Thinking aloud

is still the season right? this one has everything, there will be laugh, excitement and sweetness, a lovely one by Rtarara

Hi! I hope you share these secret Hoyt thoughts now that you've made me curious. Anyway, apologies for a late response. Those are going to be a regular thing around these parts. I'm overworked, having Weird Times, and having like four concurrent idenity crises at the moment.

So... Hoyt Thoughts!

There are a few things I've been thinking about, mostly after recently skimming over some sections of the second Tess Gerritsen book that became the pilot of Rizzoli & Isles. I've essentially been ruminating on this conversation thread about the Hoyt thing kind of being the lynchpin of the whole show—it's what makes all this romantic context between Jane and Maura indelible and unable to be walked back, ignored, or substituted with men (or anyone else) instead. I think at that point, I wondered how it could possibly be accidental. But with that second look, and this is a bit of a book spoiler, it's actually quite clear. The TV adaptation crushes two characters, Warren Hoyt (the Surgeon), and the Dominator into one Charles Hoyt... and then never follows up on the consequences of that change, never sits with the implications of it. They also simplify and sanitize him. Book-Hoyt originally targets women who are already afraid, works with partners because he's a perverted little weasel that can't really do it himself. But part of the show's problem is that it left in a few hints of Hoyt's complexity without putting the rest of it on screen. Like the implications of sexual assault, which end up incredibly glossed over and ignored. Sanitized. I've been thinking a lot of what Rizzoli & Isles could be if they had done a great adaption, if they'd mapped the effects of their changes, spent time working on retaining the complexity of characters in a new medium, etc. (Side thought: I think retaining too much of book-Jane is also patt of the reason she seems SO lesbian, but that's beside the point).

Another thing I briefly mentioned in that other post was that a lot of Hoyt's manipulation was working by way of turning intimacy into a knife of sorts, gleaning intimate understandings of Jane and Maura, deeply understanding their fears, and forcing them to sit with them before they're ready to deal with them. He preys on it. But, even further than that, he weaponizes BOTH of them against THEMSELVES. It's more obvious with Maura to me that he pokes into her insecurity about not being a good and worthy person to make her pull away from Jane. But he also turns Jane's deep desire to help, her inability not to put others before herself, into a way of getting Jane to be more reckless. Jane knows how to irritate Hoyt and remember he's just a weasel of a man and Hoyt knows how to make Jane fall into instincts and quick fear-based decision-making and forget to be a cop. This is the niggliest of the thoughts. Currently living rent-free in my head.

And finally, again in that book, two different characters compare Hoyt and Jane, suggest they're the same. I've been rolling that one around in my head for a long while. I can spot some ways it's true: they both deeply understand the motivations of others ridiculously quickly and use that to get what they want, for starters. I think it's truer than I've noticed—and I wish they put that in the show, especially that one of the people who insists on this is Gabriel Dean. I feel they kind of switched it for Hoyt telling Maura that—which also works and is incredibly interesting. But Jane is arguably more like him to me and I'm still poking at why. I can't stop thinking about that.

you have to be a very particular type of person and thinking in a very particular type of way to be in a position of "certain" (it's never certain with Hoyt but anyway) victory in your intentionally aroused and empowered animal mind (LR you're absolutely right about that, he does that part on purpose with Jane and to great effect) and instead of taking the kill shot, overcome your animal mind that wants to take this golden opportunity to permanently neutralize the threat in order to not kill but wound your victim both irreparably and incredibly painfully. that's not something an animal does. that is an entirely human decision. and a really fucked up human decision!!

obviously cop media and in particular american cop media has a tendency to minimize how fucked up the decisions of its righteous protagonists are when there is violence against a Bad Guy involved, so it doesn't maybe necessarily hit us as hard as it should how Very Fucked Up shooting a guy through both of his hands, For Any Reason, is. but it's really, really fucked up!!! why would Jane, a Good Guy, do that!! because she's fucked up. she's fucked up in at least some of the same ways that Hoyt is (not, I suspect, for the same reasons but again that is something the show could've stood to give us a little more of one way or the other). she's fucked up and it causes her to do some fucked up things. including the very thing this objectively extremely fucked up man did to her. why?

And what I found really interesting about him is the reverence he puts on these relationships with his partners. He sees them like brothers but it’s more than that, these are the only people who can see and understand him. I believe he has two in the books, but Jane is also among these ranks.

The show really did us a disservice by combining Hoyt with the Dominator, not least of all because it paints the picture of Hoyt as some kind of master taking on apprentices left and right without ever giving us a full picture.

I love playing with the idea of Maura being anything like Charles Hoyt, but Jane is like him too. They do match. Maura can be distant and calculating but that’s not the part of Hoyt that kills, to me. It’s the hotheaded, irrational part. The pleasure center. Hoyt kills because he likes it, the same way Jane maims him because she likes it. She wants to.

Hoyt should’ve been a driving force between Maura and Jane, for better or for worse. How would Maura react to knowing Jane could do something like that?

And, AND! Can we talk about how Jane opted to stab Hoyt in the chest with a scalpel to kill him? I mean idk that much about anatomy and medical equipment but it seems like maybe Jane picked one of the slowest options instead of just like, stabbing him in the neck or something?

you're so right!!! I'm thinking about the accomplices thing but I think those thoughts need to percolate a little more before I voice them. and I think I need to review some episode plots lol

And not for nothing- Jane purposefully does NOT kill Hoyt until he is a direct threat to Maura. Jane plays his game! She chooses to hurt him instead of kill him in self-defense (or even as noted above, to NOT hurt him since he is no longer a threat). She chooses to play his little verbal games and string everything along.

Until Maura is about to be raped (AND OH MY GOD SHOW WOULD YOU PLEASE ADDRESS THIS) and then Jane both breaks free and kills him WITH PLEASURE. In a visceral, difficult, symbolic way. Jane will play his game when it is masochistic (even torturing Hoyt is masochistic bc it is in direct opposition to image she has of herself as a Good Cop (tm)) but the second it genuinely puts Maura in danger, she's done playing.