‘Blue Bloods’ season 7, episode 16 preview: A seat at the Reagan dinner table

We’ve got a couple of sneak peeks for you for tonight’s new episode of “Blue Bloods,” but we’re going to go ahead and give you a fair warning that within this article, we’re probably going to be spending a lot of time discussing food. Why is that? There’s a couple of reasons…

1. We love food. Food is delicious. We’re also writing this article while getting ready for lunch.

2. We’re also incredibly fascinated by what the Reagan family eats at some of these famed family dinners, such as the one you see below.

They have one of these almost every episode, and most of them revolve around the same thing — watching the family talk about some sort of surprising contentious political issue while pretending to munch on something like a salad. Note how you rarely ever see the Reagans actually eat anything — we consider this to be mostly a function of production not wanting them to look gross on TV. It’s the same reason why you rarely see anyone actually eat during those romantic dates on “The Bachelor.” Pretending to eat a.k.a. playing with your food is fun! It’s also not appealing.

Here’s what we want to know: When is Taco Tuesday going on at the Reagan house? Can we get a pizza night soon? What about a “Top Chef” hybrid show where the Reagan family judges some of the food on the basis of what looks the prettiest to pretend to eat on TV? The possibilities here are pretty endless!

Oh, and aside from the family-dinner sneak peek below, we’ve also got another one that focuses on Nicky struggling to make sense of a decision Jamie makes tonight. We’ve spoken about a lot of silliness in this article, but this sneak peek in particular takes on a pretty serious subject.

Photo: CBS