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Patrick Jane has a successful life. He's a minor celebrity, with a career as a TV psychic, nice clothes, a big house, a loving wife and child. Then he is asked on television about serial killer Red John, who has long eluded the police, and his life falls apart. Because Red John doesn’t appreciate Jane’s profile of him, he kills his wife and daughter.
From this tragedy a new Patrick Jane emerges. He gives up his TV career, rubbishes psychic abilities at any opportunity (and he should know, because he faked his own abilities, basing his success on observation and insight into human nature) and takes on a role as a paid consultant to the California Bureau of Investigation. Here he works with a small team of police specialists who try to solve cases that are too big for the local authorities to deal with. This also gives him the chance to keep tabs on Red John.
Simon Baker exudes a confident coolness as Patrick Jane. Even in the hottest weather he wears a three-piece suit, yet he never looks ruffled. He’s playful, arrogant and hardly ever plays by the rules. The latter often brings him into conflict with his colleagues, especially Special Agent Theresa Lisbon, the head of the team. Parallels have been drawn between Patrick Jane and Sherlock Holmes, in that both use observation and deduction based on their special insights to reach their conclusions. So if Jane is Holmes, then his Watson is surely Theresa Lisbon.
Lisbon (played by Robin Tunney) is hard-nosed and businesslike, but has a high tolerance of Jane’s eccentricities. This could be due to the fact that he gets results, but there is also an unspoken chemistry between her and Jane. She has put her career and her life on the line for him, and vice-versa.
Kimball Cho (Tim Kang) is often the straight man of the team, unsmiling and seemingly eternally serious, but he has a sly sense of humour and delivers puns without any hint of personal amusement. He makes a good foil for his regular partner, the easy going Rigsby.
The team joker, Wayne Rigsby, portrayed by Owain Yeoman, had his head turned the day Grace Van Pelt walked into the office. It took him over a year to act on his feelings and find that they were returned. However, the CBI take a dim view of relationships between agents and after keeping their love secret for a while, and having it officially ignored by Lisbon, they had to end the affair when Lisbon’s boss found out about them.
Despite being the rookie of the outfit, Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) brings a calm intelligence to the team. Like Jane, she is rarely ruffled, even when arresting male suspects physically bigger than she is. She was seen to be very upset when she and Rigsby had to end their relationship.
For two seasons now Patrick Jane has used his unconventional methods to get results and arrests for this small team of CBI agents, making himself virtually indispensable, despite the amount of ruffled feathers he leaves in his wake. Meanwhile Red John continues to claim victims, and Jane continues his attempts to ‘take care’ of the serial killer who turned his world upside down. With a third season of The Mentalist due to start on American TV screens this month, I hope this clash of consultant versus killer continues for some time.
Catch The Mentalist on Fridays at 9pm on five
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