Thin Ice Broke Two Franchise Traditions (& Featured The Darkest Ending)

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice broke a couple of franchise traditions – and ended on the bleakest note of the entire series. Thin Ice is the fifth entry in the Jesse Stone movie series, which adapted the Robert B. Parker novels of the same name. Parker gave Selleck two rules to follow while adapting Jesse Stone; one, Stone will always be hung up about his ex-wife Jenn, and two, he will always have a problem with drink (via TV Insider). This formula keeps the character trapped in a toxic loop, but Thin Ice needed to mix things up after four movies.

The TV movie features the same cast of characters – though Viola Davis’ Molly left after the fourth entry Sea Change – as previous Jesse Stone movies, with Selleck’s grizzled police chief looking into two cases. He’s looking into who shot his friend Captain Healy (Stephen McHattie), and a cold case involving a kidnapped baby dubbed “Baby Boy Blue” by the media. By this point in the franchise, Thin Ice knew what viewers wanted – but it also marked a shift in direction as Selleck took more control over the series.

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Thin Ice Is The First Jesse Stone Not Based On A Robert B. Parker Book Or To Feature Any Deaths

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice took the movies away from Parker’s novels

The fifth Jesse Stone has a startling opening, where Healy and Jesse are fired upon while on a stakeout; Jesse is left wounded while Healy is put in a coma. Any other installment would have seen Stone gunning down the would-be assassin at the end or engineering their demise. Thin Ice doesn’t do that, since both Healy and Internal Affairs officer Greenstreet (Leslie Hope) warn him off this path. Jesse does get his revenge by getting the shooter sent down for parole violations – but at least he gets to live.

Thin Ice is most notable for being the first Jesse Stone not based on a Parker book. Instead, Selleck co-wrote the story alongside Michael Brandman and Ronni Kern, with the latter penning the screenplay. By this juncture, Selleck and his co-writers had become experts in the world of Jesse Stone, and every following entry featured an original story. Thin Ice stays true to the core tenets of Parker’s books while diving into how Stone’s bad habits and talent for making enemies are finally catching up to him.

Thin Ice’s Lack Of Killing Was A Positive Step For Jesse As A Character

Not every Jesse Stone story needs to end with a shooting

The first four Jesse Stones end with Selleck’s chief either gunning down the main villain or in Night Passage’s case, watching the villain get gunned down by someone else. Stone has an old-fashioned sense of justice, and has proven willing to bend (or outright break) the law to see that wrongs are righted. In the past, he baited most of those criminals into lethal confrontations too, so that he could justify the shootings later. With Thin Ice, Jesse gets called out for this bad habit a few times.

It appears his therapy sessions with Dix (William Devane) are starting to pay off too, since he decides to take a different path. He could easily have pushed the shooter, Leaf (Fulvio Cecere), into another “justifiable” shooting to satisfy his personal need for revenge – but he doesn’t. He resists that temptation and even if Jesse’s methods for dealing with Leaf are still suspect, it’s a healthier step than deciding all problems must be fixed by a gun.

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice’s Shock Ending Is An Emotional Rugpull

Thin Ice’s subplot carries the biggest shocker of the series

There is something comforting about the formula of the Jesse Stone saga, where two cases often unfold side by side. In Thin Ice, this is where the mother of a supposedly deceased baby presents evidence her boy may be alive – and living in Paradise. Jesse and Rose (Kathy Baker) look into this, and for a brief moment, it appears there will be a happy resolution. Thin Ice then unloads the most devastating ending of the series, where they learn the child was indeed taken to Paradise but died years later during an ice skating accident.

None of the movies end on particularly uplifting notes, since that’s not in the nature of the character or the noir genre. Still, Thin Ice’s (which refers both to Jesse’s shaky position within the Paradise police department and the accident that resulted in “Baby Boy Blue’s” death) finale is the most haunting, since Jesse and his team invested in the idea the boy was still alive. The story closes with Jesse being suspended by the town council for his conduct, and boarding a bus to tell Baby Boy Blue’s mother what happened to her child.

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice may have broken away from Parker’s original books, but it reassured readers the movie series was in great hands. It delivered on the formula audiences expected but still managed to add some surprises and even give Jesse a tiny piece of personal progress.

Source: TV Insider

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  Jesse Stone

  The Jesse Stone franchise is a series of television films based on the novels by Robert B. Parker. The series follows Jesse Stone, a former LAPD detective who becomes the police chief of the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts. The films are noted for their character-driven plots, focusing on Stone’s battles with alcoholism, his troubled past, and the crime investigations he leads.

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  Jesse Stone: Thin Ice is a crime drama film directed by Robert Harmon. Tom Selleck returns as Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, who is recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during an unsanctioned investigation. As Stone grapples with both personal and professional challenges, he becomes embroiled in a complex case involving a missing child and a mother’s quest for answers, testing his resolve and detective skills.