“Rizzoli & Isles”: Looking For Buddy, Got Chum

When I first heard that TNT was putting together a small screen drama with two female leads I was hopeful, even though I wondered if another investigative cop show wasn’t a bit of a platitude.  Billed as a one-two punch crime solving sisterhood, I considered the potential and tuned in.  I have watched the recently aired episodes, and I am just going to jump right in here and say it, I was hoping for a female buddy series, and pretty much got chum.

My problem is not with Angie Harmon’s cop character, Rizzoli.  She is your typical, run of the mill, over the top, bad-ass, supermodel cop.  My problem is with Sasha Alexander’s medical examiner.  She is supposed to be intelligent and quirky, but comes off merely absurd.

I assume this character is targeted in type to the Fox network’s Temperance Brennan (Bones), but falls well short of the three dimensional mark.  I crave unconventional, smart characters, but this one takes ridiculous to the sublime.  Smart people do often times step to the beat of a different drummer, but this character is a one-woman band of social syncopation.  I for one, expect more.

It probably comes as no surprise that the best part of this show for me is the relationship between Rizzoli and her Italian mother, Angela, played by Lorraine Bracco.  Brassy, intrusive, and over-lovingly nagging, Bracco is a soprano among the low notes.   I love her as the overbearing mom.  Perhaps in coming episodes we will see more of Angela and her perfect rigatoni and less of the fusilli being cooked up between Rizzoli and Isles.