Tonight’s episode of The Mentalist brings back the long standing case between Jane and Red John. Remember him? The guy that Jane vowed vengeance against, but never gets around to really looking for? Well, it looks like Jane won’t be able to ignore him for much longer.
Happy Anniversary
Lisbon and the rest of the CBI team are called searching around an old light bulb factory when they find a dead body mummified in a box. Cho says that he found it, but that doesn’t make any sense. What was Cho doing there in the first place if there was no body? I’ll try not to think about it for too long or I’ll get a nose bleed. The victim was found handcuffed, with a metal piece in his rib cage. Lisbon calls Jane, who says he will make his way out there to help them. He goes to his car and finds a Happy Anniversary note on the windshield.
It is the anniversary of the murders of his wife and daughter, and he goes to the cemetery to visit their graves. While there, a girl approaches him with Red John’s mark and asks him if he’s given up. Lisbon and Wainwright meet him at the cemetery and learn that Jane hypnotized the girl, so she can’t be questioned about Red John. He says it’s to protect her, but that’s lousy police work if you ask me.
Power Brokers
The piece of metal in the body was a fake heart valve that belonged to the victim, Antonio Castro. Lisbon and Jane go to Antonio’s old work place and meet his boss, Dennis Victor, his mentor Ian and his supervisor Ben. They say that Antonio was beloved by the office, and that they knew of no problems that he had. After the questioning, Jane tells Lisbon that he is going to take the rest of the day off.
He goes to a restaurant and gets hammered on Bloody Marys, which is the exact thing I do after a tough day of work. After getting hammered, he goes home and burns all of his Red John files, because why not. He is questioned about this by Wainwright and Lisbon the next day and says that the only way that Red John doesn’t win is if he moves on, which is what he wants to do. And just like that, Red John is not mentioned again for the rest of the episode, even though it was the main piece of promotional work by CBS.
Moving On
Now that all of that Red John work is seemingly done with, Lisbon and Jane go to talk to Marcy, Antonio’s fiance and the niece of Dennis, Antonio’s boss. She is still very upset about his death, even though he disappeared months earlier. Jane finds this odd and calls her out on having an affair. He’s only half right because she has been sleeping with Ian since Antonio’s disappearance.
Cho brings in Ian to ask him why he never brought up Marcy when asked. Jane joins the interview and picks Ian’s asthma medication out of his pocket, and holds it against him for information. Due to his police brutality, they learn that Antonio was found to be stealing money from the firm he worked for. After breaking numerous laws, Jane goes to a cemetery and asks to use a freshly dug grave for police work. Let the brutality continue!
The Club Scene
Ben and Dennis are brought in a questioned about why they didn’t say anything about Antonio stealing from the company. They say that they didn’t find out until his disappearance, and they fixed the problem internally. They didn’t say anything publicly because they wanted to save face for the company. Afterwards, Van Pelt asks Jane about a sticky note with 19:24 that she found. He says it’s from the Bible, and it’s about rich people not getting into heaven. It is also the name of a high class club that is in town, so he sets up a meeting with them.
At the club, Jane tries to pull his usual routine of questioning people until the guilty person runs, but it backfires and everybody leaves. Jane goes outside and finds Ben and tells him to drive him somewhere in exchange for the information of who killed Antonio. Ben agrees and Jane has him drive to the cemetery. Things aren’t looking good for Ben.
Crossing the Line: At the cemetery, Jane tells Ben that he knows that he killed Antonio and was the one that was stealing from the company. He then hits Ben with a shovel and has him fall into a casket at the bottom of the empty grave site. The next morning, Lisbon meets Jane and learns about his terrible plan. Jane put a two way baby monitor in the grave with Ben and forces him to confess and tell them where he hid Antonio’s key chain for evidence. Lisbon then calls 911 and gets Ben taken out of the grave.
Back at the office, Wainwright and Jane have a very interesting conversation about justice versus the law which is one of the best scenes that has happened all season. It makes me wish that there was more of this instead of the weekly Mentalist fare. Wainwright tells Jane he is suspended for the whole “breaking numerous laws” thing. Jane responds by calling Wainwright a mama’s boy, and then getting promptly fired. It looks like Jane’s career in the CBI is over.
It looks like things are setting up for an unexpected finale, but with the way this show works, who knows if the finale will be as good as advertised or not. It looks like we have seven days until we find out.
Chase Gamradt
Contributing Writer
(Image courtesy of TNT)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
