I haven't watched network television except sporadically in recent years, and without cable, I'm dependent on whatever Netflix provides. Even while watching Netflix, though, I generally stay away from network shows, possibly because I spent too much watching them while growing up, and remember how shallow almost all of them were.
Because I (apparently like everyone else) likes Tom Selleck, I decided to give CBS' Blue Bloods a try. Initially, it seemed as rote and one-dimensional as I had expected. Yet Selleck's quietly strong patriarchal figure, which has become his forte, kept me watching. The more I did, the less I focused on the show's predictable elements, and the more I discerned a very traditional moral message. The characters that I initially dismissed were, I saw, specific archetypes. I kept watching, expecting to be proved wrong, yet the largely conservative atmosphere of the show and the virtues it celebrated continued to infuse the series. Its lessons were unsubtle, but perhaps that is exactly the way they need to be taught in a society large parts of which no longer practice them.
A longer, meditative essay on the virtues of Blue Bloods is here.
Because I (apparently like everyone else) likes Tom Selleck, I decided to give CBS' Blue Bloods a try. Initially, it seemed as rote and one-dimensional as I had expected. Yet Selleck's quietly strong patriarchal figure, which has become his forte, kept me watching. The more I did, the less I focused on the show's predictable elements, and the more I discerned a very traditional moral message. The characters that I initially dismissed were, I saw, specific archetypes. I kept watching, expecting to be proved wrong, yet the largely conservative atmosphere of the show and the virtues it celebrated continued to infuse the series. Its lessons were unsubtle, but perhaps that is exactly the way they need to be taught in a society large parts of which no longer practice them.
A longer, meditative essay on the virtues of Blue Bloods is here.
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