Reflections about Blue Bloods First Season

During this season we could see that the show Blue Bloods have catch the attention of the American TV viewers. From all the shows Currently, Blue Bloods is the number two new drama of the fall season. It has been number one for the past two Friday nights, as well as being number one with viewers and the show's targeted demographics.

-       The Show shows us how the Reagan Family has sacrifice their family and their private lives for their beloved job—Being part of the New York City Police Department. Frank lost his son Joe. Also Frank as the NYPD Police commissioner, can’t establish a serious relationship with his reporter/ex-girlfriend. Jaime, choose to be an NYPD and follow the steps of his Grandfather, Father and Brothers, instead of working as a Lawyer and have an amazing salary as a Harvard Law School Alumni. He didn’t just sacrifice his Law career but also his Girlfriend/Fiancé. You should detach your personal life from your work life. Danny, have gave his life to Law Enforcement, he is a Vietnam veteran and I think that have affect him physiologically. He has a really aggressive way to treat their suspects. I’m sure his behavior will influence in his private and family life.

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      During this first season, the story of the blue templar have not been developed yet…they just gave us small peaks and clues about the blue templar—it seems that that’s going to be the Core of the show! I’m really excited to see what Blue Bloods have for us in its next season. I hope they still entertain us with controversial stories!

BROTHERS

This episodes subject is about brotherhood and shows the relation of outsiders siblings—Esteban, who Erin uses to make her case against his brother Pablo, a seemingly untouchable gang leader; and parallel to this shows Danny and Jamie Reagan, that as I say it a few reviews ago, they have such an awkward brother relation and more now that they aren’t exactly acting brotherly toward each other.

In this weeks story Erin decides the only way to bring down Pablo is to force his brother to testify against him, despite the fact Esteban has become a local hero since founding and running the Webster Avenue Community Learning Center. It seems Pablo has been financing the Center for him since his legal funding dried up, which is a definite no-no. Erin seeks permission from her boss, Manhattan D.A. Charlie Rosselini, to bring Esteban in.

In an unexpected turn of events, Pablo urges Esteban to testify against him at the Grand Jury – once again, he is watching out for his little brother as he has done all their lives. Esteban gets to Erin, though, when she listens to him testifying, so she decides to ask Danny for help in investigating some old cases against Pablo as a means of bringing him down instead of using Esteban’s testimony. In another unexpected turn of events, however, Pablo is killed by his underlings. Once again the show give us more clues about the famous and mysterious Blue Templar after being absent since episode three. Jamie is washing Joe’s old car, originally was from Frank. Frank relates the story of Joe’s death—so they give us more information of Joe’s death—and then tells Jamie he can have the car. Jamie finds a box of Joe’s things in the trunk; in particular, his iPod which he listens to and hears a message Joe recorded the day of his death. It looks like the writers have decided to move this storyline ahead, Finally!

Smack Attack

In this episode three teenagers die for taking drugs at a home teenager party where parents where not home. This is a subject that its real in American and the world’s society, where is very common that teenagers host home parties and that in those parties they have access and consume illegal drugs.  Allison, who takes the drug with her now-dead boyfriend Billy, survives.

The episode shows us a really interesting interaction of the Reagan family making everyone of from the family get involved with the story! Erin’s daughter Nicky, knows the dead kids, Jamie is the hero for saving Allison’s life, Danny is the lead detective, and Frank uses his family connections with the Church to assist in the investigation—I really like how the story and the Regan family ties together. Again, this weeks Danny’s partner is Detective Curatola, I think that they have a lot of chemistry as partners between them.I think that probably they will have an affair at some point next season.

I think is funny how they named the drug as M-CAT, as the MCAT exam to get in Med-School! The M-CAT drug in this episode kills and the MCAT exam, as horrible and difficult as it is prepares people to save lives.

Again we can see as in most of the episodes the interaction and exchange of opinions at the so costumed Sunday family dinner of the Reagan Family. This time Henry stared to relate his own version of “Scared Straight” to the kids and how he did to keep Joe—deceased brother—and Danny to be away from drugs. 

WHAT YOU SEE

Do white blond people can also be Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? If you see a blond woman driving an SUV with her son in the car you would identify them as Islamic fundamentalist terrorists?  The episode “What You See” made us think about this question and the misconceptions that we have about the profile that we have in mind when we hear about Islamic terrorists touching in this episode the topic of racial profiling. At first, the NYPD’s where categorizing the search by ethnicity when Danny gets the alert information about a possible bomb. The entire city of New York goes on alert – a car bomb is somewhere in the city. All anyone knows is the car is a dark-colored SUV so checkpoints are set up everywhere. “There are about fifty million of those in the city,” he says—and that’s kind of true, the ones that we live in NYC we know that the city is full of Yellow taxis and black SUV’s—and more in the Bronx!

I really liked how Chief Reagan says about the terrorist attempt to his driver on his way into headquarters, “It’s not going to happen again. Not today. Not here.”

Renzulli and Jamie again give the “funny” touch in the show-I think is a waste of talent for Jaime!—Did you see a man in a humiliating hot dog costume on the street or did you see The Hot Dog Pharmacy?  I guess those costumes have a lot of extra space to hold the drugs and give the wearer a reason to stand on a street corner.  I’ll never look at a sandwich mascot the same way again.

I think it was a really good episode, NYC is always aware about terrorists attempts and New Yorkers we live everyday with the fear of a terrorist attempt and the fear of a possible recurrence of 9/11. In the episode What You See” everyone is fighting against a new terrorist attempt as they search for the bomb.  As Frank says, “At the end of the day, we all expect to come home safe to our families.” When I saw the Arab guy arrested I thought the episode was going to focus on racial profiling and the Reagan’s where going to debate at dinner table—as usual!— and gives their thoughts. Despite the episode focuses on racial profiling, it also emphasizes the importance of family in the end and not terrorism or race—I really like that that complementary touch that the script writer do to complete and close the whole story. 

Donnie Wahlberg-Detective Danny Reagan, veteran detective and Iraq war veteran-talks about the show and what he thinks about it!

Donnie Wahlberg Says...

"He’s [Danny] a very experienced guy who marches to the beat of his own drum, but he is the son of a very powerful man. That’s the part I really wanted to explore a lot. With each scene that Danny has for example with Frank, what’s it's like to be a son of a powerful man who’s sort of following in his footsteps, but trying to be your own man. I’m sure there’s gratitude. I’m sure there are times where he takes full advantage of his relationship with his dad. And I’m sure there’s times where he resents that relationship tremendously and thinks it’s a burden or gives him privilege that he shouldn’t have or hasn’t earned." Wahlberg continued: "There’s so much in that relationship that I didn’t want to research, I wanted to discover with each episode. I wanted to try a different take. The reality is there’s no one answer. I’m not playing a guy who simply resents a dad or simply worships his dad. I’m playing a guy who runs the full gamut of everything in between both of those scenarios. Each scene offers me a chance to play a different color or a different shade of that. "

Wahlberg said that he feels that the family aspect of Blue Bloods is working for the audience, which is also is something that works for the cast. When he initially read the family scene in the pilot, he could picture being across the table from his own sister saying his lines to her. "When something resonates like that so truthfully it definitely creates an attraction. I knew when I did that dinner scene; I knew I was going to have a good time doing it. I knew it would [be] tense, I knew it would be fun, and I knew it would be live. When you’re doing television, it’s a grind and you’re working five days a week and for me personally, I looked for something that’s going to make me feel alive. My character has a lot of freedom, which makes me feel alive. The family scenes have a lot truth in them and that makes me feel alive. I think to feel alive a few days a week during episodic television, it’s a gift to feel that sort of electricity and I get to feel it more than most." 

Wahlberg discussed his relationships with his Blue Bloods cast mates Bridget Moynahan (Erin Reagan-Boyle), Will Estes (Jamie Reagan), and Selleck. He said that he and Moynahan have a very good brotherly/sisterly relationship, which translates well on screen when they work together. With Estes, he feels like he can see part of himself in him. "Sometimes when I look at Will, it’s like looking at myself 10 years ago on Boomtown. I see him wanting to explore certain elements of his character’s story the way I did on Boomtown. I remember walking around after the first 11 episodes going, ‘When are we going to talk about my suicidal wife?’ and carrying that with me into every scene that I did, and I see Will doing that. Like an older brother, I’m able to identify it, see it, recognize it and sometimes help and encourage it depending on what the situation calls for," he said. “When I was Will’s age, I wanted every single part of my character’s story to come out like in the very first episode after the pilot. In every subsequent script I would say, ‘Man, when are we going to get to it?’ The reality is with age and with experience comes a little bit more patience. Of course, I want to get to it, but I’m not desperate to get to it. In a perfect world, Will has a couple of seasons to explore all of this stuff. You run out of material after awhile in TV. The more we can come up with good stuff like Friday’s episode, ‘Officer Down’ and not have to go there quite yet, the more we can save that for when it’s the right time and it’s really needed." The actor stated: "Obviously, I want to go into a lot of stuff that’s going on with a lot of these characters. Not just Danny, I want to know what’s going on with Will, and I want to see whether or not he’s going to investigate the Blue Templar. I’m very curious and obviously that will have implications for my character. I want to see how it all goes. Fortunately things are going great and hopefully we’ll get a chance to explore a lot of that stuff. It’s definitely what we all want, the writers and the cast.” 

Wahlberg said that Selleck is like the dad to the cast. As much as Selleck knows that Wahlberg likes to have fun on set, he also knows that he's there to get work done. He said it was like Frank putting up with Danny sticking people's heads in toilets was like Selleck putting up with him tweeting to fans to watch the show in between takes on the set. Wahlberg says that he tries not thinking about the pressure about being on a new show that has been so successful right out the gate. Currently, Blue Bloods is the number two new drama of the fall season. It has been number one for the past two Friday nights, as well as being number one with viewers and the show's targeted demographics. "If I think about it, it only adds pressure, so I just try to not to think about it, because reality is, I control none of that. I just control what I do. For actors, for anybody dealing with numbers or polls; the more you look, the more pressure you put on yourself. If you get 20 million viewers on day one, if you look at the numbers on day two and they’re down to 19 million, you suddenly start going, ‘What happened?’ The reality is that [we have] a couple million more viewers than anybody thought we would get and that’s good news. What we do on set and what we talk about is really how to control what we can control and finding the right mix about what works for our audience and identifying who they are, and servicing what they want and also servicing our characters as best we can."

Officer Down

The episode entitled, "Officer Down," shows how the NYPD tracks down a killer of a police officer who was killed during a diamond heist. Danny Reagan struggles to find out who killed the off-duty cop. It’s kind of funny that the officer that was killed was having chitchat on her cell phone. I think that if she was more committed to her work and not talking on her phone probably she might have seen that there was a robbery sooner and she could cover herself from the attack. 

Once again the Reagan family debate whether “the good ole days” were really so good. In his view the criminals of the past knew when to work with the cops. He tells the story of a local crime boss who delivered a cop killer to the police with two bullets already in his head. Danny, as aggressive that he can get when It comes to get the testimony of a suspect, wishes for “the good ole days” as he asks his new partner to wait in the car as he drags his suspect out and threatens to shoot him as the man screams for his lawyer. His new partner seems that she knows Danny style and work ethics, and it seems she likes it, because she let him force the testimony of the suspect. As usual, The Blue Templar was brought up again. This time Jamie asks Danny about it. Danny was kind of rude with Jaime answering that “is nothing for a rookie to care about” come on! They are brothers; they should be more familiar when they talk this kind of things. I think that Jamie should have a more important story in the show; he seems to be a talented and smart actor and not put Jaime and Sgt. Renzulli as the comic part of the show as they have been doing it in the last episodes!

Privileged

I think that the "Privileged" was a really good episode from Blue Bloods. Once again, we can see the Reagan Family debating and what I really like is that everybody gave its point of view about diplomatic Immunity. Frank, Danny, and Erin all of them have a different point of view about a rape case where the suspect had diplomatic immunity. 

It was really interesting how there was a parallelism of which personage from the Regan family work in this case—Frank worked the father, Danny worked the son, and Erin looked for a way to work around the diplomatic immunity. Definitely we can see how the Reagan family work together and are ”Really Pure American Blue Justice Blood.” What I did not like about this episode was how they portray Argentineans as pompous and obnoxious people—please don’t think that they are like that! Also, the coffee beans comment from the Diplomat. Argentina is not know for their Coffee—they have good one tho, but the one who wrote the scripts for this episode, maybe confused Argentina with Colombia! Argentina is know for their wine, meat, and produce products.

I think it was hilarious when Danny was running after the wrong suspect and grabbed a pedestrian’s umbrella to throw at the suspect’s legs.  The woman that was the owner of the umbrella didn’t even complaint! I live in NYC and if someone grabs my umbrella to throw it to someone I would at least ask him what’s going on!

Frank and his girlfriend—I don’t like her, I think she is just with to take advantage and be the first having fresh news from NYC—broke up. Probably the story between them will expand in the next episodes.  

Jamie during this episode was learning how to be a cop at the NYC streets. It’s funny to watching the rookie /training officer and how they solve the problems and detect crime. Sidney—Jaime’s GF—still questioning herself about her Harvard Lawyer boyfriend as a cop. I think that Jaime doesn’t seem to be smart so he just should keep learning how to be a good cop.   Sidney  says she can deal with Jaime as a rookie cop, but she's worried that he loves the job more than her.

Once again Jaime is interested about the Blue Templar, he questions to his grandfather about the Blue Templar when he noticed Danny has a Blue Templar pin.  His grandpa answered him, “In my day we formed the Templar for a reason, to clean up the department.  After the job was done it became just another club. Drinking and war stories.”  Im sure there will be a good story made for the next season about the Blue Templar and his brothers death!

"Samaritan"

The episode “Samaritan,” portrays us how the justice system denies people the right to protect themselves from violence. In this episode the NYPD is searching for man who shot one of the members of a gang of robbers and rapists on a subway train. There is not ethnicity difference between the shooter and thugs, I guess that is why they don’t give relevance to their ethnic group—as in other episodes they do. What they want to show in this episode is how system punishes people who protect themselves and others. 

The Reagan’s weigh the pros and cons of vigilantism when a man with a police record takes action against the criminal who is terrorizing riders on a subway. These debates between the Reagan’s make the viewers draw their own conclusion.  Finally we can clearly see that the laws of the state and city put the “vigilante” in an impossible position. The city’s “no tolerance” gun laws made this honest citizen a criminal by making it illegal for him to do what any sensible person would strive to do: make sure that he can protect himself and other from violence. I really like the episode "Samaritan" and found it particularly interesting.  This episode does not follow the same story as other policeman and justice shows, such as solving murders and kidnappings. Conversely, it shows how small crimes—in this case gangs and robbery—can also have an episode. Moreover, it was really interesting when the Reagan family conclude that the law in the city doesn’t really protect the citizen. 

Episode 1-PILOT

    True Bloods introduce us to the Regan Family, a family that all his male members are in law enforcement, serving the New York Police Department. The scene opens with the famous “New York, New York” song of Frank Sinatra—a perfect song to start the show! Commissioner Frank Regan is getting ready for the graduation of his son, Jamie Regan. He is almost leaving his room to go to the graduation ceremony and he stops and sees a picture of his eldest son Joe—who was a great officer and die serving as an NYPD. I think that later the show will focus its story in Joe's Life. While the new NYPD graduates are on the ceremony, a little Latin girl is going home from school. Suddenly, the little girl is abducted by strangers in a white van. The ceremony is over and the family is outside Madison Square Garden, Frank is proud and happy, he great his children—they are all in law enforcement now. Danny—Jamie bigger brother—tells that he has to get going because he has a missing kid to find.

    Once at the crime scene, Danny asks for the details about the kidnap. The only evidence they have is a doll that was left behind. An officer tells Danny that someone saw that it was a white van that took the girl but they don’t have the numbers on the plate. The little girl is diabetic and she takes insulin shots every 24 hours. Thus they have to find her soon or she will die. This time pressure makes Danny develop anger for the kidnapper. Frank talks to the media, they question security in NYC and the lack of police force normally when it comes to minorities. Danny in his office asks if anyone checked the doll’s manufacture and he call to the manufactures in China where they tell him that the doll is not ready for distribution and just 3 testers in the U.S have that kind of doll. 

    The first doll is with a lady who still is with her doll. The second doll is with a guy that works as a reviewer for a doll magazine. Danny gets a call on the third and they have the address. Danny and his partner Demarcus King arrive at the house of the third doll. A woman walks out, she has a cross and keeps playing with around her neck as she tells that her husband is staying at a hotel. They go to the hotel. The white van now painted in blue is parked outside the hotel. At hotel room 207, Donald Vance answers the door and Danny and King enter. Danny asks where the little girl is and he denies seen a girl. Danny arrests him and King reads him his rights. He laughs and says that he will call his lawyer and he’ll be out in and hour. After that he says that he’ll see his niece then. Danny snaps and takes Donald to the bathroom and King tells that they need to take him to the station. Danny tells that a girl is in danger and he tells Donald to tell where the girl is. Danny turns violent, he dunks and bangs Donald Vance face in the toilet until he confesses and gives Danny a key to a storage room.

They arrive at the storage and Danny saves Teresa (the little Latin girl.) In the car, Donald is shouting that Danny assaulted him and that he was almost drowned.

    In the judge’s chambers, Donald’s lawyer says to District Attorney Erin Regan-Boyle that the confession was forced. Erin asks for time, that way the police build a case before they let Donald free. The judge gives them a weekend. Danny is waiting outside the courtroom and asks how it went. She tells that he has until Monday and tells that he went too far and with his violent behavior he ruined all evidence against Donald. Jamie is walking down the street and is stopped by Agents Anderson and Sico from the FBI. They show him a “Blue Templar” ring Jamie doesn’t believe that there is a secret society in the New York Police Department, he just knew about it because his grandfather use to tell him stories about it when he was little. They try to recruit him and Jamie starts to leave. Sisco plays a recording of Joe, his brother, and they ask Jamie to finish what his brother started!

    Danny in his office reads an old article of a missing girl named Kathy and sees the same cross around the little girl’s neck that Mrs. Vance had around her neck. They go to her house and she shows that the name “Kathy” is inscribed on the back. In Erin’s office, she calls the judge to extradite Donald to Florida for the murder of Kathy and the judge agrees. They won.

Jamie walks onto a Pier where his dad Frank is fishing. Dad and son start to talk, Frank asks Jamie if everything is ok—he is worried that Jamie is not telling the whole truth and Jamie asks if Frank is keeping tabs on him. Frank replies, “I have vested interests”.

To watch the complete Pilot episode of Blue Blood click here: http://www.cbs.com/primetime/blue_bloods/video/?pid=WbOcK_y3LnpwZmpZJh0_2fBzQ3TGUwrp&vs=Default&play=true

The Cast

"Blue Bloods" stars,
- Tom Selleck as Police Commissioner Frank Reagan
- Donnie Wahlberg as Detective Danny Reagan, a veteran detective and Iraq war veteran
- Will Estes as Jamie Reagan, a Harvard Law graduate turned into a rookie cop
- Len Cariou as Henry Reagan, the grandfather and retired former police commissioner
- Bridget Moynahan as Erin Reagan, a New York City assistant district attorney