Blue Bloods' Biggest Missed Opportunity Yet Leaves Fans Bummed Out
And what that opportunity might be, you ask?
Well, even though Blue Bloods is a procedural show which is both family-oriented and centered around a family, it did not have a Christmas episode this year, yet again. Blue Bloods had a couple of Christmas-themed episodes during its earlier seasons, but still, seasons which had them were exceptions, rather than the rule.
What might explain this?
Of course, there might be production problems, from technical (such as actors' scheduling problems) to general (lack of creative supervision from the showrunners resulting in the show that has no clear focus or understanding of its niche and just shambles along). It is also possible that an issue with syndication might be at the root – networks probably do not like the idea of airing a Christmas re-run in July.
Another obvious problem with Christmas episodes that might be making showrunners avoid them is that an episode which marks a holiday, also naturally marks a year passing within the show's world. Even if a show does not specifically aim to have several seasons occur within a single in-world year, like The Rookie, that still creates a clear timeline. And making a show to correspond to such timeline might well be restrictive – or feel restictive.
However, as we all know, such concerns and issues did not stop showrunners and networks before. As it seems, Christmas episodes in general become increasingly rare in the present-day shows. Not so long ago, Christmas episodes were a regular feature on shows such as Friends and The Big Bang Theory, and at least a semi-regular one on many others, like How I Met Your Mother.
But today they are much less common. For example, Young Sheldon, a TBBT spin-off, did not have a single Christmas episode over its five seasons this far, despite theoretically being ideally suited for them, with a kid as its titular character.
Times might be changing, but some fans are still bummed out by such developments. It remains to be seen whether this trend is temporary or whether Christmas episodes will entirely become a thing of the past, or at least a rarity.