Rizzoli & Isles 6×09 featured Jane in a fringe jacket, Maura lying without breaking out in hives, Korsak and Nina showing off some badass moves – oh, and a dead guy. Read on for our recap.
‘That is a statement, not a feel’
When an episode of a crime show opens with someone struggling to climb up a steep rock face, you can be reasonably certain that things will end in tragedy. They do – but not because the man fell of his own accord. Rather, he got all the way to the top, only to have his hands stomped on. Ouch.
Over at Maura’s house, the venerable Dr. Isles is dealing with a tragedy of her own. After Jane lost most of her clothes in the fire that burned down her apartment, Maura encouraged her to expand her wardrobe, and now she’s sporting a fringe leather jacket. To use a patented Rizzoli catchphrase, “Really?”
Credit: relight-the-flame @ Tumblr
Speaking of Dr. Isles-es, the other one – Maura’s father – is still in town after last week’s case, and he wants to have dinner with his daughter. Maura, who’s still angry that he made her lie about seeing him cheating on her mother when she was 14, is ignoring his attempts at contact, but Jane urges her to try a different approach.
Jane: Just get it out. Tell him how you feel.
Maura: Wait, you’re one to talk. You don’t tell anyone how you feel.
Jane: Well, I’ll tell you how I feel right now: I feel that you should do this or you’re gonna be avoiding him forever.
Maura: That is a statement, not a feel.
Speaking of feelings, I strongly feel that Jane isn’t serious about that fringe jacket – and, sure enough, once she and Maura are at this week’s crime scene and the good doctor is out of earshot, she confirms as much to Korsak (“I’m making a point, but it’s always so much more fun to amuse myself while I do it…”)
Things quickly get serious once Maura determines that the death of their victim, Stuart, wasn’t caused by an accidental fall, as he has broken hands and a cracked skull. Once Maura takes a closer look at the body back at the lab, she determines that Stuart’s broken fingers were caused by a hiking boot. Surely she isn’t speculating? “I don’t need to speculate – I have science,” she tells Jane, then proves her point by demonstrating how she used a Gaussian filter to isolate dust particles and find traces of rubber. “You really do love showing off your toys, don’t you?” Jane asks. That joke is too easy, so I won’t make it. I have standards, you know. Anyway, Maura determines that Stuart’s killer struck him once, broke his fingers, and, once he fell off the cliff, struck him again. Yikes.
32 girlfriends & then some
What could possibly cause someone to want to murder a nerdy college student like Stuart? Once Nina unlocks the phone found in his dorm room, there’s a surprising development: Stuart had 32 girlfriends (yes, you read that right). Texts to and from them are the only thing the phone contains, along with some threatening messages from a man warning Stuart to stop contacting his wife. I’ll take “motive” for 500, Alex.
When Jane and Korsak visit the couple, there’s another surprising development: The wife claims that the man with whom she was corresponding was nothing more than the creation of an app called Your Perfect Mate. Turns out that her “virtual boyfriend” was actually very real – working for Your Perfect Mate, Stuart handled up to 40 clients at a time. For a college kid paying his own way through school, the job was a great way to make money… even if he did incite the rage of a few jealous significant others along the way.
Meanwhile, Maura has a change of heart and meets with her father after all. He says the affair was a mistake and his wife forgave him years ago, so he isn’t sure why Maura can’t do the same. “You never asked me to,” Maura points out, then lays into him about pretending it never happened and letting her carry around the secret by herself. He apologizes and it seems genuine, but Maura isn’t having any of it.
Dr. Isles: If I could go back in time and change things, I’d do that in a heartbeat. I miss you so much.
Maura: I missed you too, for so long. Then I got over it.
Well, damn.
Jackets & patterns
Back at her office, Maura tells Jane she doesn’t feel any different after speaking with her father, but Jane’s not convinced. Working off the hypothesis that the years of keeping her father’s secret were what caused Maura to break out into hives when lying, Jane decides to run a test. Maura is understandably confused – it’s not often that your girlfriend ENCOURAGES lying – but she acquiesces and lies by saying she really likes Jane’s fringe jacket. Following a theatrical gasp on Jane’s part and a hiveless reaction from Maura, Jane decides they’re making progress, then admits she was just wearing the jacket as a prank.
Later, after Dr. Isles invites Maura to accompany him to a lecture and Maura turns him down, Angela asks why she’s holding onto her pain and anger. Maura says she isn’t sure how to let it go, and Angela urges her to take a different approach and see what happens. Did Maura just get counseled by two Rizzolis for the price of one? That’s what I call a bargain.
Over at the headquarters of Your Perfect Mate, Frankie and Korsak ask for access to all of the company’s records and sit down to interview the CEO, who I can’t be the only viewer to recognize as Danny from Chasing Life. Frankie and Nina analyze the conversation logs generated by employees and clients, and pick up on an interesting pattern: Many of the women were burglarized after mentioning that they’d be going out of town, although the wide accessibility of the company’s data makes it impossible to zero in on the perpetrator’s identity. Jane sends a message to one of the virtual boyfriends, Winston the cowboy, and sets up a sting operation to catch their burglar in the act. The culprit turns out to be a Your Perfect Mate programmer named Evan. Could Stuart have figured out what he was doing and threatened to expose him?
‘Holiday’s a badass’
Remember that phone of Stuart’s that contained nothing but texts to and from Your Perfect Mate clients? He had another phone as well, but nobody can locate it. With some help from Stuart’s phone carrier, Nina begins tracking it, so when someone turns it on, she’s on the case – and so are Jane and Maura, if they can stop bickering for long enough. After taking a look at the photos being uploaded to Stuart’s cloud storage, Maura recognizes a rare plant that grows in a maintenance area of Franklin Park.
Jane: How do we get there?
Maura: Off the main path, you would travel approximately 40 degrees due west –
Jane: Nope.
Maura: OK. Oh, if you start where the butterflies nest every spring –
Jane: How would I know where butterflies nest?
Maura: Well, you would know if you went on these hikes with me.
Jane’s not so great at the part of a relationship that involves indulging your significant other’s hobbies, but she’ll get there – and hopefully sooner rather than later, as they need to get to the location before the phone gets turned off.
At the park, Jane goes toe to toe with a pack of skateboarders, and when the one with the phone escapes on his board, Nina derails him with a well-placed swing of a metal gate. Apparently she’s not only tech-savvy, but also kind of awesome in the field. “Holiday’s a badass!” Jane exclaims delightedly. The boy claims he found the phone on the trail near where Stuart was killed and had nothing to do with the murder, but at the end of the day, Nina’s still a badass.
Credit: goodnightkate @ Tumblr
The fringe returns
So, they have two thieves but no suspects. Remember that jealous husband who was threatening Stuart? Turns out his wife, Heather, isn’t exactly the sanest banana in the bunch. In fact, it seems she was stalking Stuart – but how did she get his personal details? That’s where Evan comes in. As well as supplementing his income by burglarizing Your Perfect Mate clients, he also sold information about the company’s employees to several people, including Heather. Jane, Frankie and Korsak rush over to Heather and Rick’s home to find Heather has torched the place with gasoline and is about to light her house on fire, along with her husband. Long story short, she confused fantasy with reality, lashed out at Stuart for not responding to her affections in real life, and ended up killing him – and she’s about to do the same to Rick because he threatened to leave her. She tosses the lighter in the air, but Korsak averts disaster by catching it. Looks like Nina’s badassery is catching.
With the crime of the week neatly solved, it’s time for Jane and Maura to join the gang at the Dirty Robber, where Korsak will finally introduce them to his life coach-turned-girlfriend, Kiki. Despite Maura’s protestations, Jane’s wearing her fringe jacket because her other jacket got gasoline on it, and before they head to the bar, Maura has an announcement to make.
If it wasn’t for you, Jane, and your family, I think I would probably be one of those people that’s sitting home on a Friday night reading medical journals, and instead I’m heading out for the evening surrounded by friends.
All together now: Awwwwwww.
After spending some time with Kiki, Korsak and the Rizzolis, Maura ducks out to meet her father at that lecture. It may not be a gooey Rizzles ending, but it’s cute nonetheless.
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