What I’m Watching: Rizzoli & Isles

Rizzoli & Isles: Season 1, Episode 8 “I’m Your Boogie Man” (B)

I’ve officially decided, after eight episodes of this series, that it really needs to be classified as a guilty pleasure rather than a genuinely good show. There are so many reasons for this; the first being that each case is even more sensational than the next, and now we have a serial killer manipulating a woman who got plastic surgery from inside prison. It’s definitely interesting, but hardly believable. This show also seems incapable of having supporting plotlines not related to Jane since Frankie’s shot at true love turns out to be a crazy follower of Hoyt’s intent on killing her new boyfriend just to pay tribute to the man who killed her husband in front of her. I expected Lola, played by Scottie Thompson of “NCIS” season four fame, to stick around for much longer given how much of an impact Jeanne Benoit had on Tony DiNozzo’s life. Hoyt’s ability to smell fear is more than a little ridiculous, though having the ultra-creepy Michael Massee, who has also been uber-villainous on “24” and “Flash Forward,” play the guy helps matters considerably. I would definitely question the validity of having the quirky, sunny Maura interrogate Hoyt, as well as the ease with which he was extracted from a maximum security prison to be questioned, unsupervised, by outsiders. But of course that’s what there is to love about this show – it doesn’t have to make sense all of the time, as long as it’s entertaining and engaging, which it most definitely is.