‘Rizzoli & Isles’ season 7, episode 3 review: Jane, Maura, and (fake) zombies

To us, the best episodes of “Rizzoli & Isles” are the ones that really do their part to introduce some sort of excellent balance. We do like the serious material and the struggle, but we also dig the humor and the fun character scenes!

With this, the zombie convention part of Monday’s “Cops vs. Zombies” was all sorts of fun to us, mostly because it is really indicative of some of what the show does best: Weird, wacky storytelling that emphasizes the characters we really have come to love, and minimizes almost everything else. Yet, we do still wish that Jane and Maura had more actual scenes together! It’s not on a “Castle” season 8 level by any means, but given that these two are your leads and their chemistry is one of the reasons so many watch, shouldn’t you be coming up with as many different ways as possible to use them both?

Now, let’s spend a minute talking about Maura’s story and difficult recovery from her brain injury, since it is somewhat hard for many diehard fans to watch. Given that we are so close to the end of the show, we understand their desire to see a version of Sasha Alexander’s character who completely has her faculties and her wits about her. We do think that moment is coming, so with that, we’re okay that this roadblock has been presented. We’ve seen her and Jane overcome so much over the course of this series that it would feel almost like an insult to even suggest that they would have problems here.

The good news here is that Jane was there for Maura by the time we got to the end of the episode, and she tries to convince her to not resign, something that Maura seems intent to do if she does not get any better.

As for some other assorted odds and ends tonight, Maura played teacher to Angela during her time of need, and Nina and Frankie now seem to be a thing! There were times that this episode made us sad, but we’d proclaim it to be successful overall. Grade: B.