M*A*S*H, Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore, and The Sopranos all influenced the forthcoming series finale of Blue Bloods. Showrunner/executive producer Kevin Wade recently revealed what the series finales for all the aforementioned shows have in common and how he set out to make sure Blue Bloods follows that formula.
Speaking with TVLine for its Fall Preview Q&A, Wade shared that he had begun thinking about how to wrap up the long-running CBS procedural around five years ago. “I mean, if you’re on for 14 years, in at least four or five of those years you started out a season going, ‘This could be the last one,’ just as a numbers game,” the showrunner explained. “So, I’ve thought about it a lot, along with my colleagues. [Longtime executive producer] Siobhan Byrne O’Connor and I would talk about it a lot over the seasons.”
In November 2023, CBS announced that Blue Bloods would end after Season 14. The first 10 episodes aired on the network from February to May 2024, with the final eight episodes set to air this fall, beginning in October. When the time came to write the series finale for Blue Bloods, Wade “rewatched the series finales of great shows, going back to M*A*S*H and Cheers and Mary Tyler Moore, and certainly The Sopranos. I watched a lot of them for what they might have in common, and what they basically had in common, if I boiled it down, is they did a great show, and then in the last few minutes they did a little pivot towards, ‘This is also the last show.'”
The Blue Bloods Series Finale Will See the Reagans Working Together
Wade noted how this approach “avoided the ‘We are now going to do a retrospective of how great we’ve been,’ because I think people tune in just to see a really good episode of the show that they loved.” The showrunner then revealed that fans can expect for the Blue Bloods series finale to be quite similar to any of the recent season finales, explaining, “To me, the Blue Bloods season finales that worked best were where we found a crime or criminals or a situation for all the Reagans to work together on — separately but together. And we did that [for the series finale]. We have four different stories but all are aimed at solving or preventing the same crimes.”
Created by Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, Blue Bloods premiered in September 2010 on CBS. The long-running police procedural drama series is set in New York City and follows members of the Reagan family, a Catholic, Irish-American family with a history of working in law enforcement. Tom Selleck leads the main cast as New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, with Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, and Will Estes portraying his character’s adult children. Len Cariou, Marisa Ramirez, and Vanessa Ray also star.
Blue Bloods Season 14 returns on CBS on Friday, Oct. 18, with the series finale expected to air on either the first or second Friday in December.