The Mentalist "Little Red Corvette" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: visual lies)...like TV.

Moral of the story: TV deceives them but the one with the remote has the power to change.

In "Little Red Corvette" the power of Tommy "Volker" (that's TV, people) rests in the hands of a little boy holding the remote who witnesses the murder of a geologist who knew about the mass murder of the Brazilian tribe that threatened TV's power play.  TV orders the little boy to be killed but the hired killer says he didn't sign up to kill little boys and hides him with his brother's ex-wife and eventually kills himself by crossing a dangerous intersection.  Eventually, TV learns the boy is still alive with the help of a red head in CBI who likes to watch and  says "she didn't sign up for this"  but gives TV the picture of the boy.  TV orders another hitman to kill the boy but he refuses as he says "he didn't sign up for this."  TV tracks the boy down at the Redland Zoo but "Lisbuns" puts TV in a cage.  But who controls TV?

Watching the "Little Red Corvette" going around in circles, perhaps Bruno Heller was making a political statement (what goes around...) about the power of TV in the wrong hands ala the RED FOX (Furland) and friends like Prince of Darkness Dick Cheney and the revelation that its propaganda signs deceive US into criminal actions like the IRAQ WAR.  And we all certainly loved to watch the bombing of Baghdad on HDTV.   IF we don't like what we are watching,  we control the remote and could make a change in our killing decisions. We could say we didn't sign up for this (we did but sent our poor unemployed men and women to do our killing for US).  (NB. The main technology used in home remote controls is infrared (IR) light. The signal between a remote control handset and the device it controls consists of pulses of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.) So who controls the remote? On "LRC" "He is MAR"(VIN PETTIGREW) but on The Mentalist it's Patrick Jane.

 RED LIGHT

 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 (Patrick Jane anagram is  "Captain Jerk") and spends his days with the remote watching TV shows, which generate his ideas for the delusional episodes. 

Burning clues: Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of booze.  "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point.  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 - Johnny WALKER RED..

.  
 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.

 Drink Scotch Whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel

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. 


                                                                                  
  
Lisbuns: Jane, is that the remote in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?



Jane's Cup of Tea


Here's my mental list of scripts, "Seven" come 11,  so you can dream along with me:

"Dragon Star" Logline: Code-cracking prodigy tracks serial killer who returns after seven years to terrorize his hometown. Tagline: You can go Holmes again. DRAGON_STAR_-_Final[1]

“MIDNIGHT RIDE” Logline:Garage band cruises a small Pennsylvania town on a stormy night that changes the course of rock music. Tagline: She loves you and you and you, yeah, yeah, yeah.

"DIVE" Logline: An American naval officer is forced to pilot a Colombian cartel submarine loaded with cocaine into San Diego harbor. But there's something else on board.  Tagline: Sub-text: Hidden between the lines.

"COLUMBIA ROADS" Logline: US embassy investigator discovers Aurora prophecy that threatens civil war in the US. Tagline: All Roads lead to Columbia.  Download -COLUMBIA ROADS-

 “FACESPACE”  Logline: CIA Deep Throat recruits a conspiracy writer to stop a  mind control plan using social networks. Tagline: Who is like FACESPACE and who can defeat it?

"SPYDER AND THE FLY" Logline: A black op team gets caught in its web of deceit. Tagline:  "Come into my parlor said the Spyder to the Fly, but who was the Spyder and Who was the Fly?"

 "THE 11 O'CLOCK NEWS" Logline: Two bloggers, Richie Scalia and John Scott,  get in way-over-their-head trouble.  Tagline:  Hindsight is 2021