In case our readers wonder why I am obsessed with the episode enough to create so much material based on "The Mentalist," the main reason I offer is my envy of the Mentalist, played by Simon Baker.
I can relate to the Mentalist, a.k.a. Patrick Jane in many ways. As a retired United States Army Staff Sergeant, I can relate to the office politics the Mentalist is constantly subjected to, such as mandatory meetings, and being obliged to "walk on eggshells" around certain people, or to handle them "with kid gloves" because they are so important. For example, one supervisor chides Mr. Jane's boss, Agent Lisbon, played by Robin Tunney, once, for arresting a man who was such a close friend the Governor (of the State of California) as to possess his home phone number. Mr. Jane and his boss are continually threatened by powerful people with connections above their pay grades.
Being subjected to office politics is not what I envy about the Mentalist. What I envy about him is his ability to outmaneuver the "big dogs" who want to eat him, and "have it his way," as if he lived at Burger King. For example, Agent Fischer, played by Emily Swallow, once explains to him that he can't have a couch at the F.B.I. headquarters where he works because rating a couch requires a minimum pay grade, and he, as a mere consultant, isn't even on the pay scale; long story short, his favorite, old, leather couch (or one very similar to it) supports the full length of his body, in his office at F.B.I. headquarters, by the end of the episode.
Then there are all the things he gets away with saying and doing to powerful people. One time, he flips a prominent businessman in the head for throwing a party for business associates while he should be grieving the death of his spouse. At least twice, he accuses other businessmen of committing statutory rape, based on little more than hunches. His hunches are usually so accurate that his boss eventually refers to them as "Jane hunch[es]," as she reminds her supervisor that he "keep[s] Jane around for a reason."
The Mentalist's proficiency at his job is something else I envy. His job is to close murder cases, and, to quote one of his boss' supervisors, he "close[s] cases like a fiend!" It's enough to make him seem indispensable to his boss and supervisors, influencing to "make certain allowances" for him, and offer him "a certain amount of leeway." Most of the time I served in the Army, my superiors did not regard me as indispensable; on the contrary, they considered me, at best, so dispensable that I would in several situations have been the very person they asked to unmask to test the air for chemical or biological agents, instead of people junior to me in rank, but regarded as more indispensable for other reasons, such as their particular job skills. A few commissioned Officers regarded me as such a detriment that they actually tried to have me discharged without retirement or a pension. (Fortunately, I did retire in spite of their efforts, so there's a certain part of my anatomy they are more than welcome to kiss any time they want!) However, during rare, brief periods of my military career, I enjoyed special privileges because of my special skills as a Spanish linguist. An officer might have preferred a driver who was easier on the eyes, so to speak, but her looks were of little help when, for example, las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia were saying things it behooved them to understand. Those were the times when I felt like the Mentalist, the guy who sleeps on the job so much that he literally has a couch to sleep on at work, who eats and drinks everything, and who almost always tends to avoid performing the most dangerous, tedious, or menial tasks, such as canvasing the neighborhood, serving "hot warrants," sitting through boring meetings or sifting through the garbage.
Something else I like about the Mentalist in particular, and the series in general, is the lightheartedness, in spite of the harsh realities homicide detectives constantly encounter and counter. The Mentalist often gives people gifts, from small works of origami, to jewelry costing five or more figures, but always with a personal touch and a sense of humor. He also makes an excellent golf companion and a formidable card player, as well as an entertaining magician, crime solver, and fund raiser. Whatever he does, he tends to do it with a contagious smile, so it came as no surprise to discover that Simon Baker's nickname is "Smiley."
Perhaps this was creator Bruno Heller's inspiration for the calling card of the Mentalist's arch antagonist, Red John: a smiley face, drawn in red, often with the blood of his victims.
Not everything about the Mentalist is ideal. Mistakes were made. For example, the script supervisor and footage editors apparently missed a seen where Agent Cho, played by Tim Kang, handed someone a tool, only to appear using the tool in the next instant. Every once in a while, Simon Baker and Owain Yeoman, who plays Agent Rigsby, slip into their native accents; they are literally from Tasmania and Oxford, respectively, even though their characters are Americans. Jane was raised in a carnival that toured the Midwestern United States; Rigsby was the son of a motorcycle gangster from California. It would have made more sense to either hire American actors to play these roles, or have the characters come from Australia and England. Patrick Jane drinks tea so incessantly that he must be a Brit! Why not just make his character British?
Another mistake, as far as I'm concerned, which happens in at least three episodes, is that the Mentalist tricks people into shooting firearms with blanks when they think their guns are loaded with ball rounds (not blanks). In my opinion, his is too risky to be considered professional enough for a law enforcement agency to do, because any self-respecting criminal who knows how to handle a firearm would probably check their ammunition before using it to commit a crime. Granted, a similar situation in another episode resulted in the killing of a police officer. The Mentalist slipped peanuts into a suspect's pistol; later, when the suspect escorted him outside to get past the police who surrounded the place, the Mentalist told them to merely arrest the man, because he'd put peanuts in his pistol. Sure enough, the criminal attempted to fire the pistol, and it was jammed, but, when a police officer approached to cuff him, he pulled out his back-up weapon and shot the officer dead. Oops!
Extras which were included in the D.V.D. copies of the first six seasons were discarded in the final season. Earlier editions were translated into audible Portuguese and about a dozen foreign subtitles. The final season may be heard only in English, with subtitles in only three languages: English, Spanish, and French. I've often wondered why anyone bothered to translate the earlier seasons into Portuguese instead of Spanish, and if there isn't a connection to this peculiarity and Agent Lisbon being named after the capital of Portugal.
But the final disc of the final season does include a special feature, titled "Patrick Jane: An Uncommon Man," chronicling his "journey of redemption, from revenge to romance." The Mentalist spends approximately the first five and a half seasons hunting Red John, after Red John butchered his wife and child, in response to Jane's taunting him via a televised interview which included a broadcast of a demonstration of Jane's alleged psychic powers, with which Jane had made a lucrative living while claiming they were genuine. Jane apparently blames himself for the massacre of his family, and stops claiming to have any psychic powers. Furthermore, he insists that no one has any psychic powers, and that there are no such things as psychic powers. He does, however, continue to use the sometimes deceptive tricks psychics use, as well as their authentic skills, to get what he wants, and to accomplish his missions.
Sometime during Season Six, the Mentalist becomes significantly less concerned with Red John, and a lot more concerned with Agent Lisbon, so much so that, at the end of the Season finale, he confesses his love for her, to her.
Coincidental to the Mentalist's loss of interest in Red John, he transitions from his job at a by then defunct C.B.I. headquarters in Sacramento, California, to a position at an F.B.I. headquarters in, for some strange reason, Austin, Texas. This divides the entire series into two distinct portions, which I have come to think of as the California chronicles and the Texas tales. For all intents and purposes, they are essentially two different series, but with some of the same characters, especially the Mentalist and his boss, Agent Lisbon, who becomes his partner both professionally and romantically in Season Seven.
This series begs the questions:
Will the Mentalist ever catch Red John?
If and when the Mentalist does catch Red John, will he kill him, incarcerate him, or merely let him go?
Will the Mentalist and Agent Lisbon get married and live happily ever after?
I hope the answer to that last question is answered in a future, spin-off series.
Back to the quizzes I mentioned in the first paragraph of this review... So far, I have only created and published nine such quizzes - four each for each of the first two episodes of Season One, plus an extra Witness Level Quiz for the Pilot episode. The answers to the multiple-choice questions are published in separate posts, on the same blog.
I am creating four quizzes for each episode, of four levels of difficulty; for each episode, I intend to create a Witness Level Quiz, an Agent Level Test, a Mentalist Level Exam, and an Omniscient Level Inquisition, with eleven, twenty-one, thirty-one, and forty-one questions, respectively. Not only are there ten more questions for each level of difficulty above the Witness Level, the questions themselves tend to be more difficult, or at least focused from a different point of view.
I try to derive the Witness level questions by watching the episode with the volume muted.
The Agent and Mentalist Level questions are mostly derived from conversations the Agents and/or the Mentalist have during the episode. The Agent Level Test will tend to have more questions based on things the C.B.I. or F.B.I. (California and Federal Bureaus of Investigation) Agents say or hear, whereas the Mentalist Level Exam will contain more questions based on what the Mentalist says or hears.
The Omniscient Level Inquisitions are comparable to the "impossible" "nightmare" levels in video games. Their questions are derived from sources other than the episodes themselves, such as the Internet. Occasionally, there may be questions in the Inquisitions which aren't even available - at least not readily, on the Internet. These are often behind-the-scenes questions, such as which actor played which role, and what else have they appeared in. Some of the Inquisition questions may involve more in depth studies into items seen or foreign or peculiar words uttered during the episode. For examples, what type of fish is shown at the beginning of a certain scene, or what does sacramento mean in which languages?
Each quiz above the Witness level provides the opportunity to "test out" at a lower level than that indicated by the level of the test. To score at a certain level, one must score the percentage which corresponds to that level:
Seventy percent to achieve the status of a Witness
Eighty percent to achieve the status of an Agent
Ninety percent to achieve the status of a Mentalist
One hundred percent to achieve the status of the Omniscient.
Any score below seventy percent on any of the quizzes constitutes a failure.
Each quiz has a bonus question. Missing the bonus questions does not lower the overall percentage scored, because the percentages are based on round numbers of questions. For examples, seven of ten questions, or seventy percent, for a Witness Level Quiz, or forty of forty questions for the Omniscient Level Inquisition... However, answering the bonus question correctly boosts the percentage, because it counts as a correct answer against the number of non-bonus questions on the quiz. For example, if someone were to answer only six non-bonus questions correctly on a Witness Level Quiz, this would constitute a failure; however, if they answered the bonus question correctly, they would pass with seven correct answers, or seventy percent.
I hope our readers will enjoy watching and re-watching episodes of "The Mentalist" for decades to come, finding the answers to these and many more questions!
Review by William Mortensen Vaughan
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