Is ‘Rizzoli & Isles’ new tonight? What could be in France

It pains us in many ways to write this article, but unfortunately, we do still have to: There is no new episode of “Rizzoli & Isles” coming up on TNT Monday night, and there will (insert tears here) probably not be another one ever unless another announcement is made.

If there is a silver lining here, it’s that we don’t think that this series got a particularly terrible ending, and it is therefore not closing things out in the same miserable way as some other shows on TV have over the past few years. We saw Jane say goodbye to her old job at the Boston PD, but in one last show of friendship, she and Maura are going to have a little bit of time now to gallivant around France as she takes a little break before heading down to Quantico.

For the sake of this article, we do still wonder whether or not this France trip will be spotlighted in a TV movie or something else down the line. We do think it’s possible in a never-say-never sort of way, but we’d be shocked if it happens at any point in the near future.

From a pure ratings standpoint, what we will say is that the final season did a great job of giving TNT an incentive to consider more someday. The show was down less than 5% in the 18-49 demographic versus season six (given the many super-harsh drops recently, this isn’t so bad), and it was actually up in total viewers by more than 10%. While these numbers are a tad skewed because there was no winter arc this year and the ratings tend to be worse then, we will take whatever little victory we can to show that there could still be a market for the show, should the stars ever align and the powers-that-be decide they’d like at least a TV movie.