Rizzoli and Isles 4x16 You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone review

I’m not sure I will actually call this a ‘review’. I think it’ll come out as more of a rant.  

I’ll repeat the words of Jane Rizzoli – “what the hell did we stumble onto?” Because this doesn’t feel like the Rizzoli and Isles show that I’ve loved for four seasons.

For the first time through four full seasons, I think I found the homicide case to be much more interesting (i.e. non-nauseating) than any of the (nauseating) Rizzoli drama.

1. The mention of Frost being “on vacation” early on just put me in a crappy mood from the start. I knew it was coming, but it hasn’t really sunk in yet. Having Korsak doing most of the computer stuff also brought that point home even more. I understand that they only had a few days to rewrite Frost out of this episode, but just a mention that he’s on vacation? I hate that we don’t get any more than that. So we have to wait for June 17^th to get any type of closure with Lee/Frost? Couldn’t they have given us a little something – maybe take out the weird Maura/Frankie kiss and give us any kind of bread crumb for Frost? It gives me the feeling that Janet Tamaro didn’t want to deal with any of it and just decided to leave it for the new showrunner, who happens to be Jan Nash. I did like the fact that Lee’s name is still in the opening credits. That made me smile a little.

2. Frankie/Maura – in some other universe, this might actually be a nice pairing that I’d enjoy. In this show, it just seems a bit freaky – not quite as freaky as Tommy/Maura was. So Maura is making her way through the Rizzoli siblings? There’s only one Rizzoli left, Maura. I know they’ll never put Jane & Maura together on the show, but I hate how the Rizzles relationship always suffers whenever they try to pair up Maura with one of the Rizzoli brothers. I hate when they try to downplay the Jane/Maura chemistry, because it never works and feels extremely forced. If they have to hook Maura up, the only one that was even close to being acceptable was B.T the bomb tech. And even that ended up sappy.

3. Did they really need to have Tommy fall off the wagon just as he was getting things together? Wasn’t there enough Rizzoil family drama with all of the Frankie/Maura and Jane drama? Couldn’t they have SOMEONE in the Rizzoli family be happy? The Frankie/Tommy fight (without Jane around) would have been cute if they were teenagers, but not grown adults, and Tommy drunk off his ass. It would have been more interesting if Jane had been there. Why was Tommy calling Frankie “Francis”? It’s Francesco. Duh! Sister Bitcher would never be wrong on that.

4. I knew Casey could never give up who he is, just as Jane can’t give up her life for him. I just hope she doesn’t change her mind about marriage. Jane has enough support to help her with a baby. I guess Angie has gotten her wish of having Jane be pregnant. I kind of liked Jane with the kid in the R&I books (but not dickhead Dean as the husband), but I can’t see this Jane/baby storyline playing out very well on screen. I’m hoping Jane’s stomach ache is just nerves – or bad PMS. Unfortunately, the preview for Season 5 doesn’t make that look promising.

5. speaking of the Rizzoli & Isles books by Tess Gerritsen – much of season 4 of the tv show has felt like regressing back to the books - where Jane & Maura are mainly just little more than colleagues and not close best friends; in the books, Jane is married to Gabriel Dean. Season 4 of the show brought us all the torture of the on/off Jane/Casey debacle.

5. Maura’s “Doyle blood” is showing! I love how she takes the retainers and continually reiterates to Suzie that she’ll take full responsibility for obstructing justice. “Privacy is an illusion, Suzie.” I wonder if Maura is thinking back to her 'private' life of officially being a Doyle being exposed. I love when Maura uses her full title “Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” to make it sound authoritative! I would have liked more ‘Maura/Suzie hiding evidence’ stuff.

6. It was great to see Jayne Brook again. I remember her from the early ‘90s show, Sirens. I wonder if I still have any vhs tapes of that show somewhere. She looked good in that cop uniform back in the day.

7. Now that we won’t have Frost, maybe we’ll get more Lt Cavanaugh in the office. I love how he swapped out their computers so the feds got the wrong ones. We’ve got him more in the Rizzoli family drama, so maybe we can get him more in the office too.