The Mentalist "Red and Itchy" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) and the ending will leave Patrick Jane and the rest of us speechless.

Dr. Linus Wagner: Everything you told me, Mr. Jane,  is total fiction, isn't it?.

In "Red and Itchy"  JJ's mystery box leaves US LOST and scratching for answers.  JJ Laroche needs Patrick Jane's help to find his mystery box before the black(fe)maler tells the world what dark secret JJ has been hiding. Jane feels an obligation to help JJ because he knows his actions to crack JJ's safe resulted in JJ's secret getting into the hands of a corrupt CBI PR officer, the object of JJ's Internal Affairs investigation. Jane's ruse fools the PR officer into talking to her cartel capo, and Jane hands back JJ's mystery box.  While Jane prevents JJ's secret from getting out, Lisbun's visit to the guy who raped JJ's mother left the viewers speechless and tongues wagging.  Is JJ a monster or just another vengeful man like Jane who won't let go of the past?  Who really knows?  It's a mystery.

There is a growing fear in The Mentalist audience and not just those crazy bloggers Lisbuns never reads (sigh) that when the identity of Red John is revealed a year away there will be a bigger disappointment than LOST.  Bruno Heller should talk to JJ Abrams.

JJ Abrams: "People often ask me how Lost is going to end. I usually tell them to ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who run that series. (Turns out they were  LOST about that too) But I always wonder, do they really want to know? And what if I did tell them? They might have an aha moment, but without context. Especially since the final episode is a year away. That is to say, the experience—the setup for a joke's punch line, the buildup to a magic trick's big flourish—is as much of a thrill as the result. There's discovery to be made and wonder to be had on the journey that not only enrich the ending but in many ways define it."

The moral of the story: it's a magic trick, an ILLUSION.

Of course, the LOST audience eventually discovered the incoherent ending made little sense and the mystery journey was an excuse by BAD robot writers to hide the real mystery that they were LOST and just making it up as they went. Put a cork in it, JJ. We can only hope Bruno won't leave us hanging like poor John Locke as the show goes off the cliff. And let's not forget JJ's bad treatment of John Scott in "FRINGE"...as if he knew all the secrets.

The Mentalist is an ILLUSION: Jane appears to be a Sherlock Homes super-sleuth character, but in reality is a mental patient with a cracked eggshell who suffers from paranoid delusions due to feelings of extreme guilt in the deaths of his wife and child who were burned as he was (CBI = intensive burn care?)  in a horrific car accident involving a driver named Tanner when he failed to stop at a BLINKING RED LIGHT CROSSING AN INTERSECTION, hence the RJ symbol, while he was driving intoxicated  and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes.  Note: Jane's eggshell blue car - a vintage 1972 Citroen DS 20 that Warner Bros., producer of "The Mentalist" for CBS, had in its inventory. It was used in the 2008 movie "Speed Racer." For "The Mentalist," the car was shipped from Germany and painted eggshell blue (it was originally red).


Burning Clues: "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point. Items: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze. Out of the Frye-ing pan into the... As Kristina Frye discovered, when you get too close to Red John, you get burned.  "Tiger, Tiger burning bright, they were "Au-burned."  In the "Red Mile" episode Jane arrives at a crime scene outside Auburn, California.  Shouts from Alabama football fans of "Roll Tide" first appeared during the Alabama-Auburn Tiger IRON BOWL game in 1907. Curiously, a corpse was found in a burned car in "Ruby Slippers," in which Jane discovers the identity of Fifi Nix, like Jane's Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of his past life.  In "Red Dawn" Jane is given a desk next to a fire extinguisher that is there, then it's gone, then it's there again.   Fake Red John read all about it - catch the fire-y headline on the front page of the newspaper Tim Carter was reading before Jane shot him.  Red John appeared to Jane in the burn mask.  Jane: It's not my fire.

UPDATE:  As the first episode of the sixth season of the MENTALIST has been revealed - "The DESERT ROSE" - perhaps Bruno referred to a song that Sting made famous.  The lyrics will burn in your imagination and perhaps provide a clue about Patrick Jane's:

I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire

This desert rose
Each of her seven veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing's as it seems


THE WILD WEST-PHALL WORLD

Red John is Patrick Jane's imaginary evil twin, his "perfect symmetry" alter-ego (Jane/John) Professor Moriarty character in a Tommy Westphall" imaginary world like "St. Elsewhere's" snow globe and "Life on Mars" that is the dream state of Jane.  (NB. The fake Jane character in "Red Moon" where a corpse was found in a burned car was named Ellis Mars (El - He is Mars.) 

Ellis Mars: The mind is a powerful weapon. It can create reality. 

Jane: Perhaps we can see each other again.
Lorelei: That’s not up to me.
Jane: Oh, you have no say in it?
Lorelei: None at all. It’s very "Westphall."
Jane: I don’t follow you.
Lorelei: I do what Red John tells me to do.
 
 
                         Red Face to Face

 

Mentalist in a Box, It's a BAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD, The BIG W:  The characters of Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt and Lisbon are also Jane's creations ala the "Wizard of Oz;"  the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy in reality are the assistants and doctors at the mental hospital and the RJ minions are Jane's fellow mental patients. In the final scene Jane confronts "Red John,"  and in an homage to "OZ" awakens from his dream state to realize the true identity of  RED JOHN - the Big W - Johnny Walker RED. 

.   Shaking hands with Red John

Drink Scotch Whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel

 BLOOD and SAND
½ oz. Johnnie Walker Red Label
1 tbsp. orange juice
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. fresh cherry syrup
Orange peel for garnish
Add the Johnnie Walker, orange juice, vermouth and cherry syrup to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until cold and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with orange peel.

It takes a toll on my soul,
Because I'm starting to believe the lies you strung with red,
Is it all just a game?
One day I'll heal and I'll be covered in scars (red and itchy)
And never forget why did it all fell apart.
When you finally came clean about the lies and the games you played from the start!
-Red in Tooth and Claw

The Man with Two Names -- Red John's alias is ROY Tagliaferro (read: "cut iron").   The ROY CUT IRON  anagrams are "court irony" and "you r citron."  How ironic that Jane, the court jester who arrives at the crime scene in his Citroen,  a master reader of how others' emotions control them and our need to let go of the past,  was a prisoner of his IRON-ic chains to the past.  Until Jane leaves his OLD LIFE BEHIND, The Mentalist is on the mental list, a prisoner of his own device. 

                                                                                  
  

Jane: Lisbuns, what's red and itchy and dying to get out?