Nearly each episode features a family dinner. This was at Tom Selleck's request to keep a sense of family. He also states that this scene is usually one of the longest ones to shoot. The family dinner happens always each Sunday around 17:00 to 17:30.
Although they play father and son, Len Cariou is only five years and four months older than Tom Selleck.
The actors who play Jack and Sean (Danny's kids) are brothers in real life in which Jack is the older brother and Sean the younger.
In Shoot the Messenger (2014), at the Reagan family's Sunday dinner, the Broken Windows Theory is discussed. The theory is that unaddressed minor offenses lead to more serious crimes, for instance, if no one is arrested for breaking a house's windows - it will become a site of further crimes, such as dumping, breaking the furniture or burning the house down. It was written by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson and published on March 1, 1982 in The Atlantic Monthly. Later, it featured in a criminology book written by George L. Kelling and Catherine Coles, published in 1996.
The family dinner scene is the first one shot on the production schedule, and starts in the morning, going as long as eight hours. The food arrives hot and fresh just before...then gets gradually older and colder - "pretty gamy" in Tom Selleck's words. Will Estes says that when eating the same food over and over for hours, "you gotta pace yourself."