Blue Bloods is poised to return to TV in the 2020-2021 TV season after its longest hiatus ever, and now CBS has revealed the premiere date as well as what the Season 11 premiere will cover. As expected and like many other crime procedurals that are on the way back to primetime, Blue Bloods will address the issue of police brutality. Unlike other crime procedurals, Whoopi Goldberg will be involved on Blue Bloods!
The Season 11 premiere of Blue Bloods will debut on Friday, December 4 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, following the premieres of Magnum P.I. Season 3 at 9 p.m. ET and MacGyver Season 5 at 8 p.m. ET. Called "Triumph Over Trauma," the Season 11 premiere will see Frank going head-to-head with City Council Speaker Regina Thomas, played by none other than Whoopi Goldberg, who will reprise the role for the first time since 2017. The issue that Frank and Regina will discuss? Police brutality protests.
Elsewhere in the episode, Danny and Baez will go missing while on the search for a killer, which will require Jamie and Joe Hill to work together to try and find them. Also, Eddie will step up to help an "abrasive" woman locate her father's body, which was misplaced at the beginning of the pandemic. CBS' episode description for the Season 11 premiere including the pandemic as well as police brutality proves that Blue Bloods will tackle not one but two big real-life issues to launch the new season.
Like some other big CBS shows, Blue Bloods will have a shorter season than usual when it returns, but hopefully it will pack plenty into the episodes it gets. It's possible that the law enforcement officers will go about their business differently in Season 11, and not just because of whatever comes of Frank's meeting with Regina about police brutality. CBS TV contracted with a law enforcement advisory group to consult with writers on Blue Bloods, all three NCIS series, and more after the protests over the summer.
That said, the details about the Season 11 premiere prove that Blue Bloods won't spend the whole episode on Tom Selleck's Frank and Whoopi Goldberg's Regina hashing out police brutality. New character Joe Hill, whose career could be radically changed by virtue of his connections to the venerable Reagan family, will evidently be working with his uncle to find Danny and Baez. Executive producer Kevin Wade previously shared that Blue Bloods would revisit some Joe Hill plots that were in motion before the production shutdowns in the spring.
Fortunately for fans, Tom Selleck has explained why there's no end point for Blue Bloods, so the show may last beyond the pandemic, which hasn't been the case for some other TV series. That doesn't mean Blue Bloods will last forever, though! For now, fans can look forward to Season 11 now that Blue Bloods has finally received a premiere date. Blue Bloods will be back later than some of CBS' other biggest dramas, but it's still only a few weeks away.
Blue Bloods will be back for Season 11 on Friday, December 4 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. For more viewing options now and in the coming weeks, check out our 2020 fall TV premiere schedule.
