Rizzoli & Isles 6×18 – A Shot in the Dark – Recap

Before ending with a bang, Rizzoli & Isles 6×18 saw Jane being a badass, Maura dusting off her profiling skills, Korsak getting married, and Kent being irrelevant. Read on for our recap of the season 6 finale, “A Shot in the Dark.”

The Maine suspect

As this helpful mural in the opening shot informs us, Rizzoli & Isles 6×18 kicks off in Maine. We see a vintage gold car stop at a rural gas station, and a state trooper pulls up as one of the car’s occupants heads inside the building. When the trooper knocks on the car window, he’s promptly shot dead before the car peels off into the distance, leaving the passenger behind.

Down south (hey, it’s not often you can say that about Boston), Maura gets some green tea while Jane favors a four-shot espresso “because these stupid cups won’t hold five.” What is it they say about how opposites attract? Hashtag Rizzles. Although Jane’s love of coffee has been well established in this series, four shots seems a little excessive even by her standards, and Maura correctly surmises that the detective isn’t sleeping. Instead, she’s stewing over Alice Sands (née McFadden), her police academy classmate who has some kind of vendetta against her, and the whole situation is causing her to feel “bad and mad and sad.” Just call her Dr. Seuss, I guess. “Strong feelings,” Maura muses. “Would you care to explore them?” For the record, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I hoped Jane would one day explore her feelings with Maura. Regardless, Jane’s more of a doer than a talker (yeah she is), so she heads off to figure out why Alice is stalking her, leaving Maura to forlornly call after her retreating figure, “It was nice having coffee with you…”

At BPD headquarters, Frankie tells Jane that when Alice was released from prison several days earlier, she was seen getting into a gold Plymouth Satellite. Well, there’s our gold car from the Rizzoli & Isles 6×18 opening scene. Korsak wants Jane to get some protection, but – as usual – Jane would rather charge into the eye of the storm than hang back on the sidelines. Besides, she points out, Korsak’s getting married that day, and she’s his best man. (I hope she wears a tux. Please, please wear a tux.)

As the black sheep in a family of highly decorated cops, Alice got a four-year sentence for dealing drugs, so Jane goes to speak with the officer who arrested her in hopes of getting a lead. Unfortunately, he’s not optimistic. “Good luck finding a drug ring that the drug unit couldn’t,” he scoffs. Luckily, Jane’s the type of person who takes that kind of comment as a challenge.

Meanwhile, the Maine murder makes its way into Nina’s database, and the investigators finally catch a break: The gold Plymouth belongs to a woman named Wendy who shared a cell with Alice. Video footage from the gas station indicates that Wendy was the passenger left behind, and although there’s no clear image of the driver, Jane’s sure it’s Alice. She storms off to Maine with Frankie in tow, growling, “It’s her turn to be chased.” In case the past six seasons haven’t made this clear, hopefully Rizzoli & Isles 6×18 drives home the fact that it is not a good idea to get on Jane Rizzoli’s bad side.

Dr. Isles is the best

Needless to say, Jane is in no mood to deal with a territorial Maine cop, but that’s exactly who she encounters at the crime scene. First, he declines Jane’s offer to share the BPD’s files on Alice and Wendy, and then he really takes things too far by insisting a local M.E. secure the evidence from the scene. “But Dr. Isles is the best,” Jane protests. You know that game that involves adding “in bed” to the end of every fortune from a fortune cookie? Let’s play that with what Jane just said.

Aaanyway, after Jane yells at the officer with little success, Maura tries a softer approach by calmly outlining the details of her abduction to a now much more sympathetic listener. When the cop’s walkie crackles to life with news that a search dog hit on a scent, the officer invites Jane to come with him, and Jane whispers her gratitude to Maura before striding after him.

Back in Boston, Korsak approaches the case from a different angle by heading to Alice’s father’s house. At first, the man is less than welcoming, but he opens up after Korsak plies him with a bottle of scotch (don’t we all?). Mr. McFadden tells Korsak that Alice was top of her class in high school, but quit the police academy after a lackluster performance. Alice proceeded to head down the wrong path, got in trouble with the law, and became estranged from her family. Her father hasn’t spoken to her in years, but he gives Korsak some boxes containing relics of her accomplishments from back when she was still the golden child.

Following his visit with Mr. McFadden, Korsak heads over to the Dirty Robber, where bride-to-be Kiki is bickering with sister Mimi (I love the names in that family). The couple is almost ready to tie the knot, but there are some minor issues standing in their way, like the fact that their best man isn’t in attendance. Korsak reassures Kiki that Jane’s probably right around the corner, when in actuality, she’s roaming through the woods of Maine.

Speaking of those woods, Wendy gets the drop on Jane by popping up behind her with a gun and announcing, “You’re taller than I expected.” Jane’s heard that a lot – mostly at in-person meetings with women from online dating sites back before she met Maura. Wendy forces Jane to drop her gun, but Jane has another weapon: the power of persuasion.

“You know what Alice did to me? Can you imagine what she’s going to do to you when she doesn’t need you anymore? She left you at the station. She left you out here to fend for yourself. You’d better start thinking about yourself, Wendy, because Alice only thinks about herself.”

Wendy says she and Alice love each other (because why pass up a chance to use the Psycho Lesbian trope?), but the seeds of doubt Jane plants are strong enough to get Wendy to hand over her gun.

Later, Jughead

So remember that time Jane was supposed to show up to Korsak’s wedding? Oh, yeah, that time is right now. However, given the reason behind Jane’s tardiness, Korsak’s not mad. After all, he points out, “You had a gun to your head; it’s not like you stopped to catch a movie.” And it’s not like Korsak and Kiki’s friends and family are stiffly seated in church pews – rather, they’re holed up at the Dirty Robber with an open bar that Mimi’s taking full, gleeful advantage of.

While Jane’s on the phone with Korsak, she gets interrupted by a call from Nina. Apparently Wendy’s family owns a cabin up by the Canadian border, but although there are signs that Alice and Wendy were planning to stay there for a while, neither Alice nor the car is on the premises. Wendy refuses to cooperate with Jane, but she inadvertently reveals an important piece of information: Alice has a son. As Nina works to track down the son’s location, Jane heads back to Boston, but the wedding’s been postponed. Sounds like this cute sign on the Robber’s bulletin board is about to get recycled:

At headquarters, Nina tells Jane and Korsak that she thinks she’s figured out Alice’s plan. There’s an APB out on Alice in the U.S., but with dyed hair, she can pass for Wendy – and, sure enough, someone using Wendy’s ID recently crossed the border into Canada.

In the lab, Kent’s reading Archie comics stashed in one of the boxes that Alice’s father gave Korsak while Maura’s doing, you know, actual helpful stuff to further the case. Kent then proceeds to alternate between standing way too close to Maura and paying way too close attention to the comics. He says something about how he attended an all-boy boarding school and used the comics as “a great primer for relationships,” but I don’t care because he’s Kent and he’s irrelevant. Just then…

Kent: “Here comes Jane!”
Maura: “Thank God.”
Kent: “Well, I guess we’ll continue our conversation later, Betty, and I’ll see you later too, Veronica.”
Jane: “Later, Jughead.”

Well, I think we know who won that round of verbal sparring.

A shot in the dark

With Kent duly banished, Jane turns her attention to a wall of the lab that’s currently hosting a psychological profile of Alice Sands, which Maura handily put together using the contents of the boxes from Mr. McFadden. The profile indicates that Alice was a popular, smart, driven woman under a lot of pressure – from both her family and herself – to succeed at the police academy. Unfortunately for her, Jane was in her class and basically kicked ass at everything. (Raise your hand if you’re surprised.) When Alice got incarcerated, she found herself with a lot of time on her hands that she apparently used to plot her revenge against Jane.

After Nina works her magic, Korsak reschedules his wedding again to track down Alice’s unofficially adopted son, Eric. The college student insists that Alice is a legitimate businesswoman who was framed by the BPD, but Korsak and Jane are skeptical. As Nina digs into irregularities pertaining to Alice’s American and Canadian businesses, Frankie appears with news: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have tracked Alice to a two-block radius. USA 0, Canada 1. However, Korsak and his colleagues’ sleuthing will have to wait because the wedding is on, and the third time truly is the charm. Nina brings her wedding hat, Frankie brings a date (much to Nina’s disappointment), and Jane brings… well, not a tux, but a pretty nice dress, all things considered.

The newly married couple takes to the dance floor, and although Jane and Maura could be dancing together too, they sit on the sidelines because we don’t deserve nice things. But, you know what? At least we didn’t have to get an eyeful of Kent “swinging his kilt.” (Incidentally, our two faves do end up dancing together for one literal second before Kent awkwardly paws at Maura’s hips and Jane heads back to her seat. Hey, Kent, how about you unhand your boss and back off, buddy? This is Rizzles time.)

Hilariously, Jane and Maura get around to discussing marriage later in the evening, while sitting in a booth at the Robber. No, really, they do – this isn’t one of my far-fetched interpretations. “At my wedding, you’re going to wear a midnight blue, strapless maid of honor dress,” Maura tells Jane, except I heard “at our wedding” and “strapless wedding dress” instead, so, yeah, I’m pretty pumped about that.

Back to Alice in Mountie Land. She gives the RCMP the slip and crosses the border by stowing away in the back of a van. Come to think of it, we don’t see any actual proof that it’s Alice, so this may be a curveball. Anyway, cut to the Robber, where Jane is giving a toast (“I’m no expert on love or marriage – or toast, actually, now that I think about it…”). Oblivious to Alice’s (or whoever’s) proximity, everyone congregates outside to throw rice at the newlyweds, and it’s then that Jane sees a red dot of light flicker across Kiki and Korsak’s chests. She promptly sounds the alarm, but did everyone take cover in time? We’ll have to wait until the show’s seventh and last season to find out, as Rizzoli & Isles 6×18 ends with a black screen and a gunshot.