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Jane: This is Red John. Lisbon: How can you tell? Jane: Because when it's him I can feel it.The Mentalist Clips
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Jane: This is Red John. Lisbon: How can you tell? Jane: Because when it's him I can feel it.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 17th, 2013 1:13 AM
Finally, I don't think when Jane meets Red John, it'll be as easy as him just catching him and him finally reaching peace and all ending well. That's not what this show is about. It's about sacrifices, it's about their being dark with lightness. That's what the guy who faked being incompetent they caught back in season 1 who read Mobey Dick also talked about, revenge is costly. If the show wants continuity, that has to be the case here. Maybe revenge costs Jane Lisbon or maybe it costs him something else or the process isn't nearly as clear cut and through Lorelei we see just how complicated things are, but I'd be surprised if it would just be as easy as Jane completing his heroes journey as @huisclothes was hoping for.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 17th, 2013 1:09 AM
c) another smaller point that isn't really as centered but is something I think about and you can see from time to time is what Jane said in the second to last episode last yr to Wainwright "what's the point in all of this if you don't get the bad guy?". What's the point in all the formalities(which Jane has openly disregarded) and everything else we do, if we don't do the end goal? And that's how Jane feels about RJ, what's the point in my life if I don't catch RJ(and this mindset is something his daughter hates), I can't move on otherwise. One thing to look for, Jane is trying to turn Lorelei and he has evidence now that could do it if Lorelei can believe him. My guess is at some point she will(she's signed on for 3 more episodes) and if she does that will tear apart RJ's network and let us see what RJ personifies and what he's about. Perhaps we'll have greater insight to his idea from "tyger, tyger" and a greater perspective on evil is, how it's in the eyes of the beholder in the mo
Rank: Recurring Character
January 17th, 2013 1:03 AM
show for change in a character hell bent on it. Theyve tried to show Jane's past, particularly in the past year, but it's tough to really show his past without focusing an episode entirely on it. @rationalgal; I definitely agree with that idea of Red John's philosophy speaking to a greater theme about the show. That was the whole point of Tyger Tyger's poem(which Cho then explained a season later for those who still hadn't gotten it). Its telling RJ when he finally met Jane face to face said that and only that. His perspective(which he shared again in season 3 and 4 finales) is a big part of the show and it relates to Jane of a) with life there's death....there's good with bad b) What exactly is bad and evil? RJ doesn't think he'll go to hell, he doesn't see a problem with what he's done, and Jane doesn't see a problem manipulating people to get tasks done and hurting people(his wife didn't approve of his psychic ways).
Rank: Recurring Character
January 17th, 2013 1:00 AM
There's no question that if Jane meets Red John he will kill him, simple as that, he's not going to pull a Red John and hurt a man by killing his family not himself. If we've seen one thing with his obsession, not only has it never wavered, as he said in the season 3 finale, its all about making RJ dead. He told Timothy Carter hed move on with his life after RJ was dead, simple as that, didn't hesitate either and I believe him to an extent. @Watcher and there in lies part of the problem you were talking about which I mostly agree with, if someone is this intent on killing someone and only that, then it's hard for them to mature. Jane has to an extent(he cares alot more about his team, he shows more empathy in certain situations, he knows he puts his team in trouble) but its hard to really show Jane's maturity if he's so hellbent on only this. And that's what I was talking about earlier, if your not going to develop the storyline, make real progress in the RJ case, then you cant really
January 17th, 2013 12:19 AM
i love reading all the ideas. @rationalgal about red john understanding jane's pain through the loss of his own love. i do hope they don't get all dr. phil on our asses and try something like that. and i don't want jane to give a rat's winkle about rj. i mean, the fuhrer loved children. do we care? about rj as a platform for the discussion of evil. that seems like a sensible way to look at it. i like a mission you can drive a truck through.
@watcher. for what it's worth, jane doesn't need to progress. jane can't be improved without f--king him up. i don't want him to learn his lesson or complete the hero's journey or sacrifice what he wants because he found out what he really needs. none of that stuff. i don't want the brilliant, beautiful, haunted patrick jane to wind up feeling like a jerk for what he did with the last ten years. i want him to kill the son of a bitch. then i want him to be happy.
January 16th, 2013 11:58 PM
If Heller wanted this to be about Jane's journey, he should not have made Jane so obsessed with killing Red John. Unlike the other CBIs Jane can't move forward until he settles his vendetta. (The others could because they settled their issues/relationships.) Perhaps Heller expected this series to go on for many more seasons. Then he could show Jane getting his revenge and finally setting on his journey. It would be great to see how that works out. But perhaps Heller sees the journey as already completed - We have seen Jane go from carnival huckster to a humane (though unorthodox) and caring person who does huckster things now only on bad guys. This series should have had a definite end point so the plot could be worked out deliberately instead of forcing the writers to go all this thrashing around in the cancelation dark.
January 16th, 2013 10:03 PM
(cont'd)Van Pelt lost her innocence and naive optimism after O'Laughlin. Lisbon has clearly shown signs of questioning many of her beliefs about justice and dropped her rigid separation of work and personal and come to show her love for her team. Rigsby has matured, become a responsible father, reconciled and lost his father, feels the loss of his relationship with Van Pelt. Even Cho has faced things that have changed him, such as the murder of his childhood friend, his brief addiction to pain killers, and his fun but destructive relationship with Summer. You see his humor and emotion show through the cracks of his mask more now than in seasons past. But Jane hasn't grown at all...is still willing to potentially sacrifice his closest friendships for his vendetta. He stubbornly refuses to listen to that little voice inside his head (manifested as Charlotte) that tells him this is pointless.
January 16th, 2013 10:02 PM
Continued: a similar loss. I'm assuming he has a "soul-mate"(an idea portrayed in some episodes)- a woman who joins him in his hobby killing. Who? I'm guessing Kristina Frye. If a finale confrontation has Kristina getting killed (perhaps by Jane, possibly by Lisbon), RJ suddenly understands the loss he inflicted on Jane. He lets Jane know this and then disappears, worse off than Jane because his emotional pain will be permanent whereas Jane will recover and move on. I doubt the series will end this way, but it does follow the philosophical aspects Heller has laid out. I'd love to imagine RJ living out his life, alone, in the pain and loss he inflicted on others.
January 16th, 2013 10:00 PM
My opinion for what it's worth: The show has presented RJ more as a philosophical platform for discussion of good and evil, right and wrong, life and death, the universality of the human connection, and whether it all means anything. I have long since stopped seeing RJ as an actual person - more as a personification of random evil. Timothy Carter showed RJ to be totally different from Volker in terms of serial killing. Volker is your standard bad guy. RJ is just a mindless hobby-killer, the Death that is present in everyone's life. It would be so amateurish, theatrically, to have Jane kill him again. What did one character say a few epidodes back? "If you really want to hurt someone, don't kill them; kill someone they love." That's what RJ did to Jane, and now perhaps that is why he is so attracted to Jane: For the first time he sees a depth of emotional pain he has never been able to imagine or understand and he is intrigued. So a fitting ending would be for RJ to suffer a similar los
January 16th, 2013 9:58 PM
I agree that they misplayed the Red John story. I just didn't care any more after season 3 (I realize the fan base is very divided on Red John). Another thing that bothers me is that despite many quotes from Heller saying The Mentalist is the story of Patrick Jane's journey, I haven't seen much of a journey.
He is still stuck exactly where he was when the show started, just a little darker perhaps. But he hasn't shown any growth as a person. Everybody else in the cast has grown and changed significantly.
January 16th, 2013 7:59 PM
thanks, b&w&r. timothy carter said to patrick, "you thought i'd be a monster, with horns." i did want red john to be a monster. monster red john had goals. perhaps no more complicated than i like to make a right at the sternum with my pointy knife. and i will make people who dis me in the media very unhappy. now that he's red john, incorporated, there are many other people representing the red john brand and perhaps not communicating the brand mission statement. you're right, we don't know what the mission is. i'm one of those people who don't try to figure out how a magic trick is done. i just figure there's a trick to it. i don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain because he has to be a disappointment. it's the journey. as long as i get to see patrick be patrick and they feed me red john stuff regularly, albeit with an eye-dropper, i'm happy. i hope we all get a chance to not know the mission next season.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 7:23 PM
continued: perspective on life but this is an issue that should be have been touched alot more. He(or at least the man acting as him) said he was done killing and wanted to change the world---that still doesn't answer why do what he does, what's the goal in building his network, what's the theme that he gets so people buy into what he does? After 4+ seasons I still really have no idea what he's about and that to me is the biggest problem. It's just hard for fans to relate to someone so ubiqutious. I also think the show has only briefly in the past year touched on Jane's past. There's alot of things that @huisclothes listed the shows tried to show and different ideas which is great, but is there any unifying idea that comes through them? None as clear or powerful as you'll see with other shows.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 7:19 PM
the biggest problem with this red john story line is by touching so little of it for 4+years and building him up as an empire, you've created unrealistic expectations in fans minds. Even Bruno acknowledged this, alot of people are going to be really dissapointed when the Red John story and thus the show is over. @huisclothes lists alot of good examples of how the show has showed people RJ effects but in the end all it does is show the power RJ has in a variety of ways. Think about it---we know he has a huge network of people, but we know so little about him, that shouldn't happen. By now we should at least know how he operates and ultimately here's the big thing, what's his goal? What's he trying to do? It's not as simple as murdering and controlling, there's something far deeper after all, he has built up such a network and has related with so many(CBI seemingly normal people have bought into him). We've seen how he works with the Season 2 and 3 finale providing a bit of his perspecti
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 7:03 PM
continued ... Anyhow, maybe the numbers are poor for CBS, but The Mentalist's numbers would likely put it in the top 1, 2, or 3 on every other network (like Fox's Bones has just been renewed with numbers in the 6 to 8 range where The Mentalist is usually over 10, even against Sunday Night Football with irregular start times). My wish/point is that they do settle the Red John case this year before they have to make him Emperor of the Universe to keep the mystique going -- and then carry on ... on any network that wants the hit show, CBS or any other (especially if the actors are tied up for 7 seasons)!
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 7:02 PM
I too think that the Red John angle has been misplayed. Serial killers most often look like the guy who works in a factory down the street who nobody can believe it when a couple of dozen bodies are found under the concrete floor of his basement -- but Red John has dozens of devoted slaves in the FBI and the CBI (I mean even Heath Ledger as the Joker would be an underling to RJ).
January 16th, 2013 6:59 PM
interesting that cbi agent ray haffner (he was jane's supervisor in little red book - jane screwed him) returns in the red barn.
January 16th, 2013 6:38 PM
maybe i'm the only person who's been happy having red john show a little ankle every few episodes. i never speculated on who he was. didn't want to solve the mystery. i was happy just to have patrick - so beautiful, so playful, so heartbroken, so rigorous in his thinking - and i wanted him to exist as long as possible. i think they've done great things with the r.j. storyline. among them, timothy carter, the film-maker kids, panzer, todd johnson, kristina, and best of all, lorelei. and i think r.j. is a very deep well. some of the free-standing eps have been flat but there's room for more patrick backstory. his father shows up. or his mother. he seriously falls out with lisbon. he books some sessions with sophie miller. a new cbi person gets a crush on him. plenty of material out there. think ball of fire, red badge, code red, throwing fire, blood shot, every rose has its thorn, etc.
January 16th, 2013 5:50 PM
Too right! That's a fantastic picture of Patrick in front of the red barn with the old, faded smiley face. He looks like he's sniffing the air, caught the scent of Red John. How exciting! I'm really looking forward to that episode and those that follow, no matter what happens to season six!
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 5:14 PM
talent well, its that gamble he made that didn't let this show reach its considerable promise after its early success. That's what'll stick with me. For years I never expected more than 6 seasons and 5 instead of 6 isn't that devastating. But what's most unfortunate of all as I ponder on this show as it reaches its likely final act is what it could have been(what it SHOULD have been). As it is this was a fantastic show for 5 seasons. But that feeling of "what might have been" is always the worst one you can have and always sticks with you. This definitely is not how Bruno wanted the Red John arc to be shown.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 5:05 PM
Ultimately, that's probably what was most disappointing. This show had such great promise after the first two years. Simon Baker had been signed on for 7 seasons. When Bruno asked how long the show would go he said in 2010"ask me after season 7". This show had every intention and the early success of going further than this. But the Red John arc just was not well done. Bruno like I said earlier hedged his bet on keeping the intrigue of this show around the pursuit of RJ and basically ONLY the pursuit. He made him invincible and assumed his aura would keep viewers interested even with no real progress catching him. And it's the lack of progress, that we know so little about him and seen so little interaction with him that's probably going to lead to the demise of the show. A once great story line is now going to be crammed down our throats in 12 episodes(after 4+years of no insight) telling us all we can about RJ. While Bruno has written some great episodes and utilized the acting talen
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 4:58 PM
I like how your thinking also with possible ways to get a sixth season, but there going to have to get really creative to drag this Red John storyline out another season. It's not impossible, they've shown some creativity before, but its going to need more than your typical inside job/moles type theme we see so often with this show. I also think your right on about what the identity of Red John will be. It'll be someone with a weird position, it's also probably going to be more than just knowing who he is to bring him down. The biggest problem with the show is they've tied themselves up, they've really left themselves nowhere to go. Either make weekly cases with no Red John connection that are good but that don't generate ratings or squeeze everything you can out of RJ arc. There's a point where you can only squeeze so much and there hasn't been enough in the 4.5 seasons of this show to squeeze that much to begin with.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 4:53 PM
@huisclothes: The thing is even if we all get really lucky and get a sixth season, that's it. It's either this season or next season--even in a best case scenario we won't have this show in fall 2014. So we all do have to really start preparing for the end, in the grand scheme of things, 1 year shouldn't change that much for us. I agree with you on the Red Barn description: it is not what you want to see, this seems like your typical case of the week---only now there forcing the Red John connection and when characters start questioning their future like Lisbon will, thats also not positive for the show's longevity. That's why I said these next few episodes will be huge. If we get more of these episodes like this where things are starting to get tied together and Red John is coming more and more from nowhere and characters are changing like Lisbon and asking questions they never did, we'll have our answer of the Mentalists future long before May.
January 16th, 2013 1:50 PM
hi b&w&red all over it and watcher. am starting to feel the way you feel when you read the contraindications on a drug -- freaked out from too much info. the points about the good wife (which lost it for me when she slept with will, i think, year one) and cbs (awards are seductive - many corporate toss-ups come down to what gives the chairman more bragging rights on the golf course) or the execrable undercover boss, are good ones, dammit. also, when you read the description of red barn - 25 year-old case, visualize, old smiley face on barn, you see the threads coming together. how about if they reveal red john but he escapes or is untouchable (diplomat - maybe homeland security connection?) and does something hideous which tees up a sixth season? i keep telling myself - you can't get a head start on depression. just because you start sooner, doesn't mean you finish earlier.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 12:45 PM
continued: a gamble and it looks like might have lost. It happens, that's what television show developing is-you have to take gambles and call your shot with what you want the show's arc to be centered around. If you don't get it right--your network will bail on you pretty fast.
I'll be really interested to see what happens the next few episodes. Do they really start focusing on the Red John theme? If they do, that'll tell you this is the end of the road(that and when you see themes like characters pondering their future is like Lisbon will be in ep13 is not a great sign). If they don't, maybe there's hope, but based on what Bruno said at the beginning of the season, we're going to be getting alot of Red John info this year and we really haven't gotten that much up to this point. I think that might be about to change.
Rank: Recurring Character
January 16th, 2013 12:41 PM
continued: renewed or not and they had to have a built in ending in case they were. When they found out they were renewed, it made them look bad(that was really forced having RJ still being alive, there were tons of loose ends they never tied together). And Bruno also has talked about how they made a decision last year to try to appeal to more fans and made it more relaxed. That also didn't help. But really, this show its first few years was one of the bright risers and one that CBS took pride in promoting and was very popular. Season 4 and this year things have changed alot, the ratings have declined and CBS has demoted it and clearly showed less interest in it. And I think the turning point was that season 3 finale decision with Red John. Bruno took a gamble when he did that, he didn't really have a backup plan and there's only so much you can do with the RJ plot(that's why most episodes barely get into the issue). He overestimated what he could do with the hunt for Red John. He took