Stream It Or Skip It?
Do you remember how cringey and contrived spinoffs were created in the 1980s and 90s? Someone shows up as a handyman or a cop in one department gets permission to work with another, and boom, you get a spinoff. We thought that kind of writing ended a long time ago, but we guess the writers of the Blue Bloods spinoff Boston Blue didn’t get the message.
BOSTON BLUE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Scenes in Boston at night. Two young guys are debating if anyone their age knows who Bruce Springsteen is when they come upon a group of women and start flirting.
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The Gist: The young men, Sean Reagan (Mika Amonsen) and Jonah Silver (Marcus Scribner) are rookie Boston PD officers, and when Jonah sees a building down the street is on fire, they run towards and into the building. As they help evacuate people, they see that one person is dead, but not from the fire, but from a gunshot wound in her chest. That’s when a fireball blasts Sean through a glass door.
In New York, Sean’s father, Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) is called about Danny’s condition, which is serious. He immediately goes up to Boston, and he immediately uses his NYPD detective shield to ask a suspicious onlooker about his involvement, and chases him through the streets. The lead BPD detective on the case, Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green) — yes, Jonah’s sister — chases Danny down and holds a gun on him until he throws her his shield.
The woman who was shot is the CEO of a software company that created facial recognition software used by the BPD, but has been under investigation after there is evidence that the software is biased against darker-skinned subjects. District Attorney Mae Silver (Gloria Rueben) bans the use of the software, much to the surprise of BPD Superintendent Sarah Silver (Maggie Lawson) — yes, Mae’s stepdaughter, Lena’s stepsister and Jonah’s half-sister.
Sarah authorizes Danny to work alongside Lena on this case, and while the two of them get to know each other, their differing investigative styles come out. Danny colors outside the lines a bit, and Lena tends to play things straight, mainly because of who her mother and sister are. At a certain point, Danny wonders if he’s letting the personal nature of this case get to him.
Danny’s sister Erin (Bridget Moynahan) comes up from New York to make sure Danny is OK while Sean is in a coma. When Lena invites Danny to family dinner with Mae, Sarah and Jonah, he invites Erin to go with him. Family dinner for the Silvers is on Friday nights; Mae and Lena converted to Judaism when Mae married Lena’s stepfather. Lena’s grandfather, Edwin Peters (Ernie Hudson), who is a reverend at the Roxbury Baptist Church, joins them. Yes, the Silver family is complicated, but they always try to make it to Friday night family dinner, just like the Reagans did on Sunday nights.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you didn’t realize it by now, Boston Blue is a spinoff of Blue Bloods.
Our Take: Boston Blue was eye-rollingly frustrating to watch, because it feels like showrunner Brandon Margolis and his writing staff took every contrived, cliched way to create a spinoff of a hit series they could dream up, making for a story that feels like it came straight from a spinoff episode you might have seen in the 1980s.
Never mind the hilarious notion of Boston-native Wahlberg playing a Brooklyn-born cop in Boston. The only storytelling aspect that felt like it wasn’t script gymnastics was the idea that he’d go up to Boston after Sean got hurt. But the fact that he can flash his NYPD detective shield, chase a suspect, and not get arrested? Or the fact that the BPD will allow him to work on the case, even though he has no jurisdiction, as well as the fact that the case involves his son? It’s all patently absurd, but Margolis and company had to get Wahlberg’s character to Boston somehow.
Then there’s the case of the Silver family. You knew the family aspect of Blue Bloods would carry over to Boston Blue, but it feels like the writers decided to basically do the opposite of what the Reagan family was. Let’s make them a blended, mixed-race family! Instead of Catholic, let’s make them Jewish! But the patriarch is a Baptist minister! And they do Shabbat dinner and church on Sundays! It’s a whole hell of a lot to keep up with, and none of it is going to be all that relevant as the show goes forward.
The whole thing is just one cringey line after another, despite the presence of actors we love. Even people like Martin-Green, Lawson and Reuben, Scribner and Hudson can’t make some of the dialogue they’re given sound natural, and as they all try to overexplain how complex the family’s faith is, it doesn’t even feel they’re buying into what their characters are saying.
The case that Danny and Lena investigates is pretty much immaterial here; it involves that facial-recognition software and its biases, blah, blah, blah. What matters is that it brings Danny into the BPD fold, at least as a consultant for the time being. How they’ll figure out how to make him a permanent member of the BPD will likely be just as contrived and silly as the first episode.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Sean wakes up in distress as Danny and Erin have “Sunday dinner”, praying over vending machine sandwiches.
Sleeper Star: If you haven’t seen Marcus Scribner since black-ish ended (though he did move to the spinoff series grown-ish), you’ll be shocked at how grownup he looks in Boston Blue.
Most Pilot-y Line: Every time Danny called Lena “Beantown” and Lena retorted by calling him “Brooklyn,” we wanted to throw our remote at the TV.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The first episode of Boston Blue twists itself into storytelling knots to get Donnie Wahlberg’s Blue Bloods character working with the Boston PD, and the way the Silver family is constructed feels equally as contrived. That being said, it might still be a hit among viewers who miss Blue Bloods.
Where To Watch Boston Blue
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Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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