| redbird |
Date: Wednesday, 03-Sep-14, 7:56 PM | Message # 76 |
Dinkie-Di
Messages: 152
Status: Offline |
I have to admit that the first episode of The Mentalist that I ever saw was in Season 6 - Green Thumb. I stumbled on it one evening and, liking Simon Baker as an actor, I kept watching. I really enjoyed the episode so I went to Amazon and bought all 6 seasons for my Kindle. Once I started watching, I simply could not stop. Patrick Jane is THE best character on all of TV with the exception of premium cable.
I watched simply to be entertained - I didn't start playing the "Who is Red John?" game until the final episode of Season 5 when we had the list of 7 suspects. I really hadn't paid any attention to the Red John clues. All I knew was that Red John was at least as intelligent as Patrick Jane and he had access to law enforcement. I immediately eliminated Partridge, Haffner, Smith and Kirkland from my list of possible Red Johns - Partridge was just a ghoul, Haffner was stupid, Smith was a thug and Kirkland was just plain creepy. I knew that they weren't Red John. That left Bertram, Stiles and McAllister on my list of real possibilities. Bertram had never really exhibited the intelligence necessary to be Red John but he did have access to law enforcement at a very high level, Stiles did have the intelligence level to go toe-to-toe with Jane and while he ran a church, many of his church members were law enforcement so he did have access to law enforcement and McAllister was a complete unknown except for his access to law enforcement - I knew nothing about his intelligence level but he stayed on my list because I didn't know enough about him to remove him from my list. Then we got to the wedding episode in Napa. Thomas McAllister was a very good match for Jane's intelligence - he even bested Jane in his analysis of the corpse in that episode. For those that didn't understand the pigeon scene during the Red John reveal, it came from this episode. McAllister was petrified when a pigeon flew in his face.
Once the bomb had exploded at Jane's house and we learned that Bertram, Smith and Jane had survived but Haffner, Stiles and McAllister had died, I was pretty sure that Red John was McAllister. Jane had moved everyone with the Blake Association tattoo to the other side of the room so it didn't make sense that McAllister had died with Haffner and Stiles. I watched while things played out with Bertram and Smith but I never really thought that either of them was Red John. I was even more convinced that McAllister was Red John when Jane and Lisbon were in the park after the CBI had been shut down by the FBI. Jane was feeding the pigeons. After that, I just sat back and watched it all play out. I was sure that McAllister was Red John but I must admit that I really was surprised that I had guessed right.
I thought that the Red John reveal was an excellent episode. I thought it was visually stunning and Simon Baker's acting was superb. Yes, the reveal was a bit disappointing but I would have been surprised if it didn't disappoint. Red John was never going to be the visual monster that everyone had created in their minds - he was going to be the average ordinary guy who lived down the street or that you saw once in awhile pumping gas when you pulled into the gas station to fill up your tank. I know that some people were angry that Bruno Heller didn't know who Red John was until very late in the game and, because they were unhappy with the reveal, they thought that he had screwed the whole thing up. A television show is a very fluid thing. Very often you don't know where you're going until you see what went before on screen. I think that knowing too early would have created an inflexible situation that would have limited where the show could go.
As for all of the unanswered questions that people wanted answers to, the episode did respond to that. Once Jane and Red John were face to face in the chapel, Red John wanted to gloat and puff himself up. He wanted to pontificate and show his superior intelligence by answering all of Jane's questions. Patrick Jane wouldn't have been the Patrick Jane that we've come to know over all of these years if he'd let Red John get away with that. Jane's response to Red John desire to answer his questions was a very simple "I don't care". It was perfect - Jane read the man right to the end and isn't that what we all love about Patrick Jane. Face to face with the man who had destroyed his family and his life, there were only 2 questions that needed to be answered: "Are you sorry that you killed my wife and daughter?" and "Are you afraid to die?" Patrick Jane got the answer to both of those questions. |
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| DS_Pallas |
Date: Wednesday, 17-Sep-14, 11:18 AM | Message # 77 |
 Fair Dinkum
Messages: 1979
Status: Offline |
From Xander Berkeley ( @ https://twitter.com/xanderberkeley )
16 Sept
#RedJohn right before he got sat on and choked… still thinking he's gonna get away.
12 Sept
#RedJohn's twin...
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| Juney |
Date: Thursday, 15-Jan-15, 4:31 PM | Message # 78 |
 Bee's Knees
Messages: 606
Status: Offline |
But who was the woman who walked into the church shot the man and then walked out again, never to be heard of again? |
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| DS_Pallas |
Date: Friday, 16-Jan-15, 8:58 PM | Message # 79 |
Fair Dinkum
Messages: 1979
Status: Offline |
I thnik we'll never know. One of the RJ minions, obvioulsly, but I agree it would have been nice to have some clues before that last "Red John Era" episode. |
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