After Magnum, P.I. and Before Blue Bloods, Tom Selleck was Jesse Stone
The fourteenth and final season of the popular CBS show, Blue Bloods, will air this fall. Tom Selleck, as New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, will preside over his last Sunday dinner with family members that include: Danny, an NYPD detective played by Donnie Walberg; Erin, the assistant DA, played by Bridget Moynahan; Jamie, the Harvard Law graduate who joined the force, played by Will Estes; and Henry, the former police commissioner and Frank’s father, played by Len Cariou. When he’s not at the head of the table, Frank is at 1PP (One Police Plaza) supervising the NYPD.
While many fans will be sad to see Blue Bloods end, all those seasons can be streamed online. If they still can’t get enough of Selleck, there are nine Jesse Stone movies available on Amazon Prime. Since the storylines continue from one movie to the next, with many recurring characters, it’s best to start with the first one, Night Passage.
Jesse Stone is – what else? – a cop, based on the character in Robert B. Parker’s detective novels. Stone was a minor league baseball player when he suffered a shoulder injury that ended his career. He became a homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department, but after a divorce, he began to drink heavily and was eventually asked to resign. What can only be viewed as a step down, he’s hired as the chief for a very small police department in Paradise, Massachusetts.
Stone arrives in Paradise with his bloodhound, Boomer, and meets the department’s force – Molly Crane (Viola Davis), Luther Simpson (Kohl Sudduth), and Anthony D’Angelo (Vito Rezza). Since Stone is replacing the former chief Lou Carson (Mike Starr), who was well liked, no one in the department and few in the town give him a warm welcome. (Women, married or single, are thrilled to see an attractive and available man on the scene.) He’s immediately put on guard when members of the city council who approved his hiring, make it clear that he will be carefully watched. Any missteps during this trial period will result in his firing.
Selleck, who is now 79, was 60 when he began playing Stone. Except for that difference in age, the two cops Selleck plays are interchangeable. There’s that penetrating stare, the quick reflexes in times of danger, a dislike of cellphones, and a softness for those in trouble who seek his help. Like Reagan, Stone’s preferred drink is scotch, although Reagan enjoys a drink after dinner, while Stone drinks until he passes out. Each still loves his wife. Stone tortures himself by taking to his ex-wife, Jenn, every night where she often seeks his advice about her latest boyfriend. Reagan, a widower, still wears his wedding ring and in 14 seasons, the number of women he’s slept with can be counted on one hand. (A disappointment since viewers hoped that Frank would fall in love and marry again.) Stone, however, has no trouble attracting women and still mourning his divorce, seems needy and incapable of resisting an advance. He does shy away from married women, however.
Although Paradise is a small town, Stone soon finds out that it’s run by a local crime boss, Gino Fish (William Sadler), who launders his money through a bank run by Hastings “Hasty” Hathaway (Saul Rubinek). When Lou is found dead after his car drives off a cliff, Stone doesn’t accept the explanation that it was an accident. And when Molly tells him the former chief was taking bribes from Hasty, Stone knows he has his first murder to solve.
Slowly, Stone begins to win over Molly and Luther, whom he calls “Suitcase,” as well as some of those in town who realize even small towns need a strong police presence. But Stone is in for many hard times as the city council, particularly one member who wants his son-in-law as the chief, threatens to suspend and then fire him. In so many ways, Jesse Stone was the warmup for Frank Reagan. And if you need more Tom Selleck after you’ve streamed all those cop shows, there’s the original Magnum, P.I. (much better than the recent reboot), and two feature films, Three Men and a Baby and Three Men and a Little Lady.
Top Bigstock Photo: Donnie Wahlberg, Tom Selleck, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes at a screening of CBS’s ‘Blue Bloods’ at Leonard H. Goldenson Theater on June 5, 2012 in North Hollywood, California
