Rizzoli & Isles is a case we’ll hate to see closed.
Sadly, the verdict is already in. The TNT female buddy series launches its seventh and final season Monday (6/6), with back-to-back episodes at 9 and 10 p.m. ET.
So we have just 13 more hours with Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon, top left) and Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander, top right). The good news is that based on the first two episodes, we will have every reason to enjoy them.
Jane at one time would have been called a tomboy. She’s a Boston detective who acts like a guy on the job, mixing it up with the worst of the perps.
Maura is the least likely best friend Jane ever encountered. Maura is the medical examiner, a brilliant Type A who is also versed in girl stuff like food and fashion.
Jane cares nothing for that. As she tells Maura Monday night, her idea of a four-star meal is a glazed doughnut.
Over the show’s run, which will end with 105 episodes, Jane and Maura have become each other’s forever pals and support systems, the ones who understand all the quirks and neuroses that the other doesn’t want to talk about.
A lot of their banter is light and clever. It’s also good writing that understands how these two women would talk to each other – a touch you won’t find on most cop shows, which drip with testosterone.
Rizzoli & Isles proves that women can carry an action show while remaining female. For that reason alone, it will leave a big hole when it’s gone.
Season 7 starts by playing out the cliffhanger that ended Season 6.
Jane’s cop partner Vince Korsak (Bruce McGill, below, right with Harmon, a terrific co-star) had just married Kiki (Christina Chang) when shots rang out. Boston PD analyst Nina Holiday (Idara Victor) went down and Maura was slumped against a wall, bleeding from the head.
Jane fired a few futile shots, but it was clear the perp had vanished.
On the plus side, we know the perp is Alice Sands (Annabeth Gish), who washed out of the Police Academy back when Jane was the star there and now seems to have a homicidal fixation on some weird revenge.
Monday night’s episodes, really a two-parter, are devoted to the tense cat-and-mouse game that ensues.
Elsewhere, Jane’s cop brother Frankie (Jordan Bridges) gets a couple of his own storylines, one of them personal and potentially romantic. Jane’s mother Angela (Lorraine Bracco) also gets involved, though not in her usual way.
Rizzoli & Isles has occasionally been described as a Cop Lite show, because while both Jane and Maura are complex characters with personal demons, the show often has a light touch and a stripped-down feel. It’s not as dense as a lot of classic network cop shows.
This lighter touch, in fact, has worked in its favor.
It’s an easy show both to like and to understand. Someone who has never watched it before could tune in Monday’s episodes and not feel any need for a catch-up tutorial.
It’s hard to believe there isn’t an audience for shows like that, particularly because Rizzoli & Isles has been one of the top scripted dramas on cable since its premiere in 2010.
Because the writers and producers got some notice about the show ending, they already seem to have begun pointing characters toward potential wrap-ups – though we’ve also clearly got a lot of drama and tension between now and then.
All the Turner entertainment networks, including TNT, have been taking a new direction under semi-new boss Kevin Reilly. He should be happy if the new stuff does as well on every level as Rizzoli & Isles.