Rizzoli & Isles

Overview

Jane Rizzoli (a Boston homicide detective) and Maura Isles (the chief medical examiner) couldn’t be more different. And they couldn’t be a more perfect couple. From spending all their free time with each other to trading clothes, they bantered and bickered like an old married couple.

Except they happened to be totally, 100%, straight.

That would be fine, except the show admitted to totally playing up the queerness.

As Angie Harmon (Rizzoli) put it to TV Guide:

“From the beginning, that lively chemistry – along with the fact that the characters can’t maintain steady relationships – has some fans wondering whether there was more between Rizzoli and Isles than just dusting for fingerprints. […] Alexander just smiles. “There’s nothing gay about them,” she says. “What’s gay? That Jane has a raspy voice?” Still. Harmon admits they do play up the tension sometimes. A poster for the new season features the women languidly stretched out together on a picnic blanket, for example. “Sometimes we’ll do a take for that demo,” Harmon admits. “I’ll brush by [Maura’s] blouse or maybe linger for a moment. As long as we’re not being accused of being homophobic, which is not in any way true and completely infuriating, I’m OK with it.”

Sigh.

If they had kept it at hints, that would be fine. But then they went into this weird place where they were quite seriously straight. They’d queerbait and then be aggressively heterosexual. To the point that it wasn’t believable. We get it, Jane. You like penises.

The series ended with Jane and Maura, sitting in a bed together, talking about going to Paris together.

Nope, totally not gay at all.

Notable Queer-Centric Episodes

Season one, Episode six - "I Kissed a Girl": A very special, very gay episode, where the killer, the victim, and everyone else is gay. Maura goes undercover as a gay waitress and Jane pretends to be gay to find the killer.