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Monday, March 4, 2013

The Mentalist "Red Lacquer Nail Polish" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell:  It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES) that spontaneously combusts under the heat of examination.

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

In "Red Lacquer Nail Polish" Patrick Jane uses smoke to snuff out a firebird. The firebird is Elise Vogelsong, who is played by Mariette Hartley, a crazy loon.  In fool disclosure, Hartley is my least favorite actress, whose mere presence on the screen is akin to the sound of scraping nails on a chalkboard. A character actress who got famous for doing Polaroid commercials ("this business is perfect for people who live in ILLUSIONS") Hartley suffers from mental illness and so was perfectly cast to play the crazy socialite Elise Vogelsong who burned a Viet vet in her scheme to violate her own trust.  Jane arrives at her spooky mansion to learn the socialite apparently spontaneously combusted like a human candle. Jane notices Vogelsong likes to read Rex Stout murder mysteries and does not get burned by the illusion of burning nonsense.  As master manipulator himself of illusions, Jane sees through the transparent scheme that read like her nail polish.  Jane eliminates the Usual Suspects that poor dumb Rigsby suspected and smokes out a Robins and Vogelsong on her yacht "Birdsong."  "Lisbuns" stands around as eye candy, while Rigsby and Cho complain about life and the need to "MOVE ON"  like Van Pelt, who is increasingly remote.

Booze at the heart of the matter: On a bender of his own, Jane determines there is a missing whiskey glass at the crime scene and concludes the murderer threw it into the fire. Some Rex Stout Thriller.  The episode is rich like the Ehrich scotch in references to Michael Jackson, who was famous for spontaneously combusting while filming a commercial and like Vogelsong had a doctor on the payroll who prescribed too many meds to help her sleep.

The moral of the story: don't overlook the Burning Clues.

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 (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:  "The Mentalist" is obsessed with fire, as in half the episodes it plays a significant plot point.  Jane burns his Red John files with a bottle of boozeOut 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



 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.


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, you must be using Sally Hansen because I'm hard as nails.  Get your hands on John's "SEVEN" COME 11: 


"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  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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