All good things come to an end, and such is the case for the hit CBS series Blue Bloods, which aired the first of its final eight episodes on Friday night. But first cast members Tom Selleck (Frank Reagan), Donnie Wahlberg (Danny Reagan), Bridget Moynahan (Erin Reagan-Boyle), Vanessa Ray (Eddie Janko), Len Cariou (Henry Reagan), and Marisa Ramirez (Maria Baez), as well as showrunner and executive producer Kevin Wade took part in an event to honor the long-running police/family drama.
“We were only supposed to do 10 shows for the 14th season and it kind of helped that we were the No. 6 show out of 100 broadcast shows,” Selleck told the assembled crowd. “These eight shows that we can look forward to are because CBS agreed and wanted to do that and celebrate, and not only celebrate but commemorate.”
Selleck, of course, as previously reported was none too happy when he received the news that his series was being canceled, and as much as he and the cast and producers fought it, CBS was adamant that the time had come to wrap it up.
“[I hope what the] audience takes away is it is a show worthy of an appointment,” Selleck continued. “I have great faith and have had great faith in broadcast television. I think it’s suffered from being put in second or third place. And, you know, I don’t think everybody in the world wants to spend an hour on their remote control looking at what they might want to see that night. I’m proud to say [we became appointment TV].”
From its start, Blue Bloods occupied the 10 p.m. time slot on Friday nights on CBS and it caught on immediately, most Friday nights winning its time slot, which is a difficult hour to attract viewers.
“We became an appointment and then the ability to record shows developed, so it was, ‘I’m tired, so I’ll see it in the morning,’” Selleck added. “That’s rare. And, as much as anything, it’s a reflection of the work we do. And that’s kind of the ultimate compliment. Audiences know certain things about television shows and the average guy is sitting there and he wants another beer, and he’s sitting there, going, ‘He’s not going to die. They won’t end the series.’
“I think we’re aware of the enormous amount of cliches in series television, and we comment on them, and we bring them up, and by commenting on them, it really helps with the audience because you’re, again, sharing something. Magnum had a voice-over narration. We have an audience that, by the time we sit down to family dinner, they know an awful lot of secrets that maybe everyone at that table does not know. And that’s the sense of discovery, they know more than the people at the table. ‘Hey, wait till he hears that’.”
The panel covered many topics, but especially the all-important family dinners, which was the one time in each episode that everyone came together and it helped bond them as a cast.
“We’d be working about now on the schedule, and I really miss that,” Selleck said. “But what I miss most is my friends, my actor family. I had a team. You always say, like in high school, ‘We’ll see each other,’ but it never works out that way. Everybody works, everybody goes this way and that way and suddenly that opportunity we had, that gift of once every eight working days seeing everybody [at family dinner], that doesn’t happen. The way our show was structured, you could always look forward to that.”
