Between the long glances, nights spent drinking wine and sleeping in the same bed, it’s hard to narrow down individual moments. The sexual tension is so ubiquitous between Rizzoli & Isles that at least one drinking game has been created.
Being in bed together
Jane and Maura are notorious for their sleepovers, which might seem totally innocent if the chemistry between these two wasn’t so off the charts. It’s hard to watch them in bed beside one another and not imagine that something more could happen.
Waking up together
Fans of Rizzoli & Isles love to keep track of the lesbian subtext that’s barely even subtext at this point, especially when there are mornings such as that in Season 3, Episode 11, when Maura and Jane wake up, rumpled from having spent the night together. It totally wasn’t sexual, but it’s hard to look at the hair that is messed up and the crooked pajamas and not imagine otherwise.
The lesbian murder episode
Back in Season 1, the writers went directly for the lesbian story line with an episode called “I Kissed a Girl,” in which there was a crazy amount of flirting between Jane and Maura, so much that it distracted from the actual case. There is arm caressing and eye contact over a dead body, not to mention a conversation about “if” these two were gay.
The time Maura dated Jane’s brother
In a Season 2 episode called, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” Maura dates Jane’s brother, Tommy Rizzoli. When Jane expresses her discomfort about the effect it might have on their friendship, Maura says, “I like Tommy. A lot. But I love you.”
The time with the wire
There is a scene in Season 3, Episode 1, that should basically just have “sexual tension” running across the bottom of the screen while it’s being played. Jane affixes a wire to Maura as she prepares to go undercover, and there’s a lot of wide eyes and gasping. It’s the kind of scene that inspires Rizzles fan fiction.
The unzipping
This show has such a serious case of unresolved sexual tension on its hands that even innocuous things can generate it, like Maura turning to Jane in the office during a Season 2 scene and asking that she unzip her dress. They switch clothes for the sake of Jane going on a date, before which Maura tells her that she looks sexy.
The Serenade
Let your love manifest on a road trip! Maura and Jane take off on the open road, where they sing songs to one another (including one by the Indigo Girls), with their faces very, very close together.
Pretending to be a couple
During Season 2, Jane brought Maura to her high school reunion to fend off the gross advances of a dude. While placing a name tag on Maura’s chest, there is some awkward groping and eye contact between the two, which is both very sweet and very steamy.
Eye sex and a love poem
Toward the end of Season 6, Maura writes Jane a love poem, and it gets read aloud, while she and Jane make meaningful and intense eye contact that just seems a little far beyond “I love you, you’re my BBF!”
The time we had to imagine the ending
Also in Season 6, Maura got kidnapped, and of course, rescued by Jane. In the end, there’s a moment where Maura, on a gurney and being loaded into the ambulance, holds Jane’s hand and their eyes lock. It’s not so much about sexual tension here as it is… longing? We don’t see what happens after Jane goes to Maura’s hospital bed, but we can imagine. Thanks, TV.
The time Jane almost died
Jane jumped off a bridge toward the end of Season 5, and her reunion with Maura is nothing less than heartwarming. It’s also followed by a series of conversations about Maura’s fear that she lost Jane, injected with the tension of sexual desire going unmanifested.
Leave a Comment