Blue Bloods, RIP

Being a multi-tasker by nature (and habit), I often turn on the telly for some mindless entertainment while I do some writing or editing. For fourteen years, however, on Friday nights at ten, I have put aside any serious work to engage completely with a show that was anything but mindless entertainment: Blue Bloods. For those never initiated into the BB cult, permit me to summarize the thrust of the show (spoiler alert!).

It follows the lives of the NYPD’s First Family of Law Enforcement: the Reagans. Frank (Tom Selleck), the Police Commissioner and son of former PC Henry Reagan (Len Cariou), must balance his duties of running the largest police force in the world and being the paterfamilias. His daughter Erin (Bridget Moynahan) is an Assistant District Attorney, while son Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) is a senior detective and his brother, Harvard Law grad-turned-cop, Jamie (Will Estes) live out the NYPD motto of “Fidelis ad Mortem” (Faithful unto Death) as they embrace the family tradition of “protecting and serving” the citizenry of the Big Apple.

The family is deeply rooted in their patriotism, passion, love of family–and their Catholic Faith.

The screen-writer(s) of the series must have been well schooled in the Gospel of the Family and the Laity as proposed for twenty-seven years by Pope St. John Paul II. Let but a few examples suffice:

• Nearly every episode features the Sunday family dinner, almost always shown by beginning with the Catholic Grace before Meals. At times, conversation ensues about the Sunday homily they just heard. The love the family members bear one another is always in evidence. The meal is not a “rush job” or a McDonald’s experience of a slightly higher octane; rather, one is put in mind of the verse of that lovely hymn, “Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether,” which pleads the Lord: “May all our meals be sacraments of Thee.” In fact, on one occasion, Frank declares: “It’s never about the food.”

• Frank the Commissioner is the high school classmate of the Archbishop; they value their lifelong friendship and collaborate to the mutual benefit of Church and City.

• The children attend Catholic schools. Erin’s daughter is a bit of a rebel, who tries to instigate a protest at her high school, which earns the displeasure of the school’s administration. The family sides with the school authorities.

• There is never a hint of sexual immorality, even during Jamie and Eddie’s courtship (their wedding takes place at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral). In the finale, they announce their pregnancy as Eddie says, “We’re gonna need all the parenting advice you can get,” and even more, how delighted they will be to have “a little one running around” and, yes, how “lucky” a kid will be to have such a family.

• Erin is divorced but does not re-marry. In the finale, we learn that she and her ex-husband are to reconcile.

• Police personnel are not canonized, but they are not demonized, either. When Frank or his sons act in a way that pricks their conscience, they go to confession; indeed, they view their professional careers as vocations.

• The Church is never presented in a bad light. In one episode, a priest is accused of sexual abuse of a minor; it turns out to be a false accusation.

Rumors of the show’s cancellation began circulating months in advance of the final blow, causing both fans and cast to launch a campaign to save the sixth-highest-rated show on network television and the fourth-highest on CBS (despite its less-than-optimal 10 p.m. time slot). Interestingly, it is being replaced by SWAT, only the sixteenth-highest-rated series on CBS and a viewership of two million fewer. In point of fact, the network had indicated their intention to cancel the show after Season 13 but relented only because the cast agreed to a 25% pay cut. Wahlberg and Selleck were particularly vocal in pressing for a reversal of the cancellation. Eleven million people watched the series finale, causing not a few to threaten a network boycott–that’s loyalty!

Wahlberg offered this touching human reflection on his experience:

We worked hard to represent the people of New York and the NYPD, and we worked hard to keep the show going and to keep it compelling for 14 years. . . And it was a lot to say goodbye. It might sometimes, from the outside, seem weird, like, ‘Oh, all these actors are crying that their show’s over.’ But we did become a family, and we did become a family with the crew. And just to say goodbye to them was emotional.

And even more this paean to fatherhood:

Fourteen years of calling this man [Selleck] my cast mate, my commissioner, my friend and — whether it was on screen or off — calling him DAD! It’s been an honor, my dear friend. Thank you for leading the way and for always trusting in me. Thank you for being a father figure, and a leader, to all of us on the set of Blue Bloods. Our tour has ended, but the friendship, admiration, respect and memories, will remain. Happy Blue Bloods Finale Friday.

His caption concluded, “Love you, Dad. All my gratitude, Donnie aka Danny aka Son.” Both Wahlberg and Selleck are Catholics (as are most of the principal players of the series).

So, what happened? What caused the demise of such a popular show? While no one will say it out loud, I believe a major factor was that it was just “too Catholic.” Which puts me in mind of a similar situation four decades ago, when I served as the public relations director for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

In 1975, John Powers (who would become a good friend of mine) wrote Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?  It was a light-hearted, slightly irreverent but lovingly told novel about growing up in the Catholic schools of the 1950s. The author turned the popular novel into a play, which made its debut at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, on December 11, 1981, playing to standing-room-only crowds until May 1, 1982. I was present for its opening night and will never forget the nearly unbelievable response of the audience to the beautifully moving scene of the May Crowning: Almost as on-cue, the entire audience spontaneously rose to their feet and joined the on-stage chorus in singing, “Hail Mary, We Crown Thee with Blossoms Today” (as could only happen in a city with a strong Catholic school culture like Philly).

The play received rousing standing ovations for minutes on end for the next five months, when Powers brought the show to the Alvin Theater on Broadway for its opening night on May 27, 1982 (the fifth anniversary of my priestly ordination). Based on the rave reviews the play had garnered in Philadelphia, tickets were sold out for weeks in advance. . . until an incredibly nasty, bigoted review appeared the next day in the New York Times–that journal of objectivity. The show died on May 30 because it was condemned to death by the beautiful and sophisticated elites.

Contrast that scenario with the hateful, viciously anti-Catholic Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, as viewers were treated to every kind of Catholic school horror story that had ever been passed on and, at the end of which, the crazy nun kills one of her students. That poorly written and badly acted excuse for a drama began its life off-Broadway and then held the elites captive on Broadway from 1979 through 1981. Yes, we read from non-Catholic scholars of history and sociology, thoughts like the following: Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to anti-Catholicism as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” Peter Viereck dubbed it “the anti-Semitism of the left,” while Philip Jenkins sub-titled his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

All that having been said, I do not think contemporary anti-Catholicism (and Wokeism in general) is a disease affecting the vast majority of Americans; I think it is a contagion almost peculiarly caught by elites who, because they only talk to each other, are convinced and try to convince everyone else that their shibboleths should be ours. The failure of mainstream news outlets and the disastrous campaigns of Bud Lite and Target validates my point, in the latter two instances bringing those corporations to their financial knees.

The national election of 2024 seems to suggest that “normal” Americans still hanker for traditional values. And the fourteen-year-long successful run of Blue Bloods suggests the same. Too bad, CBS was apparently willing to sacrifice success for ideology.