Always on Sunday: Blue Bloods (TV)

I may need help. I seem to be addicted to the police drama series Blue Bloods on CBS. I haven't missed an episode about its NYPD cop family: grandfather and former police commissioner Henry Reagan (Len Cariou), father and current police commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck, who is only five years younger than Cariou), sons Danny and Jamie Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg and Will Estes, respectively), and daughter and assistant district attorney Erin Reagan-Boyle (Bridget Moynahan)—and Danny and his wife Linda (Amy Carlson's) two sons and Erin's daughter.
    Danny and Linda's interchanges of "I love you," "I love you more," and "I love you most" don't grate.
    Nor Frank's audible sighs and grumps (which are identical to those of Jesse Stone (whom Selleck plays in another made-for-TV series he's committed to and all of whose offerings I've seen, with equal addiction).
    Nor the dependable case-solved, bad-guy-caught outcomes. Of course, we all want the good guys to win, if perhaps in not so self-assured fashion as the Reagans manage. Actually, the actors do a credible job of portraying anxiety about the outcome.

    Nor the inclusion of one or more family dinners in the typical episode, complete with supportive loving banter and the saying of grace, sometimes by one of the children (it's a Catholic family; they're Irish). The love is comforting and the characters good. (Too comforting and too good, I have to say, for my wife, who has already seen more Reagan family dinners than she would like to have to endure.)
    No, I don't mind these things, and, yes, I may need help.

Several years ago, I read the 2004 memoir by Edward Conlon about his own family's life as NYPD police. Perhaps because Conlon, like Jamie in the Reagan family, had graduated from Harvard, I've always assumed that the title and central idea of Blue Bloods came from Conlon. Apparently not. There's no mention of any such connection in Wikipedia. "Blue bloods" for NYPD familes could have been around when Conlon was born, for all I've been able to determine. Anyway, there was the TV series NYPD Blue, which debuted in 1993 so antedated Blue Bloods by twenty years. (I don't remember watching any episodes of NYPD Blue.)
    Besides, the title of Conlon's book is Blue Blood. No final letter ess, as I had mis-remembered.

We watch Blue Bloods by way of DVR recording or free on-demand offering by our local cable company.