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Monday, January 6, 2014

The Mentalist "White Lines" Review

The Mentalist in a nutshell: It's all an ILLUSION (read: VISUAL LIES), and its subtext is hidden between the "White Lines." (See B.S.)

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

Golden Man Patrick Jane plays a mentalist game of  "Traffic" between "White Lines" with femme fatale Crystal Markham, and to escape he must "Dive" in over his head. Jane sure has a way with the women: first, Jane gets his comfy couch by appealing to Kim Fisher's guilt for her deception, and then he gets Crystal to let her "disciplined guard" down on her yacht when she not-so-smartly confessed over an open smartphone.  Jane doesn't come out and say it but the subtext is Crystal and he are quite alike - "I never tell anyone who I really am."  Somewhere Erica Flynn must be laughing on her yacht.  Jane plays mind games with Lisbuns by flaunting his dating game with Crystal.  I'm betting that by the end of the TM series Jane, Lisbuns and Erica will have a threesome on that comfy couch.





But the real subtext reading between the "White Lines"  is Ken Woodruff must think the FBI is Famous But Incompetent. How else to explain Kim's revelation in front of suspect Crystal the locations of the  hit team that killed the five DEA agents?  Even Lisbun's deductive reasoning skills are  affected by her new FBI badge, as she somehow deduces Crystal is the ringleader because she looks into a DEA mirror.  And how does the FBI allow Jane to sleep overnight in the FBI Headquarters in Austin, Texas?   There's a regulation about that.  (Note to the TM writers: the FBI Headquarters is located in Washington, DC.  There is a Field Office in Austin.)

What the hell is going on with the FBI today?  Did you know the FBI no longer considers law enforcement its primary mission but instead "national security"?  Yeah, the big bucks are in "national security" and the FBI has played a big part in keeping US safe.  When I worked with the FBI to take down the Red Brigade terrorist organization and stop terrorist attacks by Hezbollah, I was impressed by the intelligence of FBI agents. Today, not so much.    Item: Boston. According to the Red coats, the terrorists were coming but nobody at the FBI listened because they were too busy spying on US. While FBI agent Cho and the rest of the FBI are into collecting signal intelligence, where is the SHARP intelligence to connect the dots?  And about that high-tech vehicle signature sound analysis Wylie used to track down the hit team, a simple check of the Texas DMV would have been a better decision. (Note the Corpus Christi bridge was prominent in the background in the episode the same week Chris Christie committed political suicide on the George Washington Bridge. Crystal was not the only one who sacrificed her workers.  GWB= Great White Bully)

Who is the Spider and Who is the Fly: Jane loves to fool the women that he is a "harmless fly" and uses it to catch the White Widow Crystal in her own spiderweb. Of course,  Jane is the real mastermind and


This BLUE BIRD  is All an ILLUSION 

 

 
Scrambled eggs:  Jane appears to be a Sherlock Holmes 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. 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. 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. Note the Auburn football game was playing on the bedroom TV in "Desert Rose. "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 WESTPHALL 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. Mr. Nguyen was LOST (also in the Westphall Universe) but was found in "Green Thumb."

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 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,  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.


 "The DESERT ROSE"

Perhaps Bruno referred to a song that Sting made famous.  The lyrics will burn in your imagination and perhaps provide a clue about Patrick Jane's:

I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire

This desert rose
Each of her seven veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing's as it seems.

                                                                                  


Jane:  Lisbuns, reading between the "White Lines" you and Kim make a great couple.
 
 Read John "Seven" Come 11:  my mental list of  7 scripts so you can dream along with me 

"Dragon STAR  (2014)   Logline:  Code-cracker tracks a serial killer who returns after seven years to terrorize his hometown. Tagline: You can go Holmes again.    The second greatest story ever told  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 white lines.

"COLUMBIA ROADS"    Logline:  US embassy investigator in Colombia discovers 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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