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''Rizzoli & Isles'' is a show on {{TNT}} set in UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} with two of the department's hardest working women cracking the city's most gruesome murders. These two friends are as different from one another as can be. Jane Rizzoli ([[Series/LawAndOrder Angie Harmon]]) is a no-nonsense cop with an attitude and tomboy inclinations. Dr. Maura Isles ([[Series/{{NCIS}} Sasha Alexander]]) is a brilliant though eccentric medical examiner, much more feminine and milder than Jane. As odd of a pairing as they may be, Jane and Maura are close friends who are always there for one another and have each other's back. With such a set up, it is not surprising to note that the show has yet to fail UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest to date.

Based on the Rizzoli/Isles novels by Tess Gerritsen.

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!!This show contains examples of:
* ActorAllusion: While the detectives are investigating a college murder, Frost asks, "Where did you go to college, Korsak?" Korsak's answer: "Didn't, watched ''AnimalHouse'' a few times." Korsak is played by Bruce [=McGill=], who played D-Day in that movie.
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: The books state that Jane is fairly plain. Angie Harmon, her actress, is a former model.
** Detective Korsak. Hardly a male model in his TV incarnation, but still much better looking than he's described in the books.
* AdaptationDistillation / CompressedAdaptation: All of the events of the second book, "The Apprentice", along with the killing of Stark/The Dominator, happen in the pilot episode.
* {{Adorkable}}: Maura, especially when she responds to stress with "Google mouth" recitation of facts.
* AlwaysMurder: Justified, as the leads are a homicide detective and the city's chief medical examiner, respectively.
* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: Angela Rizzoli, so very much. It becomes even worse when she takes a job at the police station's cafe.
* AscendedExtra[=/=]EnsembleDarkhorse: Rizzoli is actually a secondary character in ''The Surgeon'', the first book in the series, while Isles doesn't exist at all, and author Gerritsen had planned to kill her off before positive reader feedback changed her mind. Similarly, when Isles makes her first appearance in ''The Sinner'' (3rd book of the series), she's a minor character until her role enlarges to be almost equal with Rizzoli in most books, or the primary character in several.
* AutopsySnackTime: Korsak is shown chowing down on a doughnut while watching Dr. Isles perform an autopsy in the first episode.
** Jane does not like the idea of Maura keeping her food in the "dead fridge".
* BadassBookworm: After a 30-second gun-handling lesson, Maura asks, "Jane? Do I look ''badass''?" Um, no, not really (for one thing, the gun's clearly unloaded and chamber cleared).
* BareYourMidriff: Rizzoli's workout outfit, particularly in the cold open of "I Kissed a Girl", and ''damn''. You could bounce a quarter off her abs!
* BaseballEpisode: The second episode starts with a softball game between Robbery and Homicide, which is interrupted by the dumping of a dead body from the nearby freeway overpass. Notably, both ladies are ''hilariously'' bad, though Isles is considerably worse; Rizzoli's attempts to teach her how to swing properly set up a ChekhovsGun later on.
** BatterUp: ...And that would be the aforementioned ChekhovsGun.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Rizzoli and Grant.
-->'''Grant''': I didn't cheat off your [[GirlNextDoor catechism test]].\\
'''Rizzoli''': I saw you looking at it!\\
'''Grant''': You saw me looking, but [[LongingLook I wasn't looking at your test]].
* BewareTheNiceOnes: According to the show, [[spoiler:many good cops on the Boston Strangler case have died young and/or snapped in an explosive manner]].
* BlackSheep: We have the three Rizzoli siblings: Detective Jane, Officer Frankie... and Tommy the felon.
* BlahBlahBlah: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]]; Jane mentions how sometimes [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Maura goes off on a tangent when they're talking.]]
-->'''Rizzoli:''' When I talk, do you hear, "Blah blah blah, Maura, blah blah blah"?
* BloodSplatteredWeddingDress: "Cuts Like a Knife" opens with a bride staggering into a wedding chapel, he dress soaked with blood from her cut throat.
* BrainsAndBrawn
* BurnTheWitch: When someone starts murdering members of a coven in "Bloodlines", the first victim is burnt at the stake.
* CaliforniaDoubling: The show is so obviously filmed in LA it borders on embarassing.
* CallBack: Oh, man, "I'm Your Boogey Man" is made of this trope. [[spoiler:Somebody puts a road flare in front of Jane's apartment building, indicative of how she scarred Hoyt in "See One, Do One, Teach One."]] Later, we find that that somebody is a kidnap victim who [[spoiler:Hoyt tortures to the point of suffering Stockholm Syndrome (not to mention he killed her abusive husband). Having gotten Frankie, Jr., to fall in love with her, she captures both Rizzoli siblings. While Jane tries to explain to the victim that Hoyt doesn't love her and is just using her to get Jane,]] she lets her guard down long enough for a struggle to ensue between herself and Frankie, Jr., for the gun. While they are both down on the ground, Frankie, Jr., gets the gun and [[spoiler:kills her with two shots to the chest, even though his wrists were duct taped. In "See One, Do One, Teach One," Jane and Hoyt's apprentice were on the ground going for a gun. Jane got to it first and, with her wrists duct taped, she killed the apprentice with two shots to the chest]].
* TheCastShowoff: One episode sees Maura demonstrating fluency in Serbian. Sasha Alexander has a Serbian mother.
* CatchPhrase: Amongst the obscenely rich Fairfield family, "Brothers don't kill brothers." [[spoiler:Garrett Fairfield, Maura's ex-boyfriend, obviously thinks half-brothers aren't protected by this saying]].
* CannotTellALie: Maura says she can't, and it's true, at least under normal circumstances.
* CliffHanger: Why do we have to wait nine months to see [[spoiler:whether or not Jane shooting through herself to kill the corrupt cop took her own life]]? WHY?!
** [[LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt Like They Would Really Do It]]...
* CopAndScientist
* DaChief: Korsak, though he inspires fear in no one.
* DaddyDNATest: Frankie once had a girlfriend that ran out on him [[GoldDigger sometime after he bought her a car]]. Understandably both Jane and Angela are not fond of her, and when she shows up again with a little girl in tow, they want proof that the girl in question really is Frankie's. Jane smuggles out a plastic cup to use for DNA testing, and Angela sneaks out something else. Eventually they learn Frankie himself already ordered a paternity test - and it turns out that he isn't the father.
** A test is eventually performed to find out whether Tommy or [[spoiler: Frank Sr.]] is the father of Lydia's baby.
* DeadlyDoctor: The Surgeon
* TheDeterminator: If the Season 2 premiere is any indication, this trope describes Jane. After watching a soldier get blown up by a car bomb minutes after the soldier was honored for her heroics in Afghanistan, Jane ignores all commands to stay home and nurse her wounds from the Season 1 finale, as well as other roadblocks, to try and solve the case.
* DirtyCop: "What Doesn't Kill You" revolves around the hunt for dirty cops in the BPD.
* DoorStepBaby: In "Melt My Heart to Stone", Lydia leaves her baby on Maura's doorstep.
* DoubleStandard: In the books the series is based on, [[AdaptationalAttractiveness plain Jane]] is jealous and resentful of beautiful women and contemptuous of any man who is attracted to them. But she spends the first book lusting after her handsome partner and when he falls in love with the lovely Catherine Cordell, she accuses of him of [[AllMenArePerverts "falling for the same thing every guy falls for - tits and ass"]]. In a later book, when she meets the gorgeous FBI agent Gabriel Dean, she falls head over heels for him in seconds. So as a woman (and an average-looking one, at that), it's apparently perfectly okay for ''her'' to fall in love with someone attractive, but when a man does it, [[AllMenArePerverts he's a shallow jerk.]]?
* EmbarrassingFirstName: Det. Frost's first name is Barold. He normally goes by Barry.
* EmbarrassingMiddleName: How Jane feels about her own, which is [[spoiler: Clementine]].
* EnhanceButton: Apparently sophisticated enough to expand an image caught by a webcam reflected off of a person's eyeball.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Paddy Doyle doesn't like how the "new mob" handles business; he mentions how they would've never killed women and framed an innocent worker.
* EveryoneKnowsMorse: That Maura, Jane and Korsak all know Morse code saves Maura and Jane's lives in "Dirty Little Secret". Trapped in a submerging car with a damaged mobile phone that can text symbols, Jane uses dots and dashes to text their coordinates (which Maura can recite) in Morse to Korsak.
* ExpospeakGag: At least OnceAnEpisode.
* EyeScream: [[spoiler:The Surgeon left Jane alone in a van with a road flare. When he comes back to finish her, she's playing possum and he's curious as to why smoke is coming from underneath her. Jane then jabs the Surgeon in the eye WITH THE LIT END OF THE FLARE!]]
** Maura extracting vitreous fluid from the eye with a syringe. Frost in particular does not take to watching her do it.
* FairCop: Jane and Frankie, the Rizzoli siblings, are slightly better than average-looking. This is in contrast to the novels, where it is made a point that Jane is plain, and feels insecure around beautiful women. Conversely, FBI Agent Gabriel Dean is described as very attractive in the books but can be considered around average in the show.
* {{Fanservice}}: Maura playing baseball in a water-resistant, skin-tight suit. It has, shall we say, quite the effect on guys.
** One for each gender in "Money for Nothing." For the men, Maura in a tight running suit. For the women, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, shirtless and in a swimsuit.
** Naturally, the episode [[HomoeroticSubtext "I Kissed a Girl"]] oozes of this trope. You have Jane flirting with numerous suspects [[spoiler:and being kissed on the neck by murderer]], Maura wearing a tight waitress dress that allows her to show off maximum cleavage [[spoiler:and a baby bump]], and Jane and Maura discussing lesbianism (Jane said she would "flip" sexual preferences for front row Boston Celtics tickets) and telling each other that they're [[BlatantLies not each others' type]] ([[SarcasmMode riiiiiiiight!]]). Oh, and they are doing this [[ShipTease in Jane's bed]]! But there is more than the LesYay that qualifies for fan service. There's the yoga scenes. Maura is once again in a skin-tight workout suit, while Jane is in yoga pants and a training bra, showing off abs that you could balance a quarter on ([[HotMom keep in mind that Angie Harmon has three kids]]).
** How many times can Jane and Maura be seen wearing tight clothes on this show? They do it again in "Born to Run."
** Maura's fashion sense won't let Jane go to a fancy restaurant in her workaday outfit, so she has them ''trade their entire outfits''. Not ''exactly'' SexyShirtSwitch, but it's [[FetishFuel something]]. Also not that Maura is shorter than Jane, leading to [[ShesGotLegs the predictable]].
* FictionalCounterpart: The Massachusetts Marathon standing in for the Boston Marathon.
* FictionalVideoGame: "Vikings of the Realm" in "Virtual Love".
* FlippingTheTable: In "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", Korsak and Frost attempt to arrest a suspect at an underground gambling club. He flips the table as part of his attempt to escape.
* FriendToAllLivingThings: Korsak is constantly rescuing animals. In fact, this is how Josephine "Joe" Friday and Jane were introduced before Jane took in Joe.
* FunWithAcronyms: Rizzoli and Isles run in the Massachusetts Marathon representing '''P'''rofessionals for '''U'''nderprivileged '''K'''ids of '''E'''xcellence. Of course, ''someone'' had to lampshade it...
-->'''Jane:''' I am NOT running as [[LadyGaga Lady Puke Gaga]]!
* GilliganCut: In "Seventeen Ain't So Sweet", we cut from Jane telling Maura that there is no way she is going to her high school reunion, to Jane and Maura at Jane's high school reunion.
* GPSEvidence: Maura was able to crack a case by determining the poison used in the murder came from a flower native to Boston. Jane was able to track the killer because the flower was growing in the front yard of someone who was interviewed earlier in the episode.
* HandOrObjectUnderwear: In "Class Action Satisfaction", Jane and Maura have to take a decontamination shower after being exposed to a potential pathogen. After coming out of the shower, Jane tries to keep a medical waste bin between her and anyone else.
* HasTwoMommies: [[spoiler:Frost's]] Mom and roommate come to town. The others figure out they are a couple, but are afraid to say anything. Turns out [[spoiler:Frost's]] knew all along, was just waiting for his mom to say something.
* HehHehYouSaidX: Jane seems to take great pleasure from the word "boubou", an item of West African traditional ceremonial dress.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Rizzoli and Isles, unsurprisingly, although the producers seem happy to [[FanYay milk]] the LesYay angle as well.
* HideYourPregnancy: Sasha Alexander is pregnant with her second child. This is expected to happen during season one, but she's delivering during the hiatus before filming for season two starts. Though sometimes, they aren't doing much to hide it. For "I Kissed A Girl", Maura was in baggy shirts or scrubs for half the episode and skintight outfits for the other half.
* HollywoodNewEngland: Mostly averted, but enter Donnie Wahlberg and you half expect him to say, "Chowdah." The weird part is that he's actually ''from'' Boston, but his regular accent isn't nearly that broad. It's more than made up by the extras, most of whom have very thick Boston accents.
* HollywoodVoodoo: Averted, in they're doing a religion that is similar to real voodoo, but not exactly the same. The practitioners perform exorcisms, and Maura says their practices are consistent with Catholicism in the Cape Verde Islands and other West African nations.
* HonestJohnsDealership: Angela seems to be magnetized to these. First, there's the car dealership where she swapped out her old Buick for a lemon. Then we have her as a spokesperson for "Polynesian Anti-Aging Juice" (really 98% water and 2% non-harmful materials, according to Maura). She is effective as an advertiser, though. She sold two bottles to Korsak and one to a neighbor (however, said neighbor also fell for a Nigerian scam).
* HotChickInABadassSuit: Maura seems to have channeled it when she and Jane exchanged clothes, because she got hit on twice. By women.
* HotScientist: Maura to the nines.
* HumanShield: See CliffHanger above.
* IHaveYourWife: Done by the villain in "My Own Worst Enemy".
* IKnowYoureWatchingMe: Hoyt, just before escaping from custody, looks up at the surveillance camera, and puts his palms up. He intends it as a message to Jane that he knows she's seeing it, and is daring her to come after him.
* ImpaledPalm: Jane still bears the scars from when The Surgeon literally pinned her hands to the ground. [[spoiler:She gets her revenge later in the episode by putting a bullet into both of his hands at once, telling him, "We match."]]
* InformedAttribute: Jane describes herself as strong and athletic and Angie Harmon has a lithe, muscular frame. She may not look it at first glance, but the wiry kind counts.
* InformedSelfDiagnosis: In "Dirty Little Secret'', Maura accurately diagnoses what is wrong with her injured leg and then talks Jane through what she has to do in order to relieve the pressure so she won't lose the leg.
* InsufferableGenius: [[TwoWordsObviousTrope Three Words: Maura's Google Mouth.]] She doesn't do it on purpose, but it drives Jane batty nonetheless.
* InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy: Maura performs an emergency tracheotomy on someone who is delivered to the morgue not quite dead in "This Is How A Heart Breaks".
* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation: Maura reveals that her childhood wasn't exactly parties and ponies in "I'm Your Boogie Man." In her own words, "there was a lot of benign neglect" - her parents had their own lives to lead that frequently didn't involve the mundane details of parenthood, and they didn't much care what Maura did as long as she kept good grades. As a result, Maura buried herself in schoolwork, to the point that she gave them the brochures to send her away to boarding school. ''At ten years old.''
* InternalAffairs: In "What Doesn't Kill You", Internal Affairs investigates Jane in the aftermath of her shooting of Paddy Doyle. Her bending of the rules to protect Maura makes it look like she might have been in Doyle's pocket. Ultimately, Doyle's chief mole inside the police is revealed to be [[spoiler:the head of Internal Affairs]].
* IrrationalHatred
* ItTastesLikeFeet: After drinking the coffee in the cafeteria, Jane tells Stanley he should take his dirty socks out of the coffee maker.
** In "Love the Way You Lie", Frankie complains that a health drink tastes like "Sweat and rotten celery". {{Lampshaded}} when Frost tells him to stop drinking it, and that he also should stop drinking his own sweat.
* ItWorksBetterWithBullets: In "What Doesn't Kill You", a DirtyCop attempts to shoot Jane with a pistol that had been taken from evidence storage. It doesn't work because, knowing that someone was taking guns from the evidence, Jane had removed the firing pins from all the guns.
* JerkAss: Grant in spades. Was a JerkWithAHeartOfGold for Jane.
* JurisdictionFriction: Averted for the most part. It's more prominent in "The Apprentice", where Jane does not appreciate the involvement of the FBI and Gabriel Dean in particular.
* KillerCop: The series had a detective who killed a bunch of women with the same names as the original Boston Strangler victims. His purpose in so doing was to frame the person he believed was really the Boston Strangler. He had worked the original murder case and didn't believe that the person who confessed was really the killer.
* LighterAndSofter: The books that the series is based on are much, ''much'' [[DarkerAndEdgier grimmer]].
* LittleBlackDress: Jane gets one in "Sympathy for the Devil". She is momentarily distracted by how good she looks in it when she sees herself in the mirror.
* LivingDollCollector: The killer in "Welcome to the Dollhouse".
* LovelyAngels: This show has this in spades, drawing favorable comparisons to the doomed pilot ''Nikki & Nora.''
* MissingEpisode: Apparently there are two, according to {{Twitter}}.
* MistakenForGay: Averted. Jane and Maura pretended to be gay once in order to put off an ardent admirer of Maura's, and Jane has gone undercover as a lesbian, but no one has ever assumed they were partners in that sense.
* MoodWhiplash: The second episode of the first season has an oddly-uniformed Maura Isles running happily to first base when a body is dropped off an overpass onto the far side of the field.
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: The Surgeon and his apprentice.
* MurderByMistake: The first victim in "Rebel Without a Pause" was hit by a ricochet of a shot intended for someone else.
* MyBelovedSmother: Angela seems to be filling this role perfectly already. She seems to show favoritism towards Frankie, Jr., when she blames Jane for her own basketball-related nose break, even though Frankie, Jr., admits it was his fault. Later, as Jane is holed up in her apartment during the hunt for the Surgeon and his apprentice, Angela makes an unannounced visit with the intent of staying the night. She gives Jane grief for being a cop, making Frankie, Jr., want to follow in her footsteps. This causes Jane to spend the rest of the night at Maura's.
** Bonus points go to the set-up date with Grant in episode 3, which Angela engineered by telling Jane it was a dinner with family friends and Grant that it was a class reunion. So egregious, the two of them agree within minutes that the whole thing was a very, very bad idea.
** The welcome-home party in the season finale. Angela gives Jane and Frankie Jr. no end of grief about declining to attend the party she's thrown for their ne'er-do-well older brother Tommy, who is being released from prison. [[spoiler:The whole thing backfires spectacularly and painfully; Tommy apparently decides to resume his profligate ways, while both Jane and Frankie Jr. are critically injured. Worse yet, while Angela is crying over Tommy, she has no idea what's happened to her other two children.]]
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: In "This Is How A Heart Breaks", Maura dates a sculptor who sculpts in the nude.
* NameAndName
* NewOldFlame: Dr. Ian Faulkner, the never before mentioned love of Maura's life in the second season episode "My Own Worst Enemy." Ian is wanted for questioning by Interpol because he makes a habit of illegally smuggling much needed drugs into third world countries. Maura worked with him for two years in Ethiopia and loves him though she knows they can never be together. She helps him get drugs to smuggle to Africa and lets him leave at the end of the episode, but sheds a few tears over him.
* NonIdleRich: While Rizzoli is working class, Isles comes from money and is clearly not hurting for any cash as seen from her wardrobe, apartment, and car. Referenced again in "Money For Nothing," when she casually comments that "most of my money is tied up in charitable endowments."
* NoSocialSkills: It can appear as though Maura is a perfect example of this trope, but it's more her strict honesty policy and wide-ranging knowledge that doesn't include social interactions. Yet she is perfectly good at flirting and dating etiquette, not to mention being more empathic than Jane. The street smart Rizzoli is always helping her in other areas.
-->'''Jane''': Did you ever like the same boy as your best friend? \\
'''Maura''': No. \\
'''Jane''': Did you ever ''have'' a best friend? \\
'''Maura''': (beat) No. \\
'''Jane''': (laughing) You would tell me if you were a cyborg, wouldn't you? \\
'''Maura''': (thoughtfully) No, I don't think I would.
* TheNotLoveInterest: Maura for Jane.
* OddCouple: Yup, that would be the titular pair.
* OneHitPolykill: see CliffHanger above.
* OnlySaneWoman: Jane qualifies, given how often the expression on her face resembles that of someone in the process of herding cats.
* PapaWolf: Maura's biological father Paddy Doyle stabbed a rival mobster in the heart with an icepick to prevent him from killing Maura the way he'd already killed Doyle's son. On the dead man's chest was a blood-stained photo of Doyle holding Maura as a baby, pinned there with the icepick. Doyle's message: "Don't mess with my family." Doyle told Maura to call him with the murderer's name and he'd "send the man a message" but Maura couldn't do it, even if it meant she would be murdered. It's strongly implied that [[spoiler:Jane Rizzoli's ex-partner Vince Korsak called Doyle to protect Maura.]]
* PatrickStewartSpeech: An odd one in "I Kissed A Girl". Maura explains her love of luxury items by saying that she buys the finer things in life as a tribute to human ingenuity and artistry that goes into making things like her finely knit cable sweater and her couture high heels. TruthInTelevision, many high-end and bespoke items are made with great care and hours upon hours of effort poured into them.
* [[HandsomeLech Pretty Lech]]: Some of Maura's remarks can come across as this.
-->'''Maura''': (''regarding "Mega" Vega, a baseball player'') I'd like to "mega" him.
* ProductPlacement: Thanks to a sponsorship deal between [=MillerCoors=] and Turner Broadcasting, ''Rizzoli & Isles'' is sponsored by MGD 64. MGD 64 is Jane's drink of choice.
** Hoyt is reading Tess Gerritsen's latest in the prison hospital. Gerritsen, of course, is the creator of the characters.
** Dr. Scholls For Her has popped up quite egregiously in the most recent season.
* PutOnABus: Grant's job in Washington. Also possibly Agent Dean, as he got packed off to Afghanistan.
** TheBusCameBack at the end of season 2 for Dean, but due to the pickup of Billy Burke (Dean)'s NBC pilot ''Revolution'' he was PutOnABus to Washington in 3x01.
* RaceLift: Detective Frost is white in the books, African-American in the TV series.
* RagingStiffie: In "This Is How A Heart Breaks", Maura realises a 'corpse' is not dead when he gets an erection and she feels a pulse in his penis.
* RecursiveCanon: In one shot Hoyt is reading the latest ''Rizzoli and Isles'' novel, with its title clearly visible.
* RipTailoring: In "Don't Hate the Player", Isles swaps clothes with Rizzoli so Rizzoli can meet a suspect at a fancy restaurant. When Rizzoli complains that the shoes are too tight, Isles uses a scalpel to cut the ends of the shoes off, turning them into peekaboo toes.
* RuleOfPerception: In "Rebel without a Pause", a laser beam -used to establish a bullet's trajectory- is visible in full daylight.
* RunningGag: Korsak loves to tell funny but disgusting stories (no confirmation on legitimacy) about the murders he's investigated to get Frost to puke.
** Frost puking in general seems to be a [[IncrediblyLamePun Running Gag.]]
** Rizzoli always asking "Is this from the good fridge or the dead people fridge?" before taking lunch from Isles.
** Everyone misidentifying Bass as a "turtle." [[InsistentTerminology Tortoise! He's a tortoise!]]
** Jane constantly tries to make Maura guess things, which the latter doesn't like to do.
** Maura breaking out in hives whenever she tries to lie, or even withhold information.
* SarcasmFailure: On Maura. She knows the ''definition'' of sarcasm, but doesn't seem to actually pick up on it.
* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: Maura turning her back on the high society scene to work as a medical examiner. When Jane calls her out on her privileged background, she demonstrates quite convincingly that she "has [their] backs," using her connections to obtain several vital clues to the murder.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: At least that's what one guy thought in "Born to Run." Almost a decade and a half ago, he and two of his friends gang raped and beat a fifteen-year old and recorded the entire thing on tape and got off without a blemish on their record because the guy's rich father bought off the prosecutor.
* SensitivityTraining: Jane discovers she is an "equal opportunity offender" because she offends everyone when she is finally forced to go to sensitivity training in the second season episode "Gone Daddy Gone." None of the cops take the sensitivity training seriously. Jane spends most of the episode trying to hide from the sensitivity training instructor; Vince Korsak wants her to go only because he stands to get something out of it if she does go and a cop who had previously gone to sensitivity training is overheard insulting a suspect.
* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget: In "Rebel Without a Pause", a sniper misses their shot at their target on their first attempt and kills someone else. They do another random shooting to make the police think this a series of random attacks before making another attempt on their original target.
* ShipperOnDeck: A platonic example, Jane's coworkers seem to be this for her and Maura.
* ShipTease: At least once an episode between Jane and Maura, most prevalent in "I Kissed a Girl."
** It reaches new heights in Season 2 episode 3 "Sailor Man", with Jane and Maura pretending to be a couple to get rid of an... unpleasant suitor for Maura. It works.
* ShootTheHostage: [[spoiler: ''By'' the hostage, namely Jane]]. Yeek.
* ShoutOut: Already quite a few to ''{{Dragnet}}''. Jane set her phone to use the show's theme song as a ringtone when Frost calls. And in a gender-flipping version of WeNamedTheMonkeyJack, Korsak rescues a dog from a freeway and names her Joe Friday (Joe being short for Josephine).
** ''Rizzoli & Isles'' is one of many shows where many of the episode titles are shout-outs to popular songs. See [[ShoutOut/RizzoliAndIsles the page]] for a list.
* SlapSlapKiss: Seems to be the type of relationship Jane and Grant have. They were at each others' throats since Catholic school, but harbored romantic feelings for many years.
* SlashFic: Go to FanFictionDotNet, and you will see that almost every story is Jane/Maura. It's not hard to see why these two are constantly being shipped, with all the heavy-duty LesYay and whatnot.
* SmartPeoplePlayChess: Played straight for Maura, and subverted for Tommy. And [[spoiler: for Jane]] as well, pretending [[ObfuscatingStupidity not knowing anything about chess]] when they were the one who taught Tommy how to play.
* SorryImGay: Maura doesn't know how to break up with a [[NiceGuy well-meaning but boring suitor]], so she and Jane dial the LesYay UpToEleven and pretend to be lovers.
* TheSociopath: Charles Hoyt.
* TheSpock: Very much Isles. Also nicely averts TypeCasting, as "girly girl" Isles behaves ''nothing'' like "tomboy" [[Series/{{NCIS}} Kate Todd]].
** SpockSpeak: Isles frequently sounds like a walking copy of Stedman's. Good for at least one ExpospeakGag per episode.
* StageMom: Two spectacular examples appear in "Don't Stop Dancing, Girl" where they become the prime suspects after the mother of rival dancer is murdered.
* StaircaseTumble: The VictimOfTheWeek in "Throwing Down The Gauntlet" is killed when she shoved down a flight of stairs.
* StatuesqueStunner: Jane Rizzoli played by the 5'9" former model Angie Harmon.
** It must be her [[ShesGotLegs gorgeous long bones...]]
* SuspiciouslyAproposMusic: Nothing suspicious about it, Jane's ringtones are all appropriate. Each one is indicative of what she thinks of others. There's ''TheTwilightZone'' theme for Angela, the ''{{Dragnet}}'' theme for Frost, and "Piano Sonata No. 2" (the Funeral March) for Maura.
* SympatheticMurderer: The person who murdered two men during the Massachusetts Marathon and almost gunned down a third in "Born to Run." This is because [[spoiler:her]] older sister was gang-raped on tape fifteen years earlier [[spoiler:by the "victims," who got off because the survivor's father bought off the prosecutor.]] The rape victim eventually committed suicide and her father suffered a fatal heart attack as a result of the stress.
* ThatCameOutWrong: Angela cannot text, apparently, because she sent Jane a message that said "Honey, I need a boner." She really wanted a loner. (Note that B is on the 2 button and L in on the 5 button, and 2 is right above 5 on most touchpads.)
* TakeThat: "This is not ''[[Series/{{CSI}} CSI: Boston]]'', Jane!"
* TheyFightCrime: One's a {{Badass}} homicide detective with a dysfunctional family. One's a blue-blooded medical examiner with NoSocialSkills. They're HeterosexualLifePartners. Together, They Fight Crime!
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: The titular leads, respectively.
* ToyotaTripwire: Rizzoli's brother does this to a fleeing suspect in "Sailor Man", so he can keep to the ExactWords of his promise to Rizzoli that he would not leave the car.
* {{Tsundere}}: Should it happen again, it would be this trope... 2x07, "Crazy for You", [[spoiler:Maura's rival Pike [[InVinoVeritas gets drunk]] and admits that he's loved Maura for years. When he's sober the next morning, he gets right back to his usual snarky, abrasive self, having completely forgotten the night before.]]
* TurtlePower: Maura's pet, Bass.
** [[RunningGag He's a]] [[InsistentTerminology tortoise!]]
* {{Twitter}}: [[http://twitter.com/JaneRizzoli Jane]], [[http://twitter.com/MauraIsles Maura]], [[http://twitter.com/DetBarryFrost Frost]], [[http://twitter.com/VinceKorsak Korsak]], [[http://twitter.com/FrankieRizzoli Frankie, Jr.]], [[http://twitter.com/AngelaRizzoli Angela]] and [[http://twitter.com/rizzoliplumbing Frankie, Sr.]] all have their own real-life Twitter accounts. Oh, and so do [[http://twitter.com/Joe_Friday_Dog Joe Friday]] and [[http://twitter.com/Tortoise_Isles Bass]].
** And now [[http://twitter.com/#!/_DirtyRobber_ The Dirty Robber]], the bar the characters frequent.
*** [[http://msanimanga.blogspot.com/ Jane and Maura's tweets have a Les Yay vibe to them, and Jane has some interesting Twitter banter with lesbian entertainment reporter Dorothy Snarker from AfterEllen.com]].
* TypeCasting: Two series in a row may not be enough, but Angie Harmon's last show had her as a tomboyish cop who is married to the job (the difference between ''Women's Murder Club'' and ''Rizzoli & Isles'' is that her character was divorced in ''WMC'' and single by choice on this show). This is also her third law show, but on ''Series/LawAndOrder'', she was an A.D.A., not a cop. Averted for Sasha Alexander, who was on a law show the last time she was on TV, but she goes from a federal agent who can hang with her male counterparts on ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' to a more feminine ME with an advanced degree here. Donnie Wahlberg, on the other hand, seems to be type-cast into the cop role.
** Of course, Harmon played a tomboyish detective on ''BaywatchNights''.
* UnresolvedSexualTension: Ramping up between Rizzoli and Grant.
** Some see it in the titular leads. See LesYay.
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: One of the favorite things ''Rizzoli & Isles'' likes to do is take the story of an infamous real-life Boston criminal and give it a fictional twist. Both Albert [=DeSalvo=] (the Boston Strangler) and James J. Bulger (the leader of the Winter Hill Gang and, at the time of the episode's airing, an FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive) have been given this treatment. [[spoiler:In fact, Maura's biological father is a Winter Hill enforcer and another enforcer killed her half-brother before Maura's father got to him]].
* VictoriasSecretCompartment: Maura smuggles a vial of Hoyt's blood out of the prison in her bra. Nobody expects anyone to smuggle objects ''out'' of a prison most of the time.
* VomitChainReaction: Happens in "Dirty Little Secret", where Tommy's vomiting (after a floater is pulled out of the river) sets off Frost.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Det. Frost at the first crime scene in the pilot.
-->'''Det. Crowe''': Poor guy should've stayed in robbery. Hangnails make him gag. He gives us a bad name.
* VomitingCop: Again, Frost. He seems to be getting better about it, though.
* WakingUpAtTheMorgue: Someone is delivered to the morgue not quite dead in "This Is How A Heart Breaks". Maura realises he is alive when she feels a pulse [[RagingStiffie in his penis]]. She saves his life by [[InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy by performing an emergency tracheotomy]].
* WaxMuseumMorgue: In "Melt My Heart to Stone", a body is found inside a statue that was accidentally broken. The killer had posed it to mimic an existing work of art and coated it with plaster
* WillNotTellALie: Maura
* WillTheyOrWontThey: Many fans believe we actually gotten to this point in the show, between Jane and Maura. Needless to say, the show would break away from the books' canon if they did, but it some feel become too great to ignore.
* YouNeedToGetLaid: What Frost says to Korsak when Korsak begins geeking out over a victim's sailboat.
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