Oh gosh... I feel bad about saying this, but I sort of hope that this season is the last of The Mentalist. It's not that I don't love it. Actually, I think the stuff post-Red John has been refreshing and interesting, for the most part. But I'd love to see something decisive happen about Jane and Lisbon in the finale of this season, and from that point on I'm not sure if there are more stories to tell. Let's look at the plot of this one. It was a surprisingly sad episode.
Jane, while just minding his own business, notices a man with suspicious grocery items and deduces that he has kidnapped a girl. He calls Lisbon away from her date with Pike, and they arrive to find a girl who has been shot. She dies before help can arrive. The man whose house it was ends up being a bit insane. He apparently found the shot girl on the side of the road and wanted to patch her up, just like he does with other "garbage" he finds dumped on the highway. Jane uses some hypnotic tricks to get him to remember exactly where he found the girl. From there, they are able to discover that this girl was part of a human trafficking scheme.
Jane and the others pull a trick on the trucker radio frequency, pretending to all be truckers who have been pulled over by the cops on one particular stretch of road. This way, all of the truckers in the area will be scared and will pull in to a rest stop. This plan works, and they are able to find the woman driving a truck full of girls. Jane and Abbott pretend to be interested in making a trade with the brothers in Mexico who were looking to pick up this cargo. They trap them into coming onto US soil and revealing their involvement in the trafficking.
There's no real subplot here, but we do continue to see Lisbon and Pike happy together, as Lisbon struggles to decide about moving to DC. Abbott tells Lisbon to tell Jane what's going on. She does, and Jane says he's happy if she's happy. However, we can clearly see he's very upset about the possibility of Lisbon leaving.
Complaints? Uh... you know what? I really loved this episode. Truly. I can't think of any major complaints. I suppose I could say that Fischer and Wylie didn't get a lot to do... but honestly, it's okay that they weren't the focus. There's too much else going on to really work on developing Fischer right now, even if I do wish she had more of a character.
The good stuff... is... wow. Remember how I kept complaining that we kept being tricked by Jane and everyone else, week after week? There's no purpose in keeping the audience in the dark all the time. It's okay if we see Jane's plan unfold the whole way. In this episode, we finally got that. There were no real fake-outs for us. We knew what they were up to from the start. It's still enjoyable to watch, even if there isn't some shocking twist in it for us. Yay!
The opening scene, with Jane comforting the dying girl, was really emotionally poignant. I was getting pretty upset there for a moment. Some really lovely and subtle acting from Simon Baker, here. There were a lot of other touching moments, too. One of the girls who had been pulled in to the modelling scam and was being shipped to Mexico had a sister. Her continued pleas for her sister's safe return really tugged at my heartstrings.
And of course I'll end my discussion by looking at the Jane/Lisbon material, here. Firstly, there's this little moment that kind of gets brushed over, but I loved it. While Jane and Lisbon are trying to find the truck driver, they notice a man and a woman who are clearly traveling together, but Jane says they aren't romantically involved. He says "there's no intimacy there" and as he says it, he and Lisbon are pressed way closer together than is strictly necessary in a professional setting. It seems like we're meant to see a clear contrast. This man and woman are business partners doing a job, and yet their relationship is clearly distinct from the much closer one of Jane and Lisbon.
I love that Abbott gets involved in things by telling Lisbon to tell Jane what's going on. You can see that Lisbon is hesitant... clearly, she imagines this conversation with Jane will be awkward. And it is, a little bit. Jane is clearly in pain when he hears that Lisbon really likes Pike and is thinking about moving away with him. However, he wants Lisbon to be happy, so he doesn't say anything. Lisbon seems almost angry that Jane isn't protesting, which makes me think that she secretly wants him to declare his feelings for her. Both of them are so stubborn. Lisbon will probably leave unless Jane asks her to stay, and Jane won't ask her to stay when he thinks this is what Lisbon wants. You crazy kids!
Next week, we seem to get more on the Jane/Lisbon front. I'll be excited to see what happens. To me, it seems impossible that Lisbon will actually end up with Pike in endgame. I mean, come on. Six years of buildup, and they're not going to give us what we've all been waiting for? Still, this show has pulled some pretty extreme moves in the past, so we'll have to wait and see.
9/10
A Corporate Mentalist DC is the one who hosts a magic show at a tradeshow and uses magic tricks and some humor to charm the audience and engage them. The whole purpose is to engage the audience in a positive way and let them hear about your brand’s message so that your brand can be promoted.
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