Moments pages are Spoilers Off.
- Nicky's worry over her grandfather coming to speak at her college, which has turned into an environment where the only acceptable opinion to have about the police is "they're filthy racial profilers who should just go to hell", culminates with Frank standing in front of an audience of college students who boo over him until he finally just leaves in sorrow, which they cheer. Nicky herself was in tears throughout that fiasco.
- The conclusion of Danny's search for the missing veteran and his son in "Unfinished Business" will break your heart.
- Edie's heartbreak over her boyfriend breaking up with her because seeing her do what cops do while he naturally hid from the crooks emasculated him. The bitterness in her voice as she claims that the only reason he was upset by it was because she's female is palpable and any woman in a non-traditionally feminine career path can relate. The same guy eventually reached back out to her just a few episodes later.
- Several of the cries of Nepotism with the Reagans fall flat when you realize that Jamie, a competent cop who, while flawed, always tries to do his job, has basically been told "You're a Reagan. Any promotion would be Nepotism so you'll never be anything more than a beat cop no matter what." And to add insult to injury, all of his peers have advanced at least once. Small wonder he Took a Level in Cynic. Ironically, when Jamie is given opportunity to advance by his own father, who held off from facilitating Jamie's promotion and even discouraged it himself with his own influence for similar reasons, Jamie declines because he feels somebody needs to be on the "shop floor" among all the Reagans. Jamie has literally found complacency with life as an Extreme Doormat, all For Great Justice. If Jamie didn't have the humility he does, chances are he would have torn a gaping hole right through the precinct telling everyone how hypocritical they are to the job for simply caring about position over doing the job RIGHT. And if it were Danny, the place would be a smoking crater in the ground by the time he was done with it.
- And to make it all worse, now Jamie's got people telling him off for having no ambition and saying he needs to be more like his older brother.
- The couple who put their child up for adoption in a tug-of-war with the adoptive family over custody. Inevitably, one of those couples is going to lose and be devastated, and it turns out to be the adoptive couple due to not correctly filing the paperwork, losing the child over a technicality. It is an extremely Pyrrhic Victory: one couple goes home happy, but the other goes back to an empty nest with a bitter taste in their mouths and an ax to grind with the justice system for acting more like a tiebreaker than a fair compromise. The law can be an ice cold mistress in these matters, indeed...
- The Reveal that Linda was killed between Season 7 and 8.
- The Season 8 opener shows Danny is on the verge of a meltdown that has been building up for quite sometime, and the day May 28 is a massive Berserk Button because that was the day Linda went down in a helicopter crash on the job and Danny blames himself for not being there to prevent Linda's death. It is later revealed that Linda's helicopter accident was indeed not an accident, but a sabotage set up by the cartel who sent Delgado to torch Danny's house.
- Jack and Sean are also very withdrawn from it all. And you can tell Frank is deeply concerned for his eldest son. Frank then opens up and gives some very rare details about the loss of Mary, his own wife; he completely shut down and it took the presence of his kids to give him purpose to keep on going. And the obligatory family dinner at the end shows Danny has been comforted by Henry and Frank, but he is still a long way from recovering, because he's not smiling one bit.
- What makes this so sad is Danny was the only person who was still Happily Married out of the main cast. You'd think that number would grow as the series went on, but it instead went away entirely. With the demise of Linda, now all of the major characters in the Reagan family are unwed, and the Cartwright Curse has taken full effect on them.
- Danny sitting at the unconscious Baez' bedside (she's suffered an accidental drug overdose after handling drugs in a suspect's apartment) and quietly pleading with her to Please Wake Up:"I really can't afford to lose you too."
- The death of Reverend Darnell Potter's son. As much as Darnell has been an obstructive annoyance at best or even an outright antagonist at worst, the fact his son is just fatally shot and killed out of the blue is seen as tragic even by the police themselves. Making it more powerful is The Reveal; his son wasn't shot by a white bigot or a rogue cop, as Darnell had been insisting was the case... he was killed by another black teenager. A wannabe gangbanger who needed to murder somebody to win his acceptance into the gang. When Potter demands to know why his son was chosen, the kid — no older than Potter's son — effectively just shrugs his shoulders and says it was convenient.
