dinner had lessened the dangers of his undercover role, but there’s a shocking reminder that this gang and its associates are very dangerous. We had a form of cliffhanger as we saw Joe’s informant pleading for her life before being shot by Ruiz. Joe is now part of Jamie’s ongoing storyline; will they both be in danger; what would they do to protect each other? Will we see anyone else from the family trying to help?

Compared to Loyalty, I may have some niggles with plot points and editing, but it delivers an intense emotional component. It’s such a good story for Eddie, with much more to be invested in than her trying to fix someone else’s love life. We lost some tension in Jamie’s undercover op, even if we could still see he’s under pressure. However, the stakes were already high, and this episode makes it far more personal for Jamie. This is likely to be the middle of a trilogy; with the gang fully established in part 1, the emotional stakes have been raised with Joe’s informant and Joe in danger.

In this episode, Jamie is protecting the family; it isn’t unusual for they all take that role at some time. Frank has tried to get through to Joe more than once about his attitude, but with Joe’s apology to the whole family, it feels like Jamie might be the one who is successful. It’s slightly ironic that Jamie’s undercover assignment means he’s spending time away from the family but can squeeze in enough contact to solve a long-term problem.

I’m happy to see a conflict between Eddie and Badillo if there’s a possibility of supportive scenes for Jamie and Eddie… But I have to wonder why the first two storylines of the season rely on Eddie having to work against her colleagues at the 2-9? It feels like what we saw in several of Jamie’s storylines before he moved to Intelligence: standing against the rest of the precinct, sometimes even Eddie, for something he believed in. Will this be Eddie’s arc for at least part of this season?