RIZZOLI & ISLES: Remember Me

Thank goodness we didn’t end on another cliffhanger. Rizzoli & Isles finished its summer season with tonight’s episode, “Remember Me”, and it was an adrenaline shot from start to finish. But first, did you all know there was a new episode on Labor Day? I didn’t until I pulled up the DVR, so my apologies for not recapping last week. Here’s a brief rundown:

In “Gone Daddy Gone”, a young female dockworker is murdered and the M.O. resembles that of Paddy Doyle, Maura’s birth father. With mob fingerprints all over the crime, Maura is less than surprised when Paddy shows up at her door, shot, demanding medical attention. He swears he didn’t commit the murder – “I never harm the innocent” – and despite her doubts, eventually he is cleared of the murder. More than one person comments that he obviously loves his daughter, but Maura doesn’t feel that means she has to love him back. I can only assume she’ll be dealing with daddy issues again when the show returns in November.

Speaking of unwelcome men from the past, “Remember Me” features the return of Hoyt, the serial killer fixated on Jane. When Rizzoli & Isles are called in to investigate the brutal prison stabbing of a young man who’d just made bail, they find cancer-ridden Hoyt in the next bed in the infirmary. Fun fact: Hoyt loves reading murder mysteries, specifically those by Tess Gerritsen who writes the novels the show is based on.

Jane is convinced there’s a connection, but the warden, a former defense attorney who never beat a case Rizzoli worked on, refuses to make it easy for her to follow the trail. Hoyt’s own twisted ego provided her with clues that eventually led to a cold case about a missing family of four who disappeared after dropping off their son at Boston College. We didn’t spend a lot of time on that case, but what a horrific thing to have happen! Your family takes you to your first day of college, then they disappear? Awful.

In the end Rizzoli & Isles (and Frost and Korsak) are able to connect the prison stabbing with the cold case and both of them with Hoyt. A timely call from a dying Hoyt, saying he wanted to confess all of his murders to Jane, sends the pair back to the infirmary to hear what he has to say. Despite his frail looks and labored breathing, the sense of foreboding as the two entered the room had me on edge. Sure enough, Hoyt had one last murder in mind: his guard is his final apprentice who not only carried out the stabbing (“What was in it for you?” “Nothing. It was just fun.” *shudder*), he helps a stronger-than-he-looks Hoyt overpower Rizzoli & Isles. Incapacitated with zip ties, Maura is forced to watch as Hoyt starts to torture Jane with a scalpel. But when Hoyt has the guard taze Maura, then start to cut her throat, Jane goes ballistic. She manages to stab Hoyt just as Korsak bursts into the room – he and Frost had ID’d the guard from a fingerprint on the mysterious bail money – and shoots the guard.

I’m out of breath just remembering it all. The horror of Hoyt is over, I hope. Jane killed him, which was terrifying but seems to have given her some closure on her own experience with him. We had a nice moment between her partners, too, when Frost voiced his frustration that Rizzoli wouldn’t confide in him about what Hoyt did to her. “She’s my partner, too,” he grouses. I understand that Rizzoli doesn’t want to discuss it, even with Korsak who was there at the end, but it’s nice to see Frost expresses affection and concern.

Given the intensity of this week’s case, it’s impossible to smoothly segue into the B- and C-stories in this episode. Here’s the upshot: Frankie took, and passed, his detective exam; and it was Jane’s birthday. Ma Rizzoli managed to throw her a surprise party and Maura finally hit on the perfect present – she’s sending Jane to racing school. And on that happy note, our two crime fighters take a break from the drama until November 28.