By JOSH HELLER
Executive Editor
I watch way too much TV.
There, I said it. They say the first key to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Well, I do. I can tell you the exact channels and times that “Friends” is on. I can pretty much quote those stupid Billy Fuccillo commercials.
With all of the TV I watch, I’m bound to pick up some favorite shows, most of which I picked up alongside my mother. It started with “NCIS,” and for a couple years now, we really got into “Hawaii Five-O.” But one show that has been around for six years now we watched from the start: “Rizzoli & Isles.”
To sum up the show for you, it’s based off of Tess Gerritsen’s novels (there are 13, at this point). In this adaptation, Angie Harmon plays Boston police officer Jane Rizzoli and Sasha Alexander plays medical examiner Maura Isles. Rizzoli has to deal with her brother, Frankie (Jordan Bridges), who’s also on the police force, and her mother, Angela (Lorraine Bracco), who is very over-protective.
The show is currently in its seventh and final season. My mom and I used to like the show a lot, and then the actor of one of the main characters on the show, Lee Thompson Young (played Detective Barry Frost), passed away. It was heartbreaking news at the time, and my mother and I were very curious how they would play his death into the show. It was sad, and it took almost a full season, but the show had moved on from Young’s tragic departure.
Like I said, my mom and I have watched a lot of shows. Many of our favorite ones, such as “Graceland,” “The Following,” and “In Plain Sight” have gone off the air in recent years. When we see that news pop out on the computer, we get really upset. But in the end, it’s not a terrible thing, because the show was either getting much worse at that point, or the episodes are available on Netflix.
But with “Rizzoli & Isles,” this wasn’t the case. The show rarely had a really boring storyline, and if it did, it was usually resolved within a couple of episodes. Now, in their final episodes, many big questions remain unanswered, involving Jane, Sergeant Vince Korsack (Bruce McGill), and Maura.
The way the show is written does leave it open for some kind of spin-off. But in my experience, spin-offs just leave a bad taste in the mouths of the show’s fans. So if a spin-off does stem from these shows, here’s hoping it’s actually good.
Being at school makes it a little tougher to watch all of my favorite shows, what with classes, homework, and a social life (or lack thereof). So, my mom records all our favorite shows, and we binge-watch them from the DVR on the weekends, when I go home. We usually go in order based on what she thinks were the best episodes, and “Rizzoli & Isles” is at the top of that list more often than not.
Actresses like Harmon and Alexander make the show a fun thing to watch, often providing comic relief, instead of just hard drama all episode. It’s stuff like that, and the family aspect with the Rizzoli’s, that really make the show entertaining, and it’s that part of my TV schedule that I’m really going to miss. First “Graceland” and “The Following,” now this. Let’s make sure “Chicago Fire” and “Hawaii Five-O” stay on the air, shall we?
