Year Released: 2005-2015
Directed by: Robert Harmon, Dick Lowry
Starring: Tom Selleck, William Devane, Saul Rubinek, William Sadler
(R, 129 min. per film)
Genre: Mystery and Suspense, Drama

“Well I'm just a small town cop. Mostly I give out parking tickets.” –Jesse Stone (Tom Selleck)

Tom Selleck’s Jesse Stone is the police chief, just as his Blue Bloods counterpart Frank Reagan is. He has Reagan’s sense of justice, integrity, and doggedness, but he has never slain his real demons, which are on the inside.

Unlike Blue Bloods’ Frank Reagan, Jesse doesn’t have a loving and successful family who share a Sunday dinner with him. Frank Reagan is a widower, but Jesse Stone’s case is worse. He is “divorced” from Jenn, an LA weather girl, in “every place but my mind.”

That’s why throughout most of the nine Jesse Stone films, he shares a daily phone call with the woman who tore his life apart, the one who cheated on him but still wants to draw him into her neurotic world.

The world that sucked him into its maw and spit him out, a disgraced LAPD cop who became a drunk. Why he decides to take a job as far away from LA as possible in the fictional Massachusetts town of Paradise.

A call from Jenn the night before his interview sucks him into the muck all over again, and he turns to his faithful companion, a bottle of scotch. Hung over and almost late for his meeting with the town council, Jesse takes another drink to “steady himself,” his breath reeking during the interview.

But Hastings (Hasty) Hardaway (Saul Rubinek) president of the town council, for reasons of his own, hires Jesse Stone anyway. This is a pliable man, Hasty thinks, one so desperate for a job and in thrall to alcohol that he is not going to notice, let alone investigate, the soft underbelly of corruption hidden in Paradise, MA.

But here Hasty is wrong. Lurking beneath all of Jesse’s self-loathing is a thirst for justice stronger than his craving for scotch.

Certainly a good plot and character, but what really elevates the series is Jesse’s intriguing and complex set of allies and adversaries.

***

Hasty, for instance, reinvents himself almost as often as Madonna, albeit without her onetime sex appeal and vocal talent. Hasty loses his beautiful and faithless wife along with his job as bank president when a little case of money laundering lands him in prison. Even though it is Jesse who put him there, Hasty slways reminds Jesse that he has always had “a great deal of affection” for him, usually a sign that he is about to stab Jesse in the back, or more specifically, in one case, about to shoot him. After serving his time Hasty reemerges as a used car salesman. Certainly someone you would never buy a car from, right? But Jesse does.

Well, not exactly. Jesse can be the manipulator as well as Hasty. Instead he just takes a few cars out for extended test-drives that last for weeks.

Then there is Gino Fish (William Sadler) the Boston boxing promoter who is really a mob guy. His gym is pretty unusual, too. Tucked in between the elevated mats and sparring partners is a sunken island of gourmet excellence where a handsome waiter brings Gino his haute cuisine. Jesse spars with Gino in the same way that the sweating minions who surround him do.

Candace Pennington: Did you ever box?
Jesse Stone: Oh, I don't box, I fight.
Candace Pennington: What's the difference?
Jesse Stone: Rules.”

But Gino has his vulnerabilities, too, and because he has his own as well, Jesse smells them out. The two form a strange kind of alliance eventually, Gino, with his pulse on the dirty players around him often helping Jesse find and set up some of the bad guys whom they see as common enemies.

“I’m not in the right and wrong business. I’m in the legal and illegal business.” –Jesse Stone

Then there’s Jesse’s shrink, Dr. Dix (William Devane), an ex cop who, like Jesse, had a drinking problem. Like Jesse, he doesn’t pull any punches about it either:

Jesse Stone: You don’t believe in addiction?
Dr. Dix: Sure I do. I was addicted. I still am. But that was just an explanation. If you want to stop drinking, pal, you go to do more than explain it.
Jesse Stone: You’re a cold bastard, aren’t you?
Dr. Dix: Getting sober is cold bastard work.

Then we have his handful of staff, among them Luther “Suitcase” Simpson (Kohl Sudduth), given this nickname by Jesse because he reminds him of the baseball player Harry Suitcase Simpson. Later on, when Suitcase goes into a long coma after being shot, Jesse refuses to replace him and regularly visits his hospital room to read to him, once telling the unconscious Suitcase about a South American man in a coma for years who simply woke up one day and asked for a cappuccino.

And not too long after that Suitcase suddenly sits up in bed and asks for the same.

A final mention is for his colleague from the State Highway Crime Department, Captain Healy (Stephen McHattie), who is as addicted to his job as Jesse is. Like Suitcase, he also gets shot up pretty bad, but can’t stay away from it either.

Jesse Stone: You’re supposed to be on medical leave.
Captain Healy: Actually, I am on medical leave. I’m just taking it at the office.

Different Drummer would be negligent, however, if she forgot about his best allies, Jesse’s series of dogs. First the lugubrious bloodhound Boomer, who comes with him on his road trip from LA only to get a terminal disease soon after. The brusque vet asks Jesse why he has never neutered Boomer. Did he intend to breed him?

“I just thought Boomer wouldn’t be Boomer without his testicles,” he answers. Jesse doesn’t like her and even though he eventually takes her advice to euthanize Boomer, he talks the pediatrician/medical examiner into doing the job instead.

Then there is Reggie, whose owner was killed. Jessie keeps him as a “material witness,” and it takes a while for him to admit the dog into his heart. When Jesse tells his shrink that he has lost his conscience, we later find out he is referring to the death of Reggie, who always gave him the stink eye when Jesse drank too much scotch.

Finally, we have Steve, also the dog of a murder victim adopted by Jesse. Not only is he almost a lookalike for the Golden Retriever Reggie, but he seems to take on Reggie’s role as Jesse’s conscience, too.

Tom Selleck is excellent here, showing real depth as the melancholy lawman battling his own demons as he battles the real flesh and blood ones Paradise, Massachusetts, and beyond.

Watch the first one, Night Passage, and you’ll be hooked.

–Kathy Borich
🥁🥁🥁🥁

Trailers

Film-Loving Foodie

The Jesse Stone series takes place in the fictional town of Paradise, Massachusetts, not too far from Boston, where Jess spends quite a bit of time in helping his friend Captain Healy solve crimes there.

Here are some terrific Boston recipes from past reviews, including 2 recipes for Boston Baked Beans and 2 recipes for Boston Cream Pie.

Boston Cream Pie (Spotlight)

Boston Cream Pie (Edge of Darkness)

Slow Cooked Boston Baked Beans (Surrogates)
Best Ever Boston Baked Beans (Manchester by the Sea)

Lobster Bisque (Patriots Day)

How about something new for today, though? Something to warm you on a cold winter night or simply celebrate a summer evening?

Lobster Chowder is a delightful new spin on clam chowder that comes from a place quite close to Boston, the Canadian Maritime Province of Nova Scotia, where the Jesse Stone series was actually filmed.

Delicious and rich with sour cream giving it an unexpected tart twist.

Enjoy.