Rizzoli and Isles Review/Recap: "Cold as Ice"

Serena Hope Hohenstein ‘17/ Emertainment Monthly Staff
If you’re planning on watching this week’s episode of Rizzoli and Isles, don’t eat right before. That being said, this episode begins at a boys recreation league hockey game. An aggressive hockey mom and a fairly sweet lady have a slight altercation in which the aggressive mom punches the other woman in the nose. The woman bleeds, but walks away. We then see the woman in a parking garage (F.Y.I. Nothing good ever happens in one of those!) when, suddenly, a person clad in all black comes up behind her and slashes her throat. It’s not a pretty sight. At all.
At Maura’s house, Angela Rizzoli (Lorraine Bracco) and Jane (Angie Harmon) are helping Maura (Sasha Alexander) go through her clothes and shoes, as it’s just a little too cluttered. They’re not succeeding, however, because Maura refuses to give up things she has barely worn. Everyone is clearly tired, but just then Cailin (Maura’s younger half-sister) appears at the door asking to stay with Maura for three weeks while their mother is in Europe. Maura obliges as Cailin (Emilee Wallace) goes prancing to the guest room talking loudly on the phone with her friends and blasting music. What has Maura gotten herself into? But before she can worry too much, Jane and Maura are called to the crime scene.

In the parking garage, the team finds the body on the ground with blood splattered everywhere, and a huge pool of it underneath the victim. One of the boys says that the human body holds something near to six quarts of blood, and there’s got to be about five quarts on the ground! As most of the team checks out the body, Frost (the late Lee Thompson Young) has a difficult time keeping his stomach calm. He has a history of queasiness, but he has decided that it’s about time to get over it. Slowly, Frankie (Jordan Bridges) reveals the neck to Frost, and he is able to settle himself enough to look at it. Needless to say, he is very proud of himself!
The ice rink has been closed off to anyone entering and exiting as the murderer may still be in the building. Knowing that, Jane goes into the arena to stop the game and begin questioning the players, fans, and coaches to see who might be missing and if they can identify the victim. Unfortunately, the ref will stop the game for no one, not even a homicide detective, so Jane begins to walk out on the ice and threaten him. It works. Jane learns that one of the hockey mothers is not in the arena, so they check to see if she’s the victim. It’s not. They find her in her car in the parking garage. It’s the aggressive mom from the opening scene. The team talks to the coaches of the hockey teams about the victim. They don’t know her name or where she’s from, but what they can tell the cops is that she was a sales lady. She gave the kids no drip helmet pads to use during the game and then they would give them back to her afterwards so she could test their effectiveness for her company. It seems like she may not be who she said she was…
Dr. Isles discovers that there is a strange gummy substance in the victim’s wound. She has no idea what it could be, so she sends it to the lab to get tested. While in the morgue, Hope calls asking about Cailin. She wants Maura to make sure Cailin has done her homework and is home at a good time. Hope’s a bit over-bearing.
While interrogating the aggressive hockey mom, the team finds out that the victim was carrying a rolling case. This case was nowhere to be found at the crime scene, and neither was her car or any I.D. The killer must have taken it, and planned to take the body, but was interrupted by the hockey mom.

At the end of the day, Maura goes home and announces to Mrs. Rizzoli that Cailin is missing. She hasn’t returned any of her calls or texts and is not at home. Mrs. Rizzoli assures her that she’s overreacting and that Cailin is probably just busy as she IS a teenager, but Maura has Jane put out a missing person’s report anyway. At that moment, Cailin walks in the door, and Maura is not pleased! They fight about how Maura is keeping too much of a leash on her, and Cailin storms to her room. The next morning, Maura wakes up to find Cailin and her friends making breakfast… and also making a mess! Once again, Maura can’t seem to understand her younger sister’s habits. But, Mrs. Rizzoli tells her that Cailin worships her. If she sets some rules, Cailin will follow them. Maura does her best at setting boundaries – she could have been a little bit tougher, but at least it’s a start.
That day at the precinct, Maura gets the test results back on the gummy substance in the wound. It’s a combination of some chemicals that Frankie and Frost realize could have been wax from a hockey stick. It’s clear a hockey stick couldn’t have done that kind of damage, but a skate hook might have.
Korsak (Bruce McGill) finds Mrs. Rizzoli in the break room digging through the garbage cans. She says she’s recycling, but Korsak knows better. He sits her down and asks her about what’s going on. Mrs. Rizzoli confides in him that her ex-husband never paid their taxes, so she owes about $27,000. Korsak offers to help her out and lend her the money since she works hard enough, but Mrs. Rizzoli says thank you, but she can do this. She also tells him that she doesn’t want her kids to know so they won’t worry. He agrees to it, but later, Jane sees her mom pushing a bakery cart around to the various offices and notices that something is up. This story line never comes up again, but you can be sure this will continue to play out through the rest of the season.
With the team together again in the bullpen, they discuss what the victim could have been doing with the helmet pads. The idea of DNA comes up, but isn’t talked about in detail. Then, they begin brainstorming where the missing car could be. They come up with a pier in Boston, and sure enough, the diving unit finds the car at the bottom of the harbor. While Korsak and Frost go to the scene of the dumped car, Frankie and Jane conduct interviews with every person who was inside the hockey facility. Because of the lack of leads, the two show each person a picture of the victim. In turn, they get fingerprints when each individual handles the photo.
Inside the victim’s car, Frost and Korsak find a purse with the victim’s I.D. They also find her case of helmet pads. They learn that the victim was named Dr. Dalton and she worked at Easton Labs, a pharmaceutical company. Her boss disclosed that she had been doing studies regarding Huntington’s disease, something that her sister suffered from. She was determined to find a cure. She was also determined to study juvenile boys ranging from twelve to fourteen. Something is definitely off now!

The boys make a visit to Dr. Dalton’s apartment and find that it has been tossed. They do, however, find hundreds of pads. They also find records of her Huntington’s disease trials. She conducted lots of trials in many cities that were all near oceans. There were pads in her apartment that matched each of those cities. In the bullpen, Maura is able to help out with the case by looking over Dr. Dalton’s files. There’s one name circled out of all the lists. She had run the DNA of the helmet pad against her Huntington test subjects, and then compared the DNA results to herself. They also learn that Dr. Dalton had called the same number on the same day every year for the twelve years prior to her death. The number belonged to a now retired Rhode Island homicide detective.
The team meets with the detective the next morning where he tells them that Dr. Dalton’s sister, brother-in-law, and nephew died in a boating accident twelve years ago. The doctor was convinced that the “accident” wasn’t really an accident. She believed that her brother-in-law killed her sister, and then faked his and his son’s deaths so that he could have custody of the child. He had even gone semi-pro in hockey. Now isn’t that a coincidence? The team is able to match the fingerprints on the picture to those on the car, so they look into him further. He has since changed his name, gotten a new wife, and his son, who has perfect attendance, has just missed a day of school. They rush to the docks where the murderer’s boat is held, and arrest him for two counts of murder. The son is left confused, scared, and calling out for his father as he is taken away.

With the help of Jane and Mrs. Rizzoli, Maura has become much more understanding of her sisters’ needs. When Cailin comes home that night, Maura and Jane are having a glass of wine and Maura allows them to pretend they are in France, so Cailin can join them. She also agrees to let Cailin cook if she will clean up after herself. Cailin doesn’t like that idea as much, so Jane offers to buy take-out as long as Cailin helps her throw away the boxes. The three agree and just like that, Maura is the cool older sister Cailin has always wanted. The friends go on with their night as the episode fades to black.
Make sure you tune to TNT this Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST to see the return of the man who is obsessed with Jane and who tortured her in the first season. He is by far the creepiest character ever on this series. You won’t want to miss it.