I am a cop show nut. I watched Dragnet re-runs as a kid. The younger Jim Gordon from Batman: Year One is one of my favourite cops, inspiring a character in my latest novella.
I’ve probably watched one of your cop shows.
All flavors of Law & Order, Cagney & Lacey, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Cop Rock (yes, I even tried this out), Without a Trace, Cold Case, Castle, Unforgettable, The Mentalist, Blue Bloods, the short-lived and much missed Boomtown, CSI—but I draw the line at CSI: Sunglasses (Miami) and CSI: UltraGritty (New York).
So when Rizzoli & Isles premiered, I watched, especially as it included Angie Harmon, who I admired on Law & Order. It’s now on my must-watch list but it has problems.
The Good:
The stars and the supporting cast are quite great, especially now that they’ve let Lorraine Braco’s Mama Rizzoli be more three dimensional. Bruce McGill is amazing as the elderly investigator, the language is excellent, and the chemistry between investigator Jane Rizzoli and Medical Examiner Maura Isles is terrific. More than terrific. More on that later.
What I also enjoy is that the leads of the show may be portrayed by males, meaning their characteristics aren’t determined by gender. Rizzoli is the tomboy, the sarcastic and smart-mouthed investigator, and Isles is the science geek. For this, I have to give credit to novelist Tess Gerritson, who developed Rizzoli & Isles in a popular mystery series that, I have no doubt, is more sophisticated than the TV.
The Bad:
The mysteries are not that good. The show isn’t realistic at all, it’s best watched as a buddy show rather than any form of police procedural. It’s the charm of the players that keep this going, not the amazing plotting And the chemistry is so excellent between Rizzoli and Isles that it almost seems wrong not to want them together, romantically. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
And there’s the core of my concern with the show.
The leads have such amazing chemistry that the show’s writers have plainly started playing up the probable love attraction usually as a joke or a covert wink at the audience, such when the duo claim to be lesbians and to get a former boyfriend to leave Isles alone.
This is excellent fun to watch because they’re charming together. My eldest son strolled into the room as I was watching one day and enquired “What’s this?” And I said “It’s a lesbian cop show.” And he said, “How did I NOT KNOW about this?” (He’s almost 17.) I told him it’s not actually a program about lesbian cops but it sorta is.
Therein lays the difficulty. The characters in the popular and acclaimed novel series by Gerritson are not lesbians. (Neither are they as handsome as on television and the tone is grittier and more serious.) But because the chemistry between Harmon and Sasha Alexander as Isles is so good, the show is playing up their attraction beyond a “buddy” level, going all the way up to the line of them being romantically connected and then dancing back. It’s meant to be humorous and play on the fan speculation but…
It seems dishonest.
In a society where LGBT folks are battling for the right to marry, when LGBT kids are tormented to the point of suicide, it seems somehow inappropriate for a show to play “yes they are, no they’re not” and wink at the audience to cater to a lesbian audience but not really go anywhere beyond that.
In Cagney & Lacey, a superb show for its day, and the female relationship was terrific and intricate but definitely not romantic. Rizzoli & Isles isn’t like that. They’re playing up the concept of the two as a relationship while all the time, being careful not to cross over that line, resulting in the kind of speculation from this Los Angeles Times article.
If it wished, the show could be ground-breaking. It could quit futzing around and genuinely have the leads get romantically linked. I’ve watched a lot of cop shows. I’ve never seen one with the two primary characters trying to navigate a lesbian relationship. And, given the chemistry of the leads and the tone of the show, I think it could be done successfully.
In the interim, I suppose there’s always the drinking game suggested by blogger CherryGrrl for The Ambiguously Gay Duo.
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