The Mentalist "Red John's Rules" Review

 The Mentalist in a nutshell:  It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) that we have seen before. In "Red John's Rules" Patrick Jane reveals his Red John Usual Suspects aka the un-Magnificent "SEVEN".

IMAGINE if any of the seven "usual suspects" Patrick Jane has not eliminated as Red John is finally revealed as the master serial killer of all time, is the audience going to buy it? Which of these guys will live up to the audience's diabolical expectations?  Sinister Stiles? Pathetic Partridge? Hapless Haffner? After six seasons Bruno Heller will have to create an ending more shocking than the Usual Suspects or the head-in-the-box in "Seven." But these guys? Bruno better call Kevin Spacey and see if he's available.

Et tu, Bruno?

EW: There’s this smart line near the start of the third act of Seven, where the audience is warned that when we meet the film’s serial killer (KEVIN SPACEY), there’s no way he’s going to live up to our expectations. He’s just a man. Has that concerned you, building up the villain for so long that it can’t top expectations?

Bruno:  Sure, if season 5 we just opened a door and said “tah-dah!” and it was some mid-range actor, that would be disappointing. The trick is going to be — and this is coming — bringing the audience along and making them second guess themselves and ask, “Is that him? Is that him?” Red John ultimately is just a man — whenever you see the great criminals reduced to the flesh it’s sort of disappointing.



                     "First he's there,"

EW: Will you cast Red John next season?
Bruno: Will I cast him? He might already have been cast. You might already have seen him.

 
              "And like that he's gone."

I give Bruno more credit than that. The moral of the story: In The Mentalist there are no Red John rules as there is no Red John.

 The Mentalist is an ILLUSION: Jane appears to be a Sherlock Homes super-sleuth character, but in reality is a mental patient with a cracked eggshell who suffers from paranoid delusions due to feelings of extreme guilt in the deaths of his wife and child who were burned as he was (CBI = intensive burn care?)  in a horrific car accident involving a driver named Tanner when he failed to stop at a BLINKING RED LIGHT CROSSING AN INTERSECTION, hence the RJ symbol, while he was driving intoxicated  and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes. 


Burning Clues: "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point. Items: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze. Out of the Frye-ing pan into the... As Kristina Frye discovered, when you get too close to Red John, you get burned.  "Tiger, Tiger burning bright, they were "Au-burned."  In the "Red Mile" episode Jane arrives at a crime scene outside Auburn, California.  Shouts from Alabama football fans of "Roll Tide" first appeared during the Alabama-Auburn Tiger IRON BOWL game in 1907. Curiously, a corpse was found in a burned car in "Ruby Slippers," in which Jane discovers the identity of Fifi Nix, like Jane's Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of his past life.  In "Red Dawn" Jane is given a desk next to a fire extinguisher that is there, then it's gone, then it's there again.   Fake Red John read all about it - catch the fire-y headline on the front page of the newspaper Tim Carter was reading before Jane shot him.  Red John appeared to Jane in the burn mask.  Jane: It's not my fire.

THE WILD WEST-PHALL WORLD

Red John is Patrick Jane's imaginary evil twin, his "perfect symmetry" alter-ego (Jane/John) Professor Moriarty character in a Tommy Westphall" imaginary world like "St. Elsewhere's" snow globe and "Life on Mars" that is the dream state of Jane.  (NB. The fake Jane character in "Red Moon" where a corpse was found in a burned car was named Ellis Mars (El - He is Mars.) 

Ellis Mars: The mind is a powerful weapon. It can create reality. 

Jane: Perhaps we can see each other again.
Lorelei: That’s not up to me.
Jane: Oh, you have no say in it?
Lorelei: None at all. It’s very "Westphall."
Jane: I don’t follow you.
Lorelei: I do what Red John tells me to do.
 
 
                         Red Face to Face

 

Mentalist in a Box, It's a BAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD**, The BIG W:  The characters of Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt and Lisbon are also Jane's creations ala the "Wizard of Oz;"  the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy in reality are the assistants and doctors at the mental hospital and the RJ minions are Jane's fellow mental patients. In the final scene Jane confronts "Red John,"  and in an homage to "OZ" awakens from his dream state to realize the true identity of  RED JOHN - the Big W - Johnny Walker RED. (**  Mentalist writer Dan Cerone co-produced "It's a BAD BAD BAD BAD WORLD on "Charmed")

.   Shaking hands with Red John


 BLOOD and SAND
½ oz. Johnnie Walker Red Label
1 tbsp. orange juice
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. fresh cherry syrup
Orange peel for garnish
Add the Johnnie Walker, orange juice, vermouth and cherry syrup to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until cold and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with orange peel.

It takes a toll on my soul,
Because I'm starting to believe the lies you strung with red,
Is it all just a game?
One day I'll heal and I'll be covered in scars (Red and Itchy)
And never forget why did it all fell apart.
When you finally came clean about the lies and the games you played from the start!
-Red in Tooth and Claw

The Man with Two Names -- Red John's alias is ROY Tagliaferro (read: "cut iron").   The ROY CUT IRON  anagrams are "court irony" and "you r citron."  How ironic that Jane, the court jester who arrives at the crime scene in his Citroen,  a master reader of how others' emotions control them and our need to let go of the past,  was a prisoner of his IRON-ic chains to the past.  Until Jane leaves his OLD LIFE BEHIND, The Mentalist is on the mental list, a prisoner of his own device. 

                                                                                  


Jane: Lisbuns, want to see my Magnificent Seven?

The Mentalist "Red and Itchy" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) that will leave Patrick Jane and the rest of us speechless. In "Red and Itchy"  JJ's mystery box leaves US LOST and scratching for answers.

JJ Laroche needs Patrick Jane's help to find his mystery box before the black(fe)maler tells the world what dark secret JJ has been hiding. Jane feels an obligation to help JJ because he knows his actions to crack JJ's safe resulted in JJ's secret getting into the hands of a corrupt CBI PR officer, the object of JJ's Internal Affairs investigation. Jane's ruse fools the PR officer into talking to her cartel capo, and Jane returns JJ's  mystery box.  While Jane prevents JJ's secret from getting out, Lisbun's visit to the guy who raped JJ's mother left the viewers speechless and tongues wagging.  Is JJ a monster or just another vengeful man like Jane who won't let go of the past? Who really knows?  It's a mystery.

There is a growing fear in The Mentalist audience and not just those crazy bloggers Lisbuns never reads (sigh) that when the identity of Red John is revealed a year away there will be a bigger disappointment than LOST.  Bruno Heller should talk to JJ Abrams.

JJ Abrams: "People often ask me how Lost is going to end. I usually tell them to ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who run that series. (Turns out they were  LOST about that too) But I always wonder, do they really want to know? And what if I did tell them? They might have an aha moment, but without context. Especially since the final episode is a year away. That is to say, the experience—the setup for a joke's punch line, the buildup to a magic trick's big flourish—is as much of a thrill as the result. There's discovery to be made and wonder to be had on the journey that not only enrich the ending but in many ways define it."

Of course, the LOST audience eventually discovered the incoherent ending made little sense and the mystery journey was an excuse by BAD robot writers to hide the real mystery that they were LOST and just making it up as they went. Put a cork in it, JJ. And let's not forget JJ's bad treatment of John Scott in "FRINGE"...as if he knew all the secrets.  We can only hope Bruno won't leave us hanging like poor John Locke as the show goes off the cliff.

The moral of the story: it's a magic trick, an ILLUSION.


The Mentalist is an ILLUSION: Jane appears to be a Sherlock Homes super-sleuth character, but in reality is a mental patient with a cracked eggshell who suffers from paranoid delusions due to feelings of extreme guilt in the deaths of his wife and child who were burned as he was (CBI = intensive burn care?)  in a horrific car accident involving a driver named Tanner when he failed to stop at a BLINKING RED LIGHT CROSSING AN INTERSECTION, hence the RJ symbol, while he was driving intoxicated  and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes. 


Burning Clues: "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point. Items: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze. Out of the Frye-ing pan into the... As Kristina Frye discovered, when you get too close to Red John, you get burned.  "Tiger, Tiger burning bright, they were "Au-burned."  In the "Red Mile" episode Jane arrives at a crime scene outside Auburn, California.  Shouts from Alabama football fans of "Roll Tide" first appeared during the Alabama-Auburn Tiger IRON BOWL game in 1907. Curiously, a corpse was found in a burned car in "Ruby Slippers," in which Jane discovers the identity of Fifi Nix, like Jane's Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of his past life.  In "Red Dawn" Jane is given a desk next to a fire extinguisher that is there, then it's gone, then it's there again.   Fake Red John read all about it - catch the fire-y headline on the front page of the newspaper Tim Carter was reading before Jane shot him.  Red John appeared to Jane in the burn mask.  Jane: It's not my fire.

THE WILD WEST-PHALL WORLD

Red John is Patrick Jane's imaginary evil twin, his "perfect symmetry" alter-ego (Jane/John) Professor Moriarty character in a Tommy Westphall" imaginary world like "St. Elsewhere's" snow globe and "Life on Mars" that is the dream state of Jane.  (NB. The fake Jane character in "Red Moon" where a corpse was found in a burned car was named Ellis Mars (El - He is Mars.) 

Ellis Mars: The mind is a powerful weapon. It can create reality. 

Jane: Perhaps we can see each other again.
Lorelei: That’s not up to me.
Jane: Oh, you have no say in it?
Lorelei: None at all. It’s very "Westphall."
Jane: I don’t follow you.
Lorelei: I do what Red John tells me to do.
 
 
                         Red Face to Face

 

Mentalist in a Box, It's a BAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD**, The BIG W:  The characters of Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt and Lisbon are also Jane's creations ala the "Wizard of Oz;"  the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy in reality are the assistants and doctors at the mental hospital and the RJ minions are Jane's fellow mental patients. In the final scene Jane confronts "Red John,"  and in an homage to "OZ" awakens from his dream state to realize the true identity of  RED JOHN - the Big W - Johnny Walker RED. (**  Mentalist writer Dan Cerone co-produced "It's a BAD BAD BAD BAD WORLD on "Charmed")

.   Shaking hands with Red John


 BLOOD and SAND
½ oz. Johnnie Walker Red Label
1 tbsp. orange juice
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. fresh cherry syrup
Orange peel for garnish
Add the Johnnie Walker, orange juice, vermouth and cherry syrup to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until cold and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with orange peel.

It takes a toll on my soul,
Because I'm starting to believe the lies you strung with red,
Is it all just a game?
One day I'll heal and I'll be covered in scars (Red and Itchy)
And never forget why did it all fell apart.
When you finally came clean about the lies and the games you played from the start!
-Red in Tooth and Claw

The Man with Two Names -- Red John's alias is ROY Tagliaferro (read: "cut iron").   The ROY CUT IRON  anagrams are "court irony" and "you r citron."  How ironic that Jane, the court jester who arrives at the crime scene in his Citroen,  a master reader of how others' emotions control them and our need to let go of the past,  was a prisoner of his IRON-ic chains to the past.  Until Jane leaves his OLD LIFE BEHIND, The Mentalist is on the mental list, a prisoner of his own device. 

                                                                                  


Jane:  Lisbuns, what's red and itchy and dying to get out?

America Proves Once Again Dumbest Country on Planet

America Proves Once Again Dumbest Country on Planet

Thanks to the NRA, terrorists on the No-Fly List can buy up to 50 pounds of black powder and make dozens of pipe bombs like the ones the Boston bombers were throwing at the police as well as obtain hundreds of AR 15s to kill US.  In 2010, 247 No-Fly listers legally bought guns.

The Boston Bomber was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and the NRA and its whores in Congress made it all possible.  If we killed Saddam to prevent that "mushroom cloud-smoking gun," what should we do about the terrorists among US?  The NRA is either with the terrorists or with US.  When are we going to ground the NRA as a threat to our national security? You decide. 

The Mentalist "Red Velvet Cupcakes" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) that cheats no one but himself.

In "Red Velvet Cupcakes" the cheating love doctor should "heel" himself.

Patrick Jane suspects a radio therapist with a foot fetish murdered his lover/client who loved to make Red Velvet Cupcakes and had the "highest arches he ever saw."  After eliminating the Usual Suspect - the husband ("KIPMAN7") had an alibi as he was spotted at a 7-11 in Tahoe at that time cheating with his personal trainer - Jane convinces Van Pelt and Rigsby to air their love problems on the air to get the love doctor to show he is the one in need of therapy.  The therapist's wife, who killed the cupcake maker, interrupts the therapist's private heeling session with Van Pelt and threatens to put an end to Van Pelt and the therapist to stomp out his cheating ways. Of course, Lisbuns, Rigsby and Jane were listening and arrive in time. In the end Rigsby and Van Pelt get back together again.

Moral of the story: This talk therapy really works!

Jane tells Lisbuns that he thinks everyone, not just cheaters, have something that flips their sex switch, whether it is a foot fetish, sexual dominance or some other fantasy. While Lisbuns put her foot down on the idea, perhaps Jane revealed something about himself, that he also likes to engage in fantasy:

Jane appears to be a Sherlock Homes super-sleuth character, but in reality is a mental patient with a cracked eggshell who suffers from paranoid delusions due to feelings of extreme guilt in the deaths of his wife and child who were burned as he was (CBI = intensive burn care?)  in a horrific car accident involving a driver named Tanner when he failed to stop at a BLINKING RED LIGHT CROSSING AN INTERSECTION, hence the RJ symbol, while he was driving intoxicated  and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes. 


Burning Clues: "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point. Items: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze. Out of the Frye-ing pan into the... As Kristina Frye discovered, when you get too close to Red John, you get burned.  "Tiger, Tiger burning bright, they were "Au-burned."  In the "Red Mile" episode Jane arrives at a crime scene outside Auburn, California.  Shouts from Alabama football fans of "Roll Tide" first appeared during the Alabama-Auburn Tiger IRON BOWL game in 1907. Curiously, a corpse was found in a burned car in "Ruby Slippers," in which Jane discovers the identity of Fifi Nix, like Jane's Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of his past life.  In "Red Dawn" Jane is given a desk next to a fire extinguisher that is there, then it's gone, then it's there again.   Fake Red John read all about it - catch the fire-y headline on the front page of the newspaper Tim Carter was reading before Jane shot him.  Red John appeared to Jane in the burn mask.  Jane: It's not my fire.

THE WILD WEST-PHALL WORLD

Red John is Patrick Jane's imaginary evil twin, his "perfect symmetry" alter-ego (Jane/John) Professor Moriarty character in a Tommy Westphall" imaginary world like "St. Elsewhere's" snow globe and "Life on Mars" that is the dream state of Jane.  (NB. The fake Jane character in "Red Moon" where a corpse was found in a burned car was named Ellis Mars (El - He is Mars.) 

Ellis Mars: The mind is a powerful weapon. It can create reality. 

Jane: Perhaps we can see each other again.
Lorelei: That’s not up to me.
Jane: Oh, you have no say in it?
Lorelei: None at all. It’s very "Westphall."
Jane: I don’t follow you.
Lorelei: I do what Red John tells me to do.
 
 
                         Red Face to Face

 

Mentalist in a Box, The BIG W:  The characters of Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt and Lisbon are also Jane's creations ala the "Wizard of Oz;"  the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy in reality are the assistants and doctors at the mental hospital and the RJ minions are Jane's fellow mental patients. In the final scene Jane confronts "Red John,"  and in an homage to "OZ" awakens from his dream state to realize the true identity of  RED JOHN - the Big W - Johnny Walker RED. 

.   Shaking hands with Red John


 BLOOD and SAND
½ oz. Johnnie Walker Red Label
1 tbsp. orange juice
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. fresh cherry syrup
Orange peel for garnish
Add the Johnnie Walker, orange juice, vermouth and cherry syrup to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until cold and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with orange peel.

It takes a toll on my soul,
Because I'm starting to believe the lies you strung with red,
Is it all just a game?
One day I'll heal and I'll be covered in scars
And never forget why did it all fell apart.
When you finally came clean about the lies and the games you played from the start!
-Red in Tooth and Claw

The Man with Two Names -- Red John's alias is ROY Tagliaferro (read: "cut iron").   The ROY CUT IRON  anagrams are "court irony" and "you r citron."  How ironic that Jane, the court jester who arrives at the crime scene in his Citroen,  a master reader of how others' emotions control them and our need to let go of the past,  was a prisoner of his IRON-ic chains to the past.  Until Jane leaves his OLD LIFE BEHIND, The Mentalist is on the mental list, a prisoner of his own device. 

                                                                                  
  
Jane: Lisbuns, in my fantasy you play this detective in tight jeans and we endlessly sexually tease the audience.
  

America Proves Once Again Dumbest Country on Planet

America Proves Once Again Dumbest Country on Planet

Restoring its reputation that America is the dumbest country on the planet, the US Senate could not muster a filibuster-proof majority and blocked a gun background-check proposal on Wednesday.

The Whole World is Laughing at US:  The bill doesn’t restrict what weapons people can buy, as an assault-weapons ban or restriction on large-capacity magazines would. It closes some glaring loopholes in the system that are more than a decade old, loopholes that allow people to buy vast quantities of deadly weapons at gun shows and on the Internet without having their names checked against mental health and criminal records. Ninety percent of Americans support this reform.  The proposal would not even have required a background check before every gun transfer. The proposal was the very least — the bare minimum — that lawmakers could do to prevent more guns from ending up in the wrong hands. And yet most Republicans and a handful of Democrats — Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) — couldn’t locate enough backbone even to vote for the bare minimum.

NUTS ARE US: The Senate was beset by bizarre conspiracy theories on which many of the opponents grounded their disapproval. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) claimed that passing the ­Manchin-Toomey plan would put the country “inexorably on the path to a push for a federal registry.” Yet the proposal specifically outlawed any national gun registration scheme — and federal authorities wouldn’t have been allowed to keep background-check records.

Are You with the Terrorists or are you with US?  There's that ol' saying "guns and pressure cookers don't kill people, GUNPOWDER does."  Well, add nails and ball bearings to that bunch of mixed nuts.  If the Feds can't locate the Boston bomber before he concocts his next devil's brew of misery, blame the politicians who choose to protect their NRA contributions than children in schools and the rest of US.  The Fed's investigation could be moving faster were it not for the successful lobbying efforts of  NRA to guarantee that American mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murders in the world. The NRA and their political  henchmen are helping bombers get away with their crimes.  Gunpowder could be traced by investigators to a buyer at the point of sale if gunpowder contained a taggant — an element that would enable tracing of the purchase of gunpowder.  But thanks to the National Rifle Association, identification taggants are remembered by law only in plastic explosives. The NRA has successfully blocked any requirements for such taggants in gunpowder,  proving ONCE AGAIN America is the DUMBEST COUNTRY ON THE PLANET.

The Mentalist "Red Letter Day" Review

 

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) we have seen over and over.

"Red Letter Day" is marked as a day of special significance but in The Mentalist episode it is more like "Deja Vu" and "Groundhog Day" as we've seen this movie before in "Red John's Friends": rich father's philandering past produces awkward incestuous situation for lovestruck son. The difference is in "Red John's Friends"  the mother killed the girl, while in "Red Letter Day"  the son kills the father and it takes place in a WILD WEST make-believe setting.  The episode has the usual Mentalist suspects: drinking, "speeding," crashes, fires, "dangerous" inter-sex situations.  Of course, all these episodes take place in Jane's IMAGINATION because it is all an ILLUSION.

Patrick Jane and friends travel to Percy, California (anagram: A CARNEY PROLIFIC) to investigate a murder having no apparent justification other than the Wild West locale is as unbelievable. Jane has fun making fun of the amateur magician and eventually pulls a blank red letter out of his pocket to fool the murderer into revealing himself, as the son of the victim did not want to humiliate his girlfriend that they were more than kissing cousins...yeech. (which reminds me of that "Simpsons" episode of two hillbillies making out behind his house: "They're your parents too.")

Speaking of "yeech" situations, poor Lisbuns has to endure a lunch date with creepy Bob Kirkland, who is feeling her out for information on Jane's knowledge of Red John. Speaking of "Groundhog Day," Rigsby and Van Pelt's love life is interrupted again by a smooth talking outsider. If the writers wanted to do justice to this scene, Bill Murray should have walked out of the elevator.   Talk about "Deja Vu," I experienced it when Bill Murray - before he was famous- walked into my office and I knew I had seen that face somewhere before.

So what is the point writer Michael Weiss is trying to make?  One possible moral of the story: don't have sex with someone other than your wife else your son will end up having incestuous sex with the offspring. Wow, what if Lisbuns was Jane's sister....IMAGINE THAT.  Maybe Jane's father  was  "a carney prolific" who toured America.  If so, Bob Kirkland, who says he is from "America," could be Jane's brother.


Jane appears to be a Sherlock Homes super-sleuth character, but in reality is a mental patient with a cracked eggshell who suffers from paranoid delusions due to feelings of extreme guilt in the deaths of his wife and child who were burned as he was (CBI = intensive burn care?)  in a horrific car accident involving a driver named Tanner when he failed to stop at a BLINKING RED LIGHT CROSSING AN INTERSECTION, hence the RJ symbol, while he was driving intoxicated  and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes. 


Burning Clues: "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point. Items: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze. Out of the Frye-ing pan into the... As Kristina Frye discovered, when you get too close to Red John, you get burned.  "Tiger, Tiger burning bright, they were "Au-burned."  In the "Red Mile" episode Jane arrives at a crime scene outside Auburn, California.  Shouts from Alabama football fans of "Roll Tide" first appeared during the Alabama-Auburn Tiger IRON BOWL game in 1907. Curiously, a corpse was found in a burned car in "Ruby Slippers," in which Jane discovers the identity of Fifi Nix, like Jane's Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of his past life.  In "Red Dawn" Jane is given a desk next to a fire extinguisher that is there, then it's gone, then it's there again.   Fake Red John read all about it - catch the fire-y headline on the front page of the newspaper Tim Carter was reading before Jane shot him.  Red John appeared to Jane in the burn mask.  Jane: It's not my fire.

THE WILD WEST-PHALL WORLD

Red John is Patrick Jane's imaginary evil twin, his "perfect symmetry" alter-ego (Jane/John) Professor Moriarty character in a Tommy Westphall" imaginary world like "St. Elsewhere's" snow globe and "Life on Mars" that is the dream state of Jane.  (NB. The fake Jane character in "Red Moon" where a corpse was found in a burned car was named Ellis Mars (El - He is Mars.) 

Ellis Mars: The mind is a powerful weapon. It can create reality. 

Jane: Perhaps we can see each other again.
Lorelei: That’s not up to me.
Jane: Oh, you have no say in it?
Lorelei: None at all. It’s very "Westphall."
Jane: I don’t follow you.
Lorelei: I do what Red John tells me to do.
 
 
                         Red Face to Face

 

Mentalist in a Box, The BIG W:  The characters of Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt and Lisbon are also Jane's creations ala the "Wizard of Oz;"  the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy in reality are the assistants and doctors at the mental hospital and the RJ minions are Jane's fellow mental patients. In the final scene Jane confronts "Red John,"  and in an homage to "OZ" awakens from his dream state to realize the true identity of  RED JOHN - the Big W - Johnny Walker RED. 

.   Shaking hands with Red John


 BLOOD and SAND
½ oz. Johnnie Walker Red Label
1 tbsp. orange juice
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. fresh cherry syrup
Orange peel for garnish
Add the Johnnie Walker, orange juice, vermouth and cherry syrup to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until cold and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with orange peel.

It takes a toll on my soul,
Because I'm starting to believe the lies you strung with red,
Is it all just a game?
One day I'll heal and I'll be covered in scars
And never forget why did it all fell apart.
When you finally came clean about the lies and the games you played from the start!
-Red in Tooth and Claw

The Man with Two Names -- Red John's alias is ROY Tagliaferro (read: "cut iron").   The ROY CUT IRON  anagrams are "court irony" and "you r citron."  How ironic that Jane, the court jester who arrives at the crime scene in his Citroen,  a master reader of how others' emotions control them and our need to let go of the past,  was a prisoner of his IRON-ic chains to the past.  Until Jane leaves his OLD LIFE BEHIND, The Mentalist is on the mental list, a prisoner of his own device. 

                                                                                  
  

Jane:  Lisbuns, watch me pull a rabbit out of my pocket.
Lisbuns:  Again?

The Mentalist "Behind the Red Curtain" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) that life imitates art. In The Mentalist, art imitates life when the writers run out of original ideas for Patrick Jane, which is a bigger problem than Red John because CBS just renewed the show for another season.  IMAGINE that.

In "Behind the Red Curtain"  a rising star comes crashing down and Jane pulls back the curtain on "Torch,"  a Broadway-bound play with a non-existent producer, which is not an original idea as it mimics "Rebecca" ("Feuer, feuer, Manderley in Flammen!"),  a real Broadway-bound play with phony investors. "Torch" has the usual themes that have a recurring role in The Mentalist:  drinking, racing, car crashes, dangerous intersections, fire escapes, and transformation. One of the usual suspects is the victim's  "dangerous" boyfriend, William Racine ("racing"). (Note: Racine's name appeared on the guest list above a real "Transformer" Meghan Fox.)  The fading star of "Torch" is ruled out as a suspect when Jane discovers she is not a drunk but actually the birth mother of the victim and suffers from MS.  Jane convinces JJ LaRoche to play the role of the fictitious investor Bert Hanover to trick the murderer who used the fire escape into revealing himself.   Meanwhile, Bob Kirkland is revealed as a Red John minion who crosses Jason Lennon off his list so he cannot identify him, while poor Jane gets burned again. Capt. Kirk-land must ...have...more...power. (NB. Patrick Jane anagram is "Captain Jerk") Well, beam me up, Scottie.  IMAGINE that.

It's a MAD WORLD, Patrick Jane: Jane appears to be a Sherlock Homes super-sleuth character, but in reality is a mental patient with a cracked eggshell who suffers from paranoid delusions due to feelings of extreme guilt in the deaths of his wife and child who were burned as he was (CBI = intensive burn care?)  in a horrific car accident involving a driver named Tanner when he failed to stop at a BLINKING RED LIGHT CROSSING AN INTERSECTION, hence the RJ symbol, while he was driving intoxicated  and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes. 


Burning Clues: "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point. Items: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze. Out of the Frye-ing pan into the... As Kristina Frye discovered, when you get too close to Red John, you get burned.  "Tiger, Tiger burning bright, they were "Au-burned."  In the "Red Mile" episode Jane arrives at a crime scene outside Auburn, California.  Shouts from Alabama football fans of "Roll Tide" first appeared during the Alabama-Auburn Tiger IRON BOWL game in 1907. Curiously, a corpse was found in a burned car in "Ruby Slippers," in which Jane discovers the identity of Fifi Nix, like Jane's Phoenix, has risen from the ashes of his past life.  In "Red Dawn" Jane is given a desk next to a fire extinguisher that is there, then it's gone, then it's there again.   Fake Red John read all about it - catch the fire-y headline on the front page of the newspaper Tim Carter was reading before Jane shot him.  Red John appeared to Jane in the burn mask.  Jane: It's not my fire.

Total Fictional Recall:  Red John is Patrick Jane's imaginary evil twin, his "perfect symmetry" alter-ego (Jane/John) Professor Moriarty character in a Tommy Westphall" imaginary world like "St. Elsewhere's" snow globe and "Life on Mars" that is the dream state of Jane.  NB. The fake Jane character in "Red Moon" where a corpse was found in a burned car was named Ellis Mars (El - He is Mars).  

Ellis Mars: The mind is a powerful weapon. It can create reality.

 Who's a Lyin'? Jane or Mar-tinsS

Jane: Perhaps we can see each other again.
Lorelei: That’s not up to me.
Jane: Oh, you have no say in it?
Lorelei: None at all. It’s very "Westphall."
Jane: I don’t follow you.
Lorelei: I do what Red John tells me to do.
 
 
                         Red Face to Face

 

Mentalist in a Box, The BIG W:  The characters of Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt and Lisbon are also Jane's creations ala the "Wizard of Oz;"  the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy in reality are the assistants and doctors at the mental hospital and the RJ minions are Jane's fellow mental patients. In the final scene Jane confronts "Red John,"  and in an homage to "OZ" awakens from his dream state to realize the true identity of  RED JOHN - the Big W - Johnny Walker RED. 

.   Shaking hands with Red John


 BLOOD and SAND
½ oz. Johnnie Walker Red Label
1 tbsp. orange juice
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. fresh cherry syrup
Orange peel for garnish
Add the Johnnie Walker, orange juice, vermouth and cherry syrup to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until cold and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with orange peel.

It takes a toll on my soul,
Because I'm starting to believe the lies you strung with red,
Is it all just a game?
One day I'll heal and I'll be covered in scars
And never forget why did it all fell apart.
When you finally came clean about the lies and the games you played from the start!
-Red in Tooth and Claw

The Man with Two Names -- Red John's alias is ROY Tagliaferro (read: "cut iron").   The ROY CUT IRON  anagrams are "court irony" and "you r citron."  How ironic that Jane, the court jester who arrives at the crime scene in his Citroen,  a master reader of how others' emotions control them and our need to let go of the past,  was a prisoner of his IRON-ic chains to the past.  Until Jane leaves his OLD LIFE BEHIND, The Mentalist is on the mental list, a prisoner of his own device. 

                                                                                  
  

Jane:  Lisbuns, everytime the writers sing the same old Red John song I die a little.

  Jane's Cup of Tea