RIZZOLI AND ISLES (TNT)

For Rizzoli and Isles, combat gear can be hospital scrubs and scalpel or a pantsuit and t-shirt and a police .45 handgun, but they manage to run around “Boston” solving crimes, dealing with their complex families, making us giggle, all the while looking unrealistically fantastic. That Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon) frequently takes down the bad guys like a linebacker is on the plus side of the ledger. That Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander) has the bad habit of talking about shoes while cutting into dead bodies is on the minus side.

But this show does manage to pass the low-bar Bechdel test, in that it a) has at least two women in it, b) who talk to each other c) about something besides a man. It also passes the slightly higher-bar Mako Mori test, which analyzes films by whether there is: a) at least one female character b) who gets her own narrative arc  c) that is not about supporting a man’s story. It’s hard to believe that here and now in the twenty-first century, it is still so difficult to find shows like this.

“Mako Mori Test.” Geek Feminism. n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2015