Blue Bloods Gone Oprah
By Joan Swirsky
CanadaFreePress.com
Among the TV shows I gravitate to with my husband
Steve, a former athlete, include live baseball,
basketball and football games, historical
documentaries, and both true crime shows and crime
dramas like Law & Order, Forensic Files, Chicago PD,
and Blue Bloods––all studies in the greatest mystery
of all time, human behavior.
When Blue Bloods debuted in September 2010, we
thought it was excellent, featuring in-depth and
provocative episodes, and at last embodying the
conservative values we embraced, including a
distinct lack of the three-legged stool on which
Progressives base their so-called values: moral
relativism, political correctness, and
multiculturalism.
The show is about the Reagan dynasty in NY City,
where the following characters are presented every
week with daunting challenges, moral dilemmas,
high-action chases and arrests, and touching family
dramas:
·
Frank Reagan, a widower and the New York Police
Department (NYPD) Commissioner, played by Tom
Selleck.
·
His father Henry Reagan, also a widower and a former
NYPD Commissioner, played by Len Cariou.
·
Frank’s son Danny, played by Donnie Wahlberg, a
tough, street-smart detective, and his partner Maria
Baez (played by Marisa Ramirez). Danny was happily
married to R.N. Linda (played by Amy Carlson)
before her death, and they were the parents of two
sons played by real-life brothers Andrew and Tony
Terraciano.
·
Frank’s daughter Erin, played by Bridget Moynihan, a
letter-of-the-law
Bureau Chief in the Manhattan District Attorney’s
Office and divorced mother of daughter Nicky
(played by Sami Gayle). Erin works closely with
Anthony Abetemarco, a detective in the D.A.’s office
(played by Steve Schirripa).
·
Frank’s son Jamie, played by Will Estes, a Harvard
Law School graduate who chose to become a street
cop, was promoted to sergeant, and then married to
his NYPD partner––a beautiful blonde from a
decidedly dysfunctional background––“Eddie” Janko,
played by Vanessa Ray.
·
Frank’s Chief of Staff, Garrett Moore, who is also
the NYPD Deputy
Commissioner of Public Information, played by
Gregory Jbara.
·
I cannot omit the very gorgeous and fabulous actress
Abigail Baker who plays Commissioner Reagan’s chief
aide as Detective Abigail Hawk.
Suffusing the drama is the Commissioner’s late son
Joe, an NYPD detective who was murdered by a corrupt
gang of police officers and whose memory continues
to haunt the Reagan family.
THE OLD FORMAT
Every week for the past many years, all these
characters presented compelling and original drama
with episodes addressing themes such as the
unreliability of eyewitnesses, the difficulty of
identifying sociopaths, the nefarious inner workings
of the New York mafia, the dangers of nepotism
within the ranks, the reluctance of sexual assault
victims to come forward, the complexity of solving
murder cases, on and on and on.
In every episode, it was clear that the
protagonists––members of the NYPD from the top on
down––knew the difference between right and wrong,
good and bad, legal and illegal.
Ø
Right was the teenage kid from the projects who
resisted following his thug friends into a life of
crime; wrong were the thugs who chose a life of
crime, including robbery, rape and murder.
Ø
Good were the people who yearned for a safe
neighborhood coming forward to identify the perps,
in spite of great risk to themselves and their
families; bad were the drug dealers and corrupt
politicians who covered for the bad guys.
Ø
Legal were the follow-the-rules cops who crossed
every “t” and dotted every “I”; illegal were the
on-the-take judges who ruled against them.
Riveting. Illuminating. Thought-provoking.
Influential. Worthy of our time.
THE OLD VALUES
Among the most refreshing qualities of the show
was––not is––the great respect the children and
grandchildren exhibited toward their father, the
Commissioner, and their grandfather, the former
Commissioner.
Every week, viewers were treated to the Reagan clan
gathering around a huge dining-room table for a
sumptuous dinner consisting of platters of roast
turkey and roast beef, mountains of salad and
vegetables, and heaping portions of baked and mashed
potatoes, where one or another member of the family
would say Grace before the meal, thank their Lord
Jesus Christ for their bounty, perform the sign of
the Cross, and in unison say Amen.
While serious discussions and good-humored kidding
took place around the table, philosophical
disagreements also abounded. Yes, quizzical looks
and raised eyebrows and even scowls were evinced,
but there was always a refreshing absence of the
dismissive, rude, hostile and insulting behavior and
the repulsively foul language we’ve become
accustomed to in shows ranging from newscasts to
award shows to daytime talk shows to “Housewives”
dramas. And there was never any sign or sight of an
iPhone!
RATINGS DON’T LIE
According to Wikipedia, the pilot episode 10 years
ago garnered 15,246 million viewers, and the ratings
remained sky-high for about seven seasons. But from
season eight on, the ratings began to plunge, with
season nine seeing the lowest in the show’s history.
No mystery to me, as the Blue Bloods audience
witnessed this once-terrific show go Oprah––turning
into both a social service and finger-wagging forum
designed to set Commissioner Frank Reagan and his
unenlightened family straight, to teach them the
Progressive values that the leftist writers they
hired wanted them to learn: how to be a moral
relativist, a multiculturalist, a politically
correct jerk.
CLUELESS WRITERS
It is abundantly clear that the current writers had
never watched the show, had no idea about the
rock-ribbed simpatico dynamics of the Reagan family,
had contempt for the police, and had a deep loathing
of the Christian religion and prayer and even the
mention of Jesus.
Why else would they have the always respectful sons
of Frank Reagan and their grandfather Henry speak to
them with such antagonistic, disrespectful language?
Why would they feature rookie and even senior
policemen speak to the Commissioner in such brazenly
inappropriate terms? Why would they completely
eliminate the prayer before eating dinner and any
reference to Jesus?
Why? I know nothing about corporate media or who
calls the shots and ultimately determines content.
But this is an all-important election year and we
already see the Murdoch boys pushing their
properties––The Wall St. Journal and Fox News, among
others––in a distinctly leftward direction, so it’s
not a far stretch to theorize that anti-Trump CBS-TV
is also pushing their popular shows along the same
route.
After all, why would they drag a veteran leftist,
the seemingly dotty 90-year-old Ed Asner, out of his
comfortable California home to star in a
preposterous episode where the writers wasted our
time watching Asner and his old friend Commissioner
Reagan show off their knowledge of ancient movies?
Why? Clearly the writers want to make the
Commissioner look like a regular guy, to reduce his
gravitas, to make him less important.
Why would they feature the toughest guy in town,
Commissioner Reagan, visiting the new Mayor of
NYC––who told him the City needed a tougher P.R.
person than Reagan’s longtime Chief of Staff Garrett
Moore––and then portray the Commissioner as an
emotional, conflicted, hand-wringing wuss over a
simple executive decision?
Why? Again, an attempt by the writers to make the
Commissioner look incapable of taking charge and
getting something done––sort of like Congressmen
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Of course, the goal of the real wusses who are
writing this junk is to convince the viewing public
that they’ve been wrong all along about Blue Bloods,
that what we should really believe is that the
police are the problem, prayer is the problem, Jesus
is the problem, and we should vote for all the
leftwing candidates who believe this tripe.
As for me and Steve, we’ve dropped this leftist
travesty forever, and are now enjoying both reruns
and new episodes of the quite fabulous and
compelling Chicago PD!
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and
author. Her website is
www.joanswirsky.com, and
she can be reached at
joanswirsky@gmail.com.