TV Watch: "Rizzoli and Isles" (finally) says "Goodbye" to Det. Barry Foster -- and actor Lee Thompson Young

Lee Thompson Young: Tuesday's episode was called "Goodbye."

by Ken

I'm glad I didn't read joyceeng61's June 17 tv.com "Looking Forward" piece, "Rizzoli and Isles Boss on Writing Out Lee Thompson Young: 'It Was Very Daunting,' " before seeing the show's first two episodes of the new season these past two Tuesdays. And if you haven't seen them yet, you may not want to continue reading this until you have. Now that I have seen those episodes, and felt I needed to say something (something approving) about the way the show finally dealt with the suicide last August of cast member Lee Thompson Young, who played Barry Foster, the partner of Det. Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon), I'm really glad to have found the piece.

In it, joyceeng61 talks to the show's new showrunner, Without a Trace veteran Jan Nash, who inherited the problem of What to Do About Lee when she took over from former showrunner (and show creator) Janet Tamaro in November.

The final episodes of Season 4 were devoid of Young, but his character, Det. Barry Frost, hadn't been written out yet. Instead, he was said to be on vacation visiting his mom.

"It was very daunting knowing what was before me and what I had to do," Nash says. "From the moment that I was approached about this show and started watching the episodes ... and [after] I met with Angie [Harmon] and Sasha [Alexander], I knew that doing it in a compelling and respectful way was the most important thing to them for the season."

The loss of Lee Thompson Young must have been as traumatic for his show family as the loss of Barry Foster was for his fictional family.

Killing off Frost was the only option to honor Young, Nash feels, as any other alternative would ring false. But she was well aware that she had to approach it with great care.

"We had to deal with it in a real and concrete way. We couldn't just say Barry Frost went on vacation and occasionally talk about how much fun he was having or give him a new job in a new city," she says. "That would feel icky. We realized that we had to have the character die so we could deal with that loss the same way the people on the show had dealt with Lee's loss. What comes with that is we had to make sure we were not being exploitive and we were honoring his memory appropriately ... and I think we all feel as a collective that we, to the best of our abilities, accomplished that."

Ms. Nash, I thought you and your team did a pretty darned good job of dealing with this awful situation. And the plot motif of everyone around Jane trying to persuade her that what she needed was to cry, which is obviously highly un-Jane-like behavior . . . well, the way that was worked out was, I thought, at once unexpected and lovely and memorable.

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