‘Rizzoli & Isles’ season 6, episode 9 review: When imaginary becomes reality

Rizzoli -We feel like in some ways Tuesday night’s “Rizzoli & Isles” episode was almost the bizarre, crime-TV version of the movie “Her.” It was something that we really did not expect from this show, and that is probably why case-wise it has to be one of the better ones this year.

Let’s start with what exactly happened here: A woman named Heather suffering from severe loneliness decided to join up with an app, which in turn provided a robot boyfriend in many ways who would tell her nice things and work to make her feel good about herself. The problem was that she wanted it to be real, and it wasn’t. It seems like the disillusion here drove her to the edge, and what ended up leading to the death of Stuart, the college kid at the center of the case. He was just trying to make his way through school, and working for the app company was a way to do this.

Technology aside, the reason that this case worked so well is that it was so easy early on to peg Heather’s husband as the killer here, given that this is the way these infidelity cases tend to go on scripted TV. Yet, this was not the case here, and it was just one of many fascinating turns before we made it to the end.

As for more sentimental moments, the night also brought us that courtesy of the scenes between Maura and her father. This has been a nice two-episode arc here, and while we were not initially sold on the reasoning behind everything, we do feel like the payoff this week was worth the wait, and this gives us at least a little more closure moving into the final episodes this summer.

So long as you enjoy what the heart of “Rizzoli & Isles” is about (interesting cases and character interactions), it’s hard to imagine you being altogether disappointed at all in this hour. Grade: B+.

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