CBS wanted somehow to keep “Blue Bloods” but get rid of Tom Selleck, who was paid a king’s ransom.
So tomorrow night comes “Boston Blue,” in which Donnie Wahlberg — who’s from Boston but play Danny Reagan from Brooklyn, is the star.
No more Selleck or that whole family sitting around the dining room table for 14 years.
Now Danny/Donnie has mysteriously left his close knit family in New York for Boston. Luckily, he has a Boston accent already.
From the promos, people are still sitting around dining tables, so that will seem familiar. But other than a cameo in episode 1 from Bridget Moynahan, we probably won’t be seeing Danny’s family. And conversely, he’s not going to visit them even though there’s a super fast Acela train.
Well, when Lou Grant left Minneapolis for Los Angeles, we never saw Mary, Ted, or Murray. They completely disappeared. Spin-offs are tricky because you can’t keep going back to the original show unless everyone’s on board. On “Frasier,” we did see the “Cheers” gang in the first couple of seasons, but once it took off it was goodbye. And when Frasier moved back to Boston for the terrible sequel, he pretended like he knew no one there.
Tom Selleck was squawking when “Blue Bloods” was cancelled because he knew what CBS was up to. He just didn’t express it very well. But he was right. “Boston Blue” won’t make much sense — what happened to Danny’s long time partner and love interest, Maria (Marisa Ramirez)? Didn’t she wait a decade to get some action? Now, nothing!
Well, that’s how the cookie crumbles in TVLand.
