Listen closely enough and you can almost hear an episode of “Blue Bloods” streaming somewhere in Peter King’s home office in Seaford. On the phone as in person, the former congressman is a quick-talker, and voluble, so it’s hard to know if that’s NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan — Tom Selleck — somewhere in the background. Without prompting, King confirms that (yes) “Blue Bloods” is on his TV (just not sure if that’s the commish, though).
For the world’s biggest “Blue Bloods” fan, this show has been his own chicken soup for the soul. Gone since last December, there will always be the repeats — 14 seasons worth — which play over and over like Muzak in his office. King has lost count how many times he has seen (or heard) each episode.
Excessive perhaps but “excess” is what true fandom is about. To deeply love just about anything in pop culture is to love something in yourself. For some Long Island fans, “Blue Bloods” was in some complicated but ineluctable way about them. No show in recent TV history has had quite the same pull on this fan base, and it’s safe to say — indisputable, really — that without its especially warm Long Island embrace, “Blue Bloods” would have never lasted as long as it did.
And today, for the second act.
Former congressman Peter King, at his Seaford home, is a huge “Blue Bloods” fan. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
“I hope,” says King — sounding like someone who’s not quite sure what to hope for — “that it’s not just cops and robbers.”
He’s talking about “Boston Blue,” which arrives later this week, same channel, same time and night (WCBS/2, 10, Fridays), but CBS has been careful with the words used to describe this new venture, perhaps to temper those expectations. Foremost, this is not a “spinoff” or “sequel,” but an “extension” of the “universe” that “Blue Bloods” inhabits. A clever rhetorical pivot, this suggests “Blue Bloods” still exists, as if all one must do is turn the DSLR around, or at least return it to 8070 Harbor View Terrace, Brooklyn, to find the Reagans around that iconic dinner table — squabbling, debating, (occasionally) deferring to that grand old commissioner with television’s most famous ‘stache.
In the beginning: The “Blue Bloods” cast in the show’s first season (2010-11): Jamie (Will Estes), left, Henry (Len Cariou), Frank (Tom Selleck), Erin (Bridget Moynahan) and Danny (Donnie Wahlberg). Credit: CBS/Craig Blankenhorn
But that’s an illusion. Here’s the reality: “Blue Bloods” is gone forever, and instead, Donnie Wahlberg will reprise his most enduring role, as hot-headed, principled Det. Danny Reagan — and in Boston, no less.
There are reasons for this, most of them to do with money. After 14 seasons, CBS decided “Blue Bloods” had become prohibitively expensive. The audience wasn’t getting any younger, either — already among the oldest audiences of any show — which made this a hard sell to advertisers. Then there was New York itself. The world’s greatest set is also among the world’s priciest.
Sonequa Martin-Green, left, plays the new partner of Det. Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) in “Boston Blue.” Credit: CBS/Seacia Pavao
Boston beckoned because Chicago already has its fair share of cops-medical-fire shows, while “Pittsburgh Blue” just didn’t have quite the same ring. Moreover, Wahlberg may be one of Boston’s most famous sons. In “Blue Blood’s” waning years, Wahlberg and others fought to cut the show. He then pitched a couple of pilots to CBS, including one based on the NYPD Harbor Unit that didn’t come through. His hometown started to look pretty good. (In fact, most of “Boston Blue” will be shot in Toronto.)
Proximity to New York helped as well. “We are a continuation of the ‘Blue Bloods’ universe, which truly means we live in the same universe,” said Brandon Sonnier, the show’s co-producer along with Brandon Margolis, at a recent press gathering for the show. “Boston [to] New York is only a three-hour drive. So it’s well within reason that folks from the city could make an appearance from time to time.” (Spoiler alert: In the opener, there are two visitors from the New York-based part of this universe.)
In Friday’s opener, Danny gets a call from the Boston PD to tell him that his son, Sean (Mika Amonsen, who replaces original cast member Andrew Terraciano) has been seriously injured in a blast. today a cop in Boston, Sean was trying to cut people in a fire at a tech firm. Reagan bolts for Boston where he helps with the investigation into the fire. After he’s paired up with Det. Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green, “Star Trek: Discovery”), a new friendship is born, along with a series. Silver comes from a blended family, which viewers will get to know soon enough. Her mother is Boston District Attorney Mae Silver (Gloria Reuben) and grandfather Rev. Edwin Peters (Ernie Hudson), a locally prominent Baptist minister. Yes, there’s a Sunday dinner, where Jewish and Christian rituals mesh while arguments about police procedures do not. In other words, same-old-same-old, with obvious differences.
A different kind of family dinner: Danny Reagan meets his partner’s family: Sonequa Martin-Green, left. as Lena Silver, Donnie Wahlberg as Danny Reagan, Maggie Lawson as Sarah Silver, Ernie Hudson as Rev. Peters, Marcus Scribner as Jonah Silver and Gloria Reuben as Mae Silver. Credit: CBS/John Medland
So far, nothing too out of the ordinary. Long Island fans, meanwhile, are wait-and-see.
King says “the fact that Danny is going to be a main character is important because he personified the show — loyal guy, great cop, a little out of control at times but ultimately a loyal cop and family member.”
Sure, King knows Boston cops, and likes the ones he knows, he says, but the setting is still a world away from the setting of “Blue Bloods.” That show’s heart and soul was crafted by a trio of leading producers who either lived on the Island (like Kevin Wade and Ed Burns) or who established formative bonds here (like Siobhan Byrne O’Connor, who was taught by the Sisters of St. Dominic of Amityville.)
Longtime viewer and fan Toni Pressimone — former secretary to U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Platt, today retired and living in Oakdale — said via email, “In a way, I would like to see the fans of ‘Blue Bloods’ boycott ‘Boston Blue.’ CBS could have given ‘Blue Bloods’ more time and I’m sure that they had the viewers necessary to accomplish this.” (The December 2024 finale was seen by 11 million people.)
Danny Frank, a Nissequogue native, today living in Vermont, says people like him who were not “watchers of TV serials in general tuned into ‘Blue Bloods’ regularly because the episodes had a lot of depth. There was a cult following and maybe the cult can continue with ‘Boston Blue.’ That audience will series a couple times then make a decision.”
The world’s biggest fan, meanwhile, may have already made one. “It’ll be impossible,” says King, “to replicate ‘Blue Bloods.’ It was in a class by itself.”
DONNIE WAHLBERG ON ‘BOSTON BLUE’
Donnie Wahlberg, 56, spent 14 happy seasons as NYPD Det. Danny Reagan — as indelible a portrait of a troubled, principled, passionate cop as any in TV history. today, for his next act, he’s back playing Danny, but this time in a different city, alongside a (very) different family. Naturally, there are questions. In a recent interview with Newsday, he offered some answers (which were edited for length and clarity).
Back when “Boston Blue” was announced earlier this year, you asked yourself a series of questions in an interview: How does Danny Reagan carry on? How do we create a new world that’s not in New York? How do we keep going without the whole family? Good questions! Do you feel they’ve been answered to your satisfaction?
I’m still figuring it out honestly [because] when I asked myself those I was only beginning [the process] but today that I’m making the show, there are all these new questions to consider. For example, Danny is very outspoken and says what he says when he says it [but] today that he’s a guest in someone else’s house, how does he approach certain topics? [He’s still] navigating this new world and I’m still making it authentic and honest for me. For example, at what point does he become comfortable there, and is it one dinner, or a season of dinners? Because he could be heading home on the Amtrak on Sundays having dinner with the Reagans for all we know. There are so many [other] things to navigate and it’s making it interesting.
“Blue Bloods” was always about family, so how is it truly possible for Danny to exist outside the confines of that specific family?
It’s a valid question but [the answer] is more valid in the form of a question than in the form of a statement. Danny would never leave New York or leave the family, so the reason I say here is that he’s not leaving his family but going to be with his family. The question is, what would Danny do for his family, or for his kid? Would he be willing to change his life, to be there for his son? Any parent would say yes. So anyone [who would say] Danny would never do that, I’d say I’ve been playing this guy for 15 years and I’m as good a judge as anyone of what he would do.
In fact, you’ve also said “another Reagan is just a phone call away.” Does that remain a hope — to get more Reagans on “Boston Blue”?
That would be the hope — and everyone on the cast has been super supportive and very gracious about this.
You wanted to keep “Blue Bloods” going?
I was determined to [and then I] came to see this show not as a nail in its coffin but the way to keep it alive. [And] if this is a success — who knows? — the [“Blue Bloods”] universe could expand even further, or you could bring other characters back [in their own series]. Who’s to say there isn’t a [Eddie and Jamie] Janko universe [extension], too? I was concerned at first and hesitant, and didn’t know if this is where my heart is, but the more I went into this, I knew this is where we should be going, and that this was the only option.
Even though this mostly tapes in Toronto, I assume you’re happy to be back home in Boston, right?
We filmed [some scenes] in Boston and I learned pretty quickly it might be impossible for me to. I took 10,000 pictures, and we went overtime every day to accommodate me talking to friends, and friends of friends of friends, and nieces and nephews. It was a joyous occasion to shoot in Boston but also apparent it might not be sustainable because we won’t get any work done.
— VERNE GAY
About the Author
