Rizzoli and Isles

So I've been trying to work up the energy and find the time (classes just started and there's always a week or two adjustment period when a new semester begins where you seemingly have no time to do anything but read and prep your lectures/discussions/in-class exercises...things'll settle down, right?) to compose a post about TNT's new original series Rizzoli & Isles, which is just winding up its first short (10 episode) season. If you're interested in checking it out, I'm pretty sure TNT has all but a few of the episodes available for viewing online.

In any case, Rizzoli & Isles is a little bit like Cagney and Lacey met a G-rated version of Sex and the City and had a love child that watched a lot of Charlie's Angels growing up. A crime show boasting two female protagonists, a detective (Rizzoli, played by Angie Harmon) and a medical examiner (Isles, played by Sasha Alexander), who are close friends (so far so good) and incessantly talk about men (ay, there's the rub), Rizzoli & Isles definitely breaks The Bechdel Rule. Not to mention that the actual solving of crimes seems to take second shrift to the show's desire to create as many touching, personal moments between its two eponymous heroes as possible (suffice it to say, that while I consider many of my female friends to be near and dear to my heart, I do not go everywhere with them or find myself having sleepovers with them every other night). And yet, despite it's near absurdity, I am absolutely in love with this show.



In lieu of a post where I actually try to parse my rationally-suspect love affair with Rizzoli & Isles, I'll leave you with a list of links about the show. In the interest of selfishness, this will also be a convenient placeholder for me to come back to when I find the time to craft a real analysis, one that, I hope, will get to the heart of why recent crime shows with more than one female lead continually seem to falter (Women's Murder Club, Law and Order: Trial by Jury, and the UK's Murder in Suburbia, to name a few) and what TNT might be trying to do differently with Rizzoli & Isles.

And now, the links:

NY Times: An Unlikely Pair Bond on the Homicide Beat
LA Times: Television review: 'Rizzoli & Isles'
USA Today: 'Rizzoli & Isles' commits the ultimate crime of tedium
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: TNT, USA launch women against crime
AfterEllen: "Rizzoli & Isles" is TV's first lesbian buddy cop show (it just doesn't know it yet)