New Year’s Resolutions: Blue Bloods needs to rectify Linda’s death

Blue Bloods did Linda Raegan dirty. There has to be a way to rectify her death, right? Here’s the New Year’s Resolution for the series.

Blue Bloods needed to find a way to write Linda Raegan out of the series after Amy Carlson chose to leave. That’s not the problem we have. The problem was the way she was written out. There has to be a way to rectify her death, doesn’t there?

It’s time for us to focus on Blue Bloods for the New Year’s Resolutions post. After all, two-and-a-half-years since the storyline has passed and we’re still not all that happy about it. But why is it important to the fans?

The show: Blue Bloods

The resolution: Find a way to rectify Linda’s death

Why it needs to be made: Okay, so I admit that it’s likely not all that possible to do. Blue Bloods is a grounded TV crime drama. Unlike NCIS: New Orleans and Nancy Drew, it doesn’t have elements of the supernatural mixed in. Yes, even NOLA has some elements of the supernatural. Just look at the guy in the red suit!

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However, that doesn’t mean we should have something. There has to be some way of rectifying this death.

Carlson had been on the series from the beginning but chose to leave the show at the end of the seventh season. We get it. Actors want to move onto other projects. They don’t want to get tied down to just one character.

That’s not the problem we have. But Blue Bloods did Linda dirty with her exit. Instead of asking Carlson to return for the premiere to give her a real exit, Linda was killed off-screen in a helicopter crash. While we watched the characters mourn, we felt a little, well, empty.

Characters often end up meaning the world to fans. We find something to connect to, something good to love or something that we can relate to. There’s this chance of escaping the real world, even in a grounded TV crime drama. So, when characters leave, we want to be able to say goodbye.

Okay, so saying goodbye isn’t always possible in real life. And while we want the grounded shows to have some realism to them, we also want to make sure there’s a chance to mourn an exiting character. And we’ve still never really been able to get that with Linda’s exit. Killing her off-screen meant we didn’t get a real chance to say goodbye.

That hole is still felt. Blue Bloods has pushed forward, but we’re watching reruns with a character we came to love, know, and respect.

At the time, some of the Blue Bloods cast members mentioned how they were shocked that Carlson was leaving. It shouldn’t have been too much of a shock, though. Carlson’s contract was coming up and someone, somewhere should have had a conversation with her about renewing her contract. It’s not her fault that they didn’t, and according to a past interview with Entertainment Weekly, it sounds like she was willing to come back for an episode just for the exit storyline. Nobody offered her that chance or asked her if she would have even considered it.

Even now, the decision not to give her a chance to help us say goodbye to Linda is a sore point. Blue Bloods still hasn’t been able to rectify it.

What did you think of Linda Raegan’s exit on Blue Bloods? How would you have handled it if you were the exec? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Blue Bloods airs Fridays at 10/9c on CBS.