The MentalistThe Thin Red Line
Original Air Date: 25 Nov 2008
Liz - TwoCents Reviewer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com
Patrice Madigan and Joe Purcell are discovered dead in a motel room in Davis, California. Joe was a state's witness in a narcotics case against Rick Carris -- although Patrick Jane thinks Patrice was the target, rather than Joe. Thus starts a trip with police partners protecting one's secret, betrayal of a wife by a husband, and an unwitting sororicide. There is always a reckoning.
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Patrice Madigan and Joe Purcell are discovered dead in a motel room in Davis, California. Joe was a state's witness in a narcotics case against Rick Carris -- although Patrick Jane thinks Patrice was the target, rather than Joe. Thus starts a trip with police partners protecting one's secret, betrayal of a wife by a husband, and an unwitting sororicide. There is always a reckoning.
ReplyDeletePatrick begins to notice something awry before anyone else -- as usual. Powdered milk and a baby bottle, but no baby to be seen. He takes Patrice's keys from her cold, dead hand and follows the signal to her car. He pulls out a baby who is remarkably happy for being left in a car all night. Honestly, I'm not sure which one is cuter.
There is a clash between CBI and the Davis homicide detectives. I've noticed that this is a recurring device in crime shows, cops tend to get very territorial over their cases and the like. The detectives, Presiado and Blakely, seem to be two sides of the same coin. Blakely is older, quieter, more mild-mannered, while Presiado seems to have more testosterone than he rightly knows what to do with. They are, ah, forcefully confident that Joe was the target, and the crime was a hit ordered by Rick Carris. Patrick thinks Patrice may have been the target, but they won't hear anything of it. So he and Lisbon go to an address that was found on a magazine in Patrice's car, to visit one Lacey Wells.
Lacey Wells turns out to have been Patrice's roommate of the past two or three months. She gives them details about Patrice. She didn't work, but she always had money. She came up with $10,000 plus for bail and a lawyer, and then somehow made a meth charge disappear. There was also a boyfriend with a blue car. At this point, Lisbon gets a phone call and says they were tipped off that Carris was in Boonville. Rigsby and Presiado almost get into it because Davis PD is ready to make the bust before Lisbon and Patrick get there. Predictably, Carris tries to flee as they bust him, but Patrick finally nabs one -- he nudges a cement block in front of the chain-link gate. Carris runs into it, expecting it will open, and is thrown flat on his back for his trouble. Hey, I laughed.
They interrogate Carris, but he's not the killer. He was looking for Purcell, but didn't find him. He said the slaying wasn't his style, which is as good an excuse as any. So starting from scratch, they look at Presiado. And the more they look at Presiado, the more he looks good for the murder.
The interrogation scene with Presiado deserves some attention, because Presiado is more tightly wound than a pocket watch and is ready to deck Patrick for "trying to hold his hand." You'd think that a cop would be onto Patrick, but maybe not a cop like Presiado. Patrick isn't trying to hold his hand, but his wrist -- checking his pulse as a rudimentary lie detector. Presiado claims Patrice had been working for them as a CI, but Lisbon said there was no record of it. And the only reason I know that's wrong is because it was featured on Dexter in a big way this season.
So what starts as questioning Catherine Blakely about Presiado's alibi for the time of the murders turns into the you-know-what hitting the fan. Their son, Sam, who was the responding officer, is edgy the entire time Patrick is there. When Patrick is finally alone with Catherine, she seems to come to a wrong conclusion -- that Dale was having an affair with Patrice. Her wording implies that this has happened before, which turns out to be important. Patrick gets punched in the nose for his trouble, which brings up an interesting statistic: he has now been punched in 25% of the episodes. Not that I'm keeping track.
Our CBI folks plan to set up and catch Sam Blakely, who they are now certain committed the crime. They invent a hitman of Carris's who did the deed named Q-Tip (I know, frightening), who they plan to grab when he is meeting Carris. Lisbon says Carris thinks he is playing them for idiots, but I think you and I both knew that it was Sam who was getting played. When Sam shows up at the scene and shoots "Q-Tip," who is a dummy in the driver's seat of the van seen on security footage, they take him in. In extra nerd points for Grace, she photoshopped the license plate number onto that van.
Like a good opera, all is revealed in the final act. Sam found out that Dale was seeing Patrice and thought she was a mistress. He followed her to the motel room, where he shot Joe and Patrice when Joe reached for his gun. He panicked and fled, but responded to dispatch because he was the closest car. Then Dale gives us the real story. Patrice was not his mistress, but his daughter, presumably from an affair long ago. Sam had killed the sister he never knew.
There is always a reckoning.
There's a silver lining to the cloud, though. The Blakelys are given Kaylee because they are the only family she has.
This was a pretty heavy episode, I thought, with all the intrigue. However, it was not without its humor. Patrick and Grace together always seem to bring amusement. His advice to her to "put a little bitch into the nice, and a little nice into the bitch" seemed to take hold, and I think Patrick was as surprised as I was. Not so much character development this time around, though.
I didn't get to see the ad for next week's, but rest assured that I am as eager as ever to see it. To my fellow Americans, have a Happy Thanksgiving, and to the rest of you out there, Have a Happy Thursday!
I am really surprised by how much I love this show. It is so funny and interesting. Simon Baker is amazing, as is the entire cast.
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