Deadline is reporting that CBS has kicked to the curb Blue Bloods creators, Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green and it has been reported that the network had creative differences with the two and that it needed to be more procedural (yuck!) in nature. Deadline notes how bizarre this is considering that former showrunner, Ken Sanzel, was exited-stage left due to his conflict with star, Tom Selleck, who thought the show was too procedural and actually refused to accept the scripts (Damn!).
Now, we don’t care about the intricacies of this mess and all of the politics involved. If you do, read the Deadline piece because you must know by now that’s not we’re about at The ‘Tastic. We’re all about he bottom line and what news like this means to a show that is one of the best new shows of the season, specifically in regard to renewal because Blue Bloods has been on the bubble all season long.
So as backwards as this sounds, the creators getting fired is great for the prospects of renewal. How, do you ask? Why bother canning the creators if you are just going to cancel the show at the end of the season, anyway? Heck, they’ve finished filming this season’s episodes already. That combined with the comments made by Armando Nuñez, president of CBS Studios International, Blue Bloods is pretty much cemented for a second season.
It’s perhaps not as sexy to talk about, but it has proven a success both on the network and in terms of global distribution.
BLUE BLOODS is a drama about a multi-generational family of cops dedicated to New York City law enforcement. Frank Reagan is the New York City Police Commissioner and heads both the police force and the Reagan brood. He runs his department as diplomatically as he runs his family, even when dealing with the politics that plagued his unapologetically bold father, Henry, during his stint as Chief. A source of pride and concern for Frank is his eldest son Danny, a seasoned detective, family man, and Iraqi War vet who on occasion uses dubious tactics to solve cases. The sole Reagan woman in the family, Erin, is a N.Y. Assistant D.A. and newly single parent, who also serves as the legal compass for her siblings and father. Jamie is the youngest Reagan, fresh out of Harvard Law and the family’s “golden boy;” however, unable to deny the family tradition, Jamie decided to give up a lucrative future in law and is now a newly minted cop. Jamie’s life takes an abrupt turn when he’s asked to become part of a clandestine police investigation even his father knows nothing about, and one that could impact the family’s legacy. – CBS
Shawn: Blue Bloods is one of the most anticipated dramas this Fall for good reason. Simply look at this cast. Your leads are Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, and Bridget Moynihan… all television and film superstars (Len Cariou is no slouch either). Superstars like that don’t just arbitrarily sign on to do a show if they don’t already know it’s brilliant. The concept is definitely unique. An original cop show that focuses on a multigenerational family of cops and all of the dynamics that go along with that. I’m very excited about Blue Bloods.
The Review:
9 out of 10
Yes, I know Blue Bloods has been on for over a month but good things come to those who wait.As noted by the preview, I knew Blue Bloods was going to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be as good as it is and I really wanted to do the show justice by watching several episodes and taking notes before I reviewed it.
Unlike other cop/legal procedurals, Blue Bloods isn’t beating you over the head with preachy, one-sided political propaganda (see: Outlaw, The Whole Truth, Boston Legal, Law & Order – the entire franchise) telling you what your opinion should be on various issues. Rather, every week, there’s a new and original plotline that invariably leads to a politically volatile issue and instead of the producers having the protagonists all carry the torch for one side of the issue without any inclination that a contrary opinion even has any merit, they intentionally present both sides as having merit and leave it to the audience to decide.
What makes this even more effective is the plot-device they use to address these issues: the family dining room table. It’s a fantastic and effective metaphor because it’s representative of not only how families often talk about the issues of the day so it’s relatable on that level but it’s also representative of American culture as a whole. Americans have vast and varying opinions on all ranges of political issues and like family members discussing them, the debates can also get quite heated as passions get involved.
The question that comes into play quite often is balancing act of following the law and doing what is the morally correct thing to do, because as we all know, the two don’t always coincide.
****(MINOR SPOILER ALERT!)****
Example: in the pilot Danny (Donnie Wahlberg – Boomtown, Band of Brothers) is faced with a dilemma. A ten year-old girl has been abducted and time is running out. He and his partner have found the kidnapper/deviant yet he will not tell them where the girl is. Danny proceeds to beat the confession out of the suspect specifically by repeatedly putting his head in a toilet bowl. Call it a poor-man’s waterboarding.
Now, no one would ever suggest that they we would want our police coercing confessions out of suspects using violence or torture, but on the other side of the coin, if you were the parent of that ten year-old wouldn’t you want Danny Reagan doing whatever he could no matter how much outside the constraints of the law it was to find your little girl even if it meant that he violated a pervert’s civil rights along the way? I know that I sure as Hell would. But, that of course leads to the inevitable question of, “Where do you draw the line?”
The truth is that with all issues, there is no “black and white,” just varying shades of gray and Blue Bloods recognizes this whereas most dramas treat the audience with an air of condescending superiority suggesting that they are too stupid to figure out right from wrong on their own without Hollywood explaining it to them. Blue Bloods respects its audience and because of that provides compelling, though-provoking drama every week.
These characters couldn’t have been written any better. They are nothing like the clichéd shells that you expect on most shows. Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck – Boston Legal, Magnum, P.I.), is the patriarch of this family and he deeply loves and cares about all of his children and unlike other cookie-cutter TV characters Frank wears his heart on his sleeve. There is a particularly touching scene between Danny and Frank where Frank expresses concern about his son’s well-being after coming back from war and lets him know that there’s no shame in talking to someone (a therapist) about it.
Now, how about that for a change in pace from the old gruff, TV cop/dads who would have just told their kid to suck it up and get over it. On the contrary, you can see the concern on Frank’s face when he’s having this discussion with Danny the same way any REAL dad would have if they were worried about their own kid.
The surprise to me on this show is Jamie (Will Estes – American Dreams, Reunion) because I didn’t think his character was going to be that compelling and quite honestly, Estes’ résumé is kind of thin. Not only is he doing an excellent job with developing his character as a rookie cop on a beat in the shadow of his big brother, but the writers have done an excellent job making him the focal point of the aforementioned clandestine investigation because he’s the last guy in the world you would ever think would be tapped for an undercover investigation of other cops. Oh, and by the way, did I mention that John Torturro (Third Watch, NYPD Blue) plays Jamie’s partner and mentor, Sgt. Anthony Renzulli. How ’bout them apples, huh? Like I said, this cast has some stones.
Bridget Moynihan (I Robot, Lord of War) does very well as the idealistic academic A.D.A., Erin Reagan-Boyle, constantly butting heads with the men in the family and she holds her own very well with the boys. As far as father to Frank and former police chief Henry Reaganthey couldn’t have casted anyone better than noted character actor Len Cariou (Damages, Brotherhood) . Nowadays, Henry is more concerned with spending time with his family and putting together toys for the grandkids but he’s always happy to throw his two cents in on the issue of the day… especially around that family dining room table.
Blue Bloods is one of the best three new shows on TV this fall and I’m thrilled that it’s finding success on Friday nights as well as the fact that it was on opposite of NBC’s failed series Outlaw to highlight just how bad that show was and just how well a police/legal procedural can be made when there’s some effort and talent behind it.
In the past, Friday prime-time has been a notorious dumping ground for television shows that weren’t cancelled yet, but were on their last legs, at least for dramas. Low-cost news magazines like Dateline and 20/20 have always found success here and of course in the last decade there have been several reality shows that have thrived here, but it’s been pretty much a foregone conclusion that if a drama winds up here, it’s not long for this world and will soon be gracing us only in syndication (if it has had a long enough run) or in your queue on Netflix. Well, this season I’m noticing a trend of the networks taking the risk of putting new shows that they’ve invested in and some that are actually fantastic with money-making casts (see: Blue Bloods) on Friday. They are also doing something else: they are putting perennial solid veterans on Friday as well. Now, I may not like or watch all of these shows (so you’re not going to see all of them reviewed or previewed) but it really is quite a change of pace for Fridays to say the least.
The first example is (now) CBS’s Medium which has averaged 10 million per season the last six seasons. What’s notable about this is that not only did Medium move from Monday to Fridays between seasons 5 and 6, they also switched networks (from NBC to CBS) yet still only dropped from 8.5 million viewers to 7.8 million. It simply absurd that they kept 92% of their core audience while not only moving to Fridays but to a different network.
CSI: NY on Fridays is the biggest head scratcher of all. I hate the entire CSI franchise for a myriad of reasons that I’m not going to go into right now but there’s no denying its success. Of the three shows in the franchise, CSI: NY is the worst performing of all of them but that’s kind of like saying that Tony Lazzeri was the worst run producer of the 1927 Yankees‘ three best in the infamous “Murderers Row” lineup with Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig being the two best. Any team would have loved to have had the ’27 Lazzeri in their lineup just like any network would love to have CSI: NY in theirs. By the way, I hate the Yankees more than I hate the CSI franchise but again there’s no denying their success.
CSI: NY has consistently averaged 13.3 million viewers per week CONSISTENTLY for six seasons in the Wednesday night 10:00 p.m. slot which has typically been very competitive (although I must admit that with Leno on at 10:00 p.m. for a good portion of last season there wasn’t much of a challenge) and has been in the top 25 of all shows every season except one (it was #28 during the 2007 – 2008 season although it had the exact same number of viewers – 12.6 million – that it did last year when it was #23) going as high as #17 (2008 – 2009, 13.03 million). Now it did take a dive last year falling to #44 with the 18 – 49 crowd but still, nearly 13 million is nothing to sneeze at even if you did drop in the “coveted” demographic. Needless to say, CSI:NY is pretty much a sure-thing for CBS and they didn’t put it in the Friday night slot to cancel it. Sorry… not with 13 million viewers.
An honorable mention needs to go out to Supernatural (and to an extent Smallville) which has been The CW’s stallion (for what that’s worth) on Thursday night at 9:00 p.m. for its first four seasons and that show is now on in the same slot on Fridays as well, but what REALLY caught my attention was not just all of the dramas on the major networks on Fridays but how Syfy has completely abandoned their original programming schedule on Friday nights that if I recall correctly, they’ve been going with for over a decade. SyFy’s two most popular shows – the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica and the franchise favorite Stargate: Universe – have been moved to Tuesday nights, premiering on October 5th. This is monumental and I haven’t seen anyone take note of this. SyFy owned Friday nights and one can only assume that this waving of the white flag was in response to the major networks actually paying attention to Friday nights again.
So why this big change in attitude towards Friday night prime-time? Historically, the reason why the Friday night line-up has been so mediocre is because viewers go out on Friday nights and don’t normally stay in to watch television… especially the “coveted” 18 – 49 demographic. Mind you, this is entirely speculative on my part but I have a theory: it’s the economy. More and more people are staying home for entertainment instead of going out in order to save money. When you’ve got unemployment at around 10% and 40% of the population who are worried that they might possibly lose their job within the next year, that’s certainly not a situation conducive to spending a bunch of money out at the club. People are saving more, spending less, paying off credit cards and when they are spending money on entertainment it’s on long-term appliances like HD TV’s and Blu Ray players, both of which have gone down dramatically in price this year.
So, there is no question that most of the networks now see value in Friday night but the question is: didn’t FOX get the memo?
You see, FOX bothers me to no end with their programming decisions. They are notorious for giving up too quickly on quality shows, not giving them a chance for audiences to grow and if they do throw an audience a bone and renew a show with borderline ratings, they stick it in Friday night to die. The decisions they make at FOX are mind-boggling and reactionary on a whole different level. Why these morons don’t understand that when you have the highest rated show of all time on three nights a week that it actually gives you latitude when it comes to relaxing a little bit when a drama doesn’t immediately perform as you hoped it would is far beyond my level of comprehension. Hell, put American Idol on every night and use it as a lead-in for every 9:00 p.m. show. It worked for 24! I will remind you that this is the same network that cancelled Family Guy. I will also remind you that this is the same network that cancelled perhaps the greatest Sci Fi series of all time, Firefly, after 11 stinkin’ episodes. Topless Robot has a great article that explains exactly how stupid the programming decisions at FOX have been.
And this is exactly the approach that FOX is going with for both Human Target and The Good Guys, both critically acclaimed shows that had marginal ratings when the aired last season. It’s not even remotely fair what they’re doing to The Good Guys even by FOX’s idiotic standards, premiering it on a Monday in the middle of May when all of the other shows are wrapping up, letting it run for nine episodes over the summer and then dumping it into Friday night because it didn’t catch fire fast enough for them. Human Target on the other hand is one of the best shows on TV, period and could very easily build a locked-in huge genre audience if FOX had the foresight to give it a chance like they did with 24 in 2001 which, by the way had the identical audience numbers that Human Target had during its first season.
Now, you might be saying, “Now, waitaminute, here… how do YOU know that FOX isn’t doing the same thing that the other networks are doing?” Nope, wrong. First, consider that we’re talking about FOX and we’ve already established what is common knowledge about their programming practices. Second, the other networks mentioned are putting up four strong veteran dramas with built-in audiences and three new shows that they have just sunk a bunch of money into in order to develop. You NEVER put a show with weak/mediocre numbers in a Friday slot if you want it to survive and have the audience grow. Hopefully, because of the other networks taking Friday night seriously for once, these two great shows can be successful despite the neglect from FOX. I doubt it, but I remain hopeful… because I really love Human Target.
Deadline is reporting that CBS has kicked to the curb Blue Bloods creators, Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green and it has been reported that the network had creative differences with the two and that it needed to be more procedural (yuck!) in nature. Deadline notes how bizarre this is considering that former showrunner, Ken Sanzel, was exited-stage left due to his conflict with star, Tom Selleck, who thought the show was too procedural and actually refused to accept the scripts (Damn!).
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