The Mentalist"Carnelian Inc."
Original Air Date: March 24, 2009.
Liz - Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com
So crime dramas aren't exactly usually my cup of tea and therefore I have not seen very many, but if I had to make a guess I would say that this week's Mentalist had one of the best openings, ever. Giant sharks in the desert and then a guy falls out of the sky into the Mojave Desert, right in front of Jane and company. Admit it, you laughed a little.
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The Mentalist
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Original Air Date: March 24, 2009.
Liz - Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com
So crime dramas aren't exactly usually my cup of tea and therefore I have not seen very many, but if I had to make a guess I would say that this week's Mentalist had one of the best openings, ever. Giant sharks in the desert and then a guy falls out of the sky into the Mojave Desert, right in front of Jane and company. Admit it, you laughed a little.
The only reason Jane and the rest were out in the desert is because the CBI had received a mysterious, threatening e-mail from one, Joe Q. Public. Very subtle. Our ill-fated skydiver's name was David Whittaker, and he was on a corporate retreat with his company, Carnelian Prime Trust. Randall Falk, president and CEO, is pretty flippant and cold in the face of it all, declaring they are not going to abandon the retreat. Another executive declares them to be the real victims here, and another message from Joe Q. Public demands an apology from Carnelian for being greedy, arrogant businessmen who put the simple folk out of work. Way to be topical, CBS.
Grace works some more of her computer magic, cross referencing a list of people who had access to the plane hanger where the parachutes were kept with a list from Carnelian of malcontents. (New life goal: get on a corporation's malcontent list.) The only name that comes up on both lists is Lee Skelling, who works at the airport and wrote Carnelian a strongly worded letter. Once in CBI custody, we learn the origin of his letter came from not being paid a fifty thousand dollar bonus after his company was bought by Carnelian. So Skelling is understandably annoyed. While Cho has Lee in the interrogation room, Lisbon and Jane go to see Lee's wife Jessi. She doesn't believe that he screwed with the guy's parachute, because he said he didn't and would not lie to her -- especially with her dying and all. She says if he goes to jail then when she dies the kids will go into care. There is a certain amount of logic in that statement.
Jane believes Skelling, so takes Lisbon with him to speak with the Carnelian executives still on retreat. Really, what he's doing is throwing a cat amongst the pigeons -- which is an expression I'd never heard before. Learning new things every day. So once Jane manages to thoroughly insult every last one of them, they leave with nothing new gleaned, which Jane calls disappointing. At the end of some major Jane and Lisbon scene time, Grace calls Lisbon with another message from Joe Q. Public. This time, it leads to a dud bomb underneath Falk's bed at the retreat. Have to love anything that gives Jane the opportunity to say "I told you so."
The bomb squad guy gives the appraisal that the bomb was army work -- done by someone who knew what they were doing. By the time they get to Skelling, Lee is gone into the mountains ready to live out his army ranger survival fantasy rather than be hauled in by the long arm of the law. Or something. It's a little overdramatic, but rule one of the show is still if Jane says they didn't do it, then they didn't do it. At CBI, Grace looks through stock market logs to see if anyone's made a killing (HA) on Carnelian's rapidly falling stock. She traces some account activity to a London bank under the name NS Holdings -- Nadia Sobel, one of the Carnelian executives. They hasten to the retreat center, although it seems they are too late. In a game of War, fought with paintball guns, Nadia is shot and killed for real.
At this point, Falk announces that the retreat is over and that he is going to make the apology that Joe Q. Public demands. Carnelian will be a new company! Etc! It's all very showy, but Jane is not fooled for a minute and neither should you be. The bullet found in Nadia's body can almost for certain be traced to Jake Coobey, who runs the retreat facility. Jane takes Falk to confront Coobey and, just as a grand finale, he fires up the bomb that he brought with him; the very same bomb that was found under Falk's bed. Falk runs to disarm it, and doesn't understand he's been tricked until after Jane has successfully ensnared him -- just as it should be. The entire ruse was a camouflage for Nadia's death, who was going to slap Falk with a sexual harassment suit just after she left the company. They agree to make a deal of Whittaker's death becoming manslaughter one, forgetting the bomb, and to not seek the death penalty in exchange for the Skelling family finally getting their money, and then some. Everyone's happy.
After last week's bump in the road, this week's episode was a refreshing visit back to some kind of normality. There was humor ("Boom!"), there was Jane being a total hardass, and lots of Lisbon and Jane screen time. Not saying they are looking to build one way or the next, but is there some truth to what Lisbon says? Are there trust issues? Was Jane being genuine when he said he wanted her to trust him? I'd be willing to say he was, but that is probably why I am not a cop. What is YOUR Two Cents?
Who played Nadia Sobel as one of the Carnelian executives in a Mentalist episode?
ReplyDeleteJaime Murray
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who played Falk?
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