"Blue Bloods" and the Power of Fatherhood

First Things, 30 December 2024

Showrunner Kevin Wade has said that the show is about tribes—the Irish Catholic tribe, the police tribe, the military tribe, the New York tribe. I would argue that it is more about fathers and sons.

The long-running CBS series Blue Bloods had its series finale on December 13, after fourteen seasons on the air and nearly three hundred episodes, which aired on Fridays. In a time of collapsing network television audiences, it was quite a run, and the police drama posted strong ratings until the end.

Blue Bloods is more of a family drama than a cops and robbers show. Tom Selleck stars as Francis (Frank) Xavier Reagan, the Irish Catholic police commissioner of New York City. Widowed, he lives with his widower father, Henry Reagan, who also served as the NYPD commissioner, now retired. Frank has three sons, all New York policemen, though the eldest was killed by corrupt cops before the series begins. His daughter is an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. Law enforcement is the family business.

The Reagan family is Catholic—and atypically observant. Sundays include both Mass and family dinner. The family dinner scene, included in every episode, is the most popular and distinctive. And they say grace before meals, perhaps the only family on network TV that prays together. In the closing scene of the final episode, we see the Reagans with their heads bowed in prayer.

Showrunner Kevin Wade has said that the show is about tribes—the Irish Catholic tribe, the police tribe, the military tribe (three generations of Reagans served in combat), the New York tribe. I would argue that it is more about fathers and sons, the paternal relationship highlighted by the fact that grandfather, father, and son are all widowers. Some fathers do become patriarchs, and patriarchs preside over tribes, so the two readings are compatible. 

While the show began in 2010 with romantic interests for Frank, they were soon left aside in favor of stories about fathers and sons in the police fraternity—and outside the fraternity, too.

In the first season, Frank visits a mobster, Whitey Brennan, on his death bed. He offers belated condolences to Whitey, whose wife and grandson were killed in a police raid under Reagan’s command thirty years ago. Frank speaks of shared loss, the pain of the father’s heart. He then invites Whitey to make a confession—not to Frank for his crimes, but to a waiting priest for his sins. Whitey does. 

Nearly a decade and a half later, in the final episode, Frank visits Lorenzo Batista in prison, a gangster played by Edward James Olmos. The commissioner needs the old man to tell him the whereabouts of his son, the prime suspect in the shooting of the mayor. The two venerable actors warily engage each other, Batista resisting Reagan’s efforts, disdaining the invitation to inform on his son. A father does not betray his own. 

Having failed to get the information as commissioner, Reagan changes tack. He appeals as one father to another, telling Batista that if his son is found by the police he will likely die in a shootout. If he is arrested with Batista’s help, at least father and son can enjoy more time together, even if in prison. Reagan speaks about losing his own son in a shootout, and how he daily feels that pain. The pain of a father’s heart converts Batista. He tells Reagan where to find his son, not as a gangster who “rats” but as a father who saves.

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