The title “History” is the giveaway. This manifests on two fronts. The main case of the week is a dead woman dragged from a wharf in relation to a drug case that is being handled by Lena’s ex-partner, Detective Brian Rogers. But thanks to a bit of jurisdictional confusion, Danny and Lena won’t let the case go, so Sarah orders that they all work together on it.
There’s an ulterior motive here. There was always a romantic spark between Lena and Brian, but she refused to cross that line while they were working together directly. Sarah is forcing them to work together again in the hope that something might manifest now they’re no longer officially partners. And, you’ll not be at all surprised to learn, it does.
In the meantime, Brian clashes with Danny in a way that feels a little forced. He thinks that Danny’s reputation in New York is almost entirely on account of his family connections, but the same doesn’t apply to Lena – even though she points out that their circumstances are very similar – for reasons that don’t make a great deal of sense. You know where all this is going: begrudging respect between the dudes, and Lena finally being willing to explore a date with Brian.
Admittedly, this does allow for a bit of sage advice from Danny that helps to flesh out their partnership and colour their respective backgrounds, but careerists being bad at relationships – Lena once put her career on hold for an ex-boyfriend who ended up meeting someone else – isn’t exactly revelatory. But Danny relating his own experiences being afraid to take the next step romantically after the death of his wife is a nice reminder of his relationship with Maria Baez, who turns up unexpectedly in Boston Blue Episode 3 for a brief cameo at the end. Aww.
With Danny and Lena’s love life handled, there are bits occurring elsewhere. Sarah, for instance, is struggling in her relationship with her boyfriend’s daughter, Phoebe, and to be fair, there’s no surprise in this since we see her turning up at a little get-together and threatening to arrest all her friends for drinking in the middle of the day, which you can see would probably annoy a teenager. Sarah can’t turn the cop off, which isn’t ideal when she has to play stepmother, but she’s having a good go at it, inviting Phoebe to the family dinner – is there nothing those dinners can’t fix? – and doing her best to be understanding and reasonable.
This is the only subplot that doesn’t reach a neat and tidy resolution, but progress is made, so I think it still counts. It’s the same with Sean and Jonah. In “History,” they overstep a bit by making promises to a woman they meet on patrol that they really shouldn’t be making in an official capacity, and then they play detectives for the entire episode despite everyone advising them that their job as uniformed cops is explicitly to not play detective. Annoyingly, this all ends up being fine as well. What lesson is being learned here? At the end, Danny tells Sean that even though he’s happy they saved a life, he wishes Sean would listen to him a bit more, but Sean counters that Danny would have done the same thing, and Danny confirms that he would’ve. So what was the point? That it’s okay to make the wrong decision as long as you stumble into the right outcome? I’m not sure that’s necessarily the right advice, but it is symptomatic of Boston Blue’s approach to storytelling in general
