The Mentalist"Pilot"
Original Air Date: September 23, 2008.
Liz - TwoCents Reviewer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com
All summer long I have seen comments decrying this new show as a, "Psych ripoff!" with varying degrees of misspelling, capitalization, and punctuation abuse. I'm forced to disagree with anyone who's ever said that -- if you need to compare it to Psych, say, "Psych played straight." Because in The Mentalist, there is no plucky sidekick or a father who gruffly dispenses advice to the hero (at least, not yet). There is only Patrick Jane, a former John Edwards-like faux psychic of some celebrity who has since put his keen powers of observation to use for the greater good with the California Bureau of Investigation. His outlook is cynical, his wit is dry, and his methods are… questionable at best.
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[photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS]
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The Mentalist
ReplyDelete"Pilot"
Original Air Date: September 23, 2008.
Liz - TwoCents Reviewer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com
All summer long I have seen comments decrying this new show as a, "Psych ripoff!" with varying degrees of misspelling, capitalization, and punctuation abuse. I'm forced to disagree with anyone who's ever said that -- if you need to compare it to Psych, say, "Psych played straight." Because in The Mentalist, there is no plucky sidekick or a father who gruffly dispenses advice to the hero (at least, not yet). There is only Patrick Jane, a former John Edwards-like faux psychic of some celebrity who has since put his keen powers of observation to use for the greater good with California Bureau of Investigation. His outlook is cynical, his wit is dry, and his methods are… questionable at best.
At one point, Patrick Jane tells Dr. Wagner, our antagonist of the week, "Why do magicians have beautiful girls as assistants? … They're reliable distractions. People will look at a girl for a long time before they look where they should be looking." I can't help but think that is CBS's plan here -- give us Simon Baker to look at for forty-three minutes, and we won't be able to see what Patrick sees and be impressed when the reveal comes.
Never mind that we're limited in what we can see to what the camera shows us -- for instance, you don't see Patrick steal Dr. Wagner's keycard to the building until after Patrick lets himself back in to the building. We are shown the opportunity, but not the act. But I'm ahead of myself.
The first time we get to see Patrick in action, he deduces that the mother of a deceased girl, "loves India, but has never been," and also that her supposedly loving husband killed their daughter. And that he was sleeping with her. The mother harbored these suspicions as well and having them confirmed, pulls a gun on her scumbag of a hubby and shoots him. When Teresa Lisbon and the other cops enter the house and Patrick tells her, hands raised in the air, "Honestly, it's not as bad as it looks," we get the feeling that this isn't the first time something like that has happened.
When we are treated to our case of the week, we are also introduced to the rest of the team. Teresa is the leader, and kind of a hard ass -- she busts rookie Grace Van Pelt for checking luggage on their business trip to Palm Springs, and yells at Patrick when he shows up separately. Okay, so yelling at Patrick is kind of deserved. His disregard for protocol or rules in general seems to be epidemic, and he goes over her head to let him in on the case. But the inklings of the tragic past begin when he called this "Red John" case "his."
Things get real intense real fast when Patrick deconstructs the local law professional's assessment of the crime scene in a manner that can only be described as passionate and with confidence. He also gets personal and calls him a "ghoul" who "enjoys his work too much." And then something about getting turned on by Britney Spears fangoria. (To be fair, who among us hasn't had a dream about taking power tools to Britney Spears?)
The case, all in all, seems to take a backseat to the enigma wrapped in a good-looking riddle that is Patrick Jane. Sure, he's kind of an ass. (When trying to get sleeping pills from Dr. Wagner and asked why he can't sleep, he replicates Johnny Cash's traumatic childhood experience. Also, he shows disdain for "real" psychics, calling them "deluded, dishonest, or both.") But he's one of those characters where it's part of his charm because he's not really harmful, just obnoxious.
He's not totally without his humanizing aspects -- there's something about a bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived Simon Baker that makes you want to hug him and put him to bed. (Okay, granted, he was up all night fabricating a diary of the murdered doctor, which he then plants and "discovers," all to drive the real killer to confess.) But the fact remains: his wife and child were killed by Red John when he, in his days as a charlatan, became involved in the police investigation against him. This is thankfully slowly revealed through flashbacks and also contemporary details, rather than being info-dumped on us by a third party.
He gave up his life as a psychic and now works for the police straight up. He also lives in the same house that he did with his family, in a minimalist manner that can only be described as Brechtian. (Sorry, that's my theatre roots talking.) His bed is a single mattress on the floor underneath the faded, chilling smiley face of Red John's signature. (Frankly, if I had that thing on my wall, I wouldn't sleep either.) I smell a protagonist who is looking for penance and absolution.
It's a little soon to say how much balance there will be between a crime show and straight up drama. I, personally, wouldn't be overly upset if it were more of the latter -- but I love character-driven things. I'm excited! I think it's well written and well cast and I hope it does well so we can have more. What did you all think?
Also, if anyone knows how to do that origami frog thing, help a sister out and link her to some instructions, because that was awesome.