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Monday, January 28, 2013

The Mentalist "Red Barn" Review


 


The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES), as obvious as the broad side of a "Red Barn."

 Dr. Linus Wagner: Everything you told me, Mr. Jane, is total fiction, isn't it?

In "Red Barn" Lisbuns is drawn into Patrick Jane's twisted paranoid Red John conspiracy, as she now suspects CBI-er Ray Haffner's ulterior motives to entice her to join him in the big expense account world of private investigators (paid by Visualize)  and that Ray may have been at the Red Barn with the Smiley Face about the time the murders occurred.  Turns out Ray is a Visualize member and inquires why "Lisbuns" went easy on the red head who shot a Visualize member in self defense.  Turns out the Visualize member was walking a pig while intoxicated on "speed" and went ballistic on the pig when the redhead's vet mom complained about his cruelty to animals. Turns out two other Visualize members were found murdered in the secret basement that was built by moonshiners and Jane suspects is the first case of a "Red John" murder, ten years before the first recorded case.  Coincidentally,  the Red Barn murders and the Smiley Face discovery occur on the day CBI celebrates Lisbun's ten-year anniversary,  and Rigsby gets blasted...again.

So many twists and turns in the five-year Red John saga, weary Mentalist viewers must now decide if Ray is yet another Red John plant in CBI and if Visualize is involved...again.  The good news is Jane reduced his list of Red John suspects to a very manageable 408.  At this pace, The Mentalist has material suspects for another five years.  But will the weary viewers stay around to watch it?

"Red Barn" appears to provide background to the RJ saga, but all is not what it appears... even the Red John smiley face.  The CBI investigation reveals the murder of one of the three was the result of good intentions gone bad. Visualize was going big Agro but was clearly out of  its field.  The business was failing and the stress pushed one past the breaking point. Add "speed" to the stress and you get a deadly combination. As "dumb" Rigsby learned again, booze, weed etc just make us do stupid things, like singing badly in front of  co-workers.  Perhaps the Visualize member "speeding" under the influence also killed his coworkers (one would think he would have smelled the corpses, right?).  Perhaps the smiley face on the Red Barn meant "nothing at all."

Moral of the story:  Sometimes things are not what they appear to be and sometimes "things just happen."  But always terrible "things just happen" when speeding under the influence .


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.  Note: Jane's eggshell blue car - a vintage 1972 Citroen DS 20 that Warner Bros., producer of "The Mentalist" for CBS, had in its inventory. It was used in the 2008 movie "Speed Racer." For "The Mentalist," the car was shipped from Germany and painted eggshell blue (it was originally red).


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

 The Mentalist logo.svg

Mentalist in a Box

.   Shaking hands with Red John

 Drink Scotch Whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel


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 aware of the 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, haste makes waste, especially when one is speeding while intoxicated. 

Take your time and Read John "Seven" Come 11:  my mental list of  7 scripts so you can dream along with me


"Dragon Star"  (2014)   Logline:  Code-cracking prodigy tracks a 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 op using social networks.    Tagline: Who is like FACESPACE and who can defeat it Download FACESPACE 7-21

"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

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