Sunday night dinners were at the heart of the hit New York detective show “Blue Bloods” (2010-2024). The Irish-Catholic Reagan family’s tradition was led by patriarch NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan.
But it’s a Shabbat dinner that is at the heart of the new “Blue Bloods” inspired spinoff, “Boston Blue,” which premiered on CBS and Paramount+ last month. And it was inspired by the show’s Jewish co-creator, Brandon Sonnier.
In “Boston Blue,” Frank’s son, Detective Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg), transfers from the NYPD to Boston’s Police Department after an incident involving his own son, Sean (Mika Amonsen), a Boston PD rookie officer. He finds himself partnered with Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green), a Boston detective who is part of a family of cops and city officials and leaders. Her youngest brother Jonah was paired with Sean on patrol duty. Her mother is District Attorney Mae Silver, and her sister, Sarah, is Boston PD’s Superintendent of Detectives.
Jonah, Mae, Sarah and Lena are Jewish, but their grandpa is Reverend Edwin Peters, who leads one of the city’s older Black churches.
Detective Reagen gets the family lore at his first Shabbat dinner with the family. Mae married Sarah and Jonah’s father, Ben, when Lena was 13, and they converted to Judaism. Lena and Sarah quickly became best friends. Ben was a district judge who was shot and killed outside his courthouse the year before Danny came to Boston. With his loss still palpable, it’s Reverend Peters who sits at the head of the table, wearing a kippah in honor of Shabbat, and translating the Hebrew prayers over the Shabbat candles that Lena, her mother and her siblings recite.
As they tuck into the challah and the meal over the warmly lit dinner table, Danny, who is there with his sister Erin who is visiting from New York, comments on how much the evening reminds him of his own family’s Sunday dinners. Lena reveals that before Danny made it to Boston, Sean used to be a guest at their Shabbat dinners, and shared that same observation.
Danny later finds himself at Reverend Edwin’s church with the choir happily singing hymns, and with Lena and her family dancing and smiling along. How does that work, he asks her, with her being Jewish? Lena explains that they don’t go to church for the faith part of the service.
“We come to see grandpa’s sermons, so we can stay connected as a family,” she says, and adds: “I love this song.”
It’s a lovely portrait of an interfaith family that respects each other’s traditions, and takes a lot from the story of the show’s co-creator, Sonnier, who was raised Catholic and became Jewish in adulthood.
In the same way that a traumatic incident leads Danny to Boston and to the Silver’s Shabbat dinner table, it was a traumatic incident in 2019 that led Sonnier to convert to Judaism.
“My wife is white and Jewish, and my children are biracial,” Sonnier told the LA Times. Just like the Silvers, Sonnier’s family gathers every week for Shabbat dinner. He says that before 2019 he was “living a Jewish lifestyle but had not taken the steps to conversion.” He always meant to convert but, he shared with the publication, “life got in the way.”
Then, while shooting “L.A.’s Finest,” a show starring Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union, he was injured by a stunt car that ran into a shipping container which fell on Brandon and left him trapped under it. He lost part of his leg in the accident.
Then came that first Shabbat dinner after coming back from the hospital.
“I’m in this big, clunky wheelchair. When we do Shabbat, we light the candles on our kitchen island while everyone gathers around for the blessing,” he told the LA Times. “My mom, in-laws, family friends were all there. People were wary of what I could handle, but I stay at the back of this group while they’re doing the blessing.”
“When we bless the challah, one person touches it and everyone else makes an unbroken chain, putting a hand on the next person so we are all part of the blessing. My oldest son turns and reaches out and grabs my hand so I can be part of the chain. And I just burst into tears. I decided then and there that I will convert. There is no more ‘life got in the way.’ It is time.”
And now, Sonnier, along with show co-runner Brandon Margolis, gets to make that meaningful tradition a part of his new show.
“When I watched ‘Blue Bloods,’ I always thought, ‘This is like my family, but I would like it to look like my family,’” he said in that same interview. “We are representative of all these pieces, all these different cultures. Danny is invited into something that is real and emotional and grounded.”
