Blue Bloods showrunner Kevin Wade took a cue from Hawkeye, B.J., Sam, Diane and Tony Soprano (but hopefully not Journey!) when formulating his approach to the long-running cop/family drama’s series finale.

It was announced last November that Blue Bloods would end with a bisected Season 14. The first 10 episodes aired February through May, and the last eight will roll out this fall, beginning Friday, Oct. 18.

Has Wade had a series finale sketched out in his head, even before the final-season announcement? Things that he always felt must happen during that very final hour?

“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 EP told TVLine during our in-depth Fall Preview Q&A. “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.”

Once Blue Bloods‘ fate cemented into a sad reality, Wade immersed himself in other long-running series’ send-offs.

“I rewatched the series finales of great shows, going back to M*A*S*H and Cheers and Mary Tyler Moore, and certainly The Sopranos..,” he shares. “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.’”

That approach, Wade says, “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.”

And that is how he approached Blue Bloods‘ own series finale, which will air on either the first or second Friday in December.

“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,” Wade notes. “And we did that” for the series finale. “We have four different stories but all are aimed at solving or preventing the same crimes.”