Rizzoli and Isles Gets A Little Tragic When RealDolls Are Attacked

In three seasons of Rizzoli and Isles I never once believed the line about them being hetero BFFs. They were always checking out each other’s boobs and having better chemistry then Bones and Booth had had in years. They did lots of things that, ostensibly, one woman does with her best friend who is also a woman (except for marathons because my BFFs and I would much rather gorge on Rice Krispie Treats and watch Men’s Olympic Swimming then engage in day long runs and we speak for all women), but every guy who was dragged in for a crotch thrust felt more like a beard then Renate Blauel ever did. These weren’t genuine love interests. There was no chemistry. Their existences were defined entirely by the women’s desire for them.

Which is a bit of sweet justice to some degree, but also highlights just how irritating it is when flimsily drawn women are trucked into shows to put a lid on the fiery homoerotic tension of the male leads (or in the case of Supernatural they threw in a crazy angel to put a stop to incest shipping and instead we got Destial). Dean and Jane’s one brother and random Eddie Cibrian would show up as temptation away from all the hot eye sex and I would not care.

Also did you know eyesex with Maura Isles runs in the family?

Casey was another in a long line of boring beards in his first appearance. His accent was always shifting and he seemed to hate everyone and his romance with Jane was whirlwind and not in the good way but in the “WTF are the writer’s doing have they ever heard of character development?” way. He was trucked off into the sunset and since then we’ve gotten a smattering of mentions and one Skype call (he LITERALLY phoned it in. I am so clever. High fives all around.)

Now suddenly he’s back and his arrival is a gut punch to Jane because she was madly in love with him forever (so madly in love with him she banged Dean and told him major secrets that ruined her friendship with Maura–yeah that’s real love). I don’t buy it on paper but Angie Harmon and Chris Vance are acting the hell out of their scenes together. To the point that I kind of like him? And would be okay with him being the Derek to their gayer Meredith and Cristina (though Owen is probably more accurate)?

Unf.

There’s still that edge to Vance’s Casey. He’s not quite operating on the same wavelength as the rest of the show. They can all crack jokes over the corpses of girls and get wrapped up in Ma Rizzoli’s adventures in blogging but he can’t and his anger has him physically vibrating from scene to scene.

For whatever reason the chemistry between Maura and Jane has cooled accordingly. They’re still possessing a fantastic rapport,

But that heat that had everyone and many of their aging mothers noticing has been tempered. Formed instead into the supportive friendship we keep hearing they have but rarely see. Maura takes a back seat (which she does in every episode but finales and premieres and very special ones since the second season) and is just there for a friend. She’s the sister Jane never had and I don’t know about you but I’m shocked their chemistry could ever turn so sororal.

I’m not exactly upset. I’ve no doubt we’ll get some delicious Rizziles moments through the rest of the season. I’m more shocked with just how adult the story was. That final scene at the bar (the stand out for what was otherwise a fairly middling plot) was incredibly mature, thoughtful and well put together.

And it was in an episode about a guy turning women into RealDoll’s because in the early 90s his dad offed his mom and hid her in the fireplace. The leap of logic was…something only a crazy dude stuck in an asylum could have put together. And it was a shame seeing Patrick St. Esprit wasted as the father/original murderer. He did absolutely nothing and most of the murder mystery seemed less about find a creepy dude who was leaving dolled up dead women at bus stops and more about giving Lorraine Bracco, Lee Thompson Young and Bruce McGill some incredibly broad comedy to play.

Also it was a great way to remind us that Maura likes fashion. Guys, Maura Isles is basically a fashion savant. Forget all the stuff with typing three different types of blood found on a splinter in a woman’s head, or correctly identifying how old some of that blood was. Forget it. The woman was able to CORRECTLY IDENTIFY THE MAKE/STYLE OF A SCRUNCHY.

Genius.

A scrunchy. I want to bottle her up and take her shopping at thrift clothes stores with me. Do you realize how valuable she’d be? If a later episode suddenly veers into Maura Isles: Clothing Coroner I will not weep. She and her sidekick, Jane Rizzoli: Frequent Fashion Disaster, could raid designer shops and root out forgeries and she’s be dressed all glamourously and instead of deriding angst from a man’s war wounds the pathos would be wratcheded up over Jane’s inability to pair shoes with dresses properly.

Notes

• Can we have an Angela/Korask/Korsak’s Boss love triangle?
• Can Frost and Frankie just make out already?
• Angela’s site had over 12,000 fans. Clearly FemPop needs to make a shift towards vocal internet vigilantism.
• The web designer in me was thoroughly delighted by her 2007 Blogspot looking interwebs. God bless Angela being just a fraction behind the times.
• As this is Rizzoli and Isles I was really expecting a five-minute lecture on what a RealDoll is. It says something that they just assumed we knew.
• That RealDoll lover ranting at his plastic lover was a delight.
• Putting the real doll in Jane’s chair is also delightful until you remember that dudes usually have sex with their RealDolls and if he was shouting at her he probably didn’t have time to clean her and there is week old spooge in her plastic cooter.
• You’re welcome for that image.
• Next Week: Maura’s birth mother arrives! Get excited! The show has done a great job handing birth versus adoptive parents (unlike some other shows) and I’m really looking forward to this reunion. That’s Sharon Lawrence of NYPD Blue as the birth mom.