Monday, September 27, 2010

The Mentalist - Red Sky at Night, S03E01

Last season, I praised the season finale for finally showing that Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) was capable of weakness and was not always right. It showed the great contrast between how successful he has been at solving crimes and how clever Red John must be so that Jane cannot catch him. After a season of a little too much Jane and not enough police work, the season finale was perfect, and this season premiere picked up with the same excellent attitude.

Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and the rest of the CBI team have taken the most recent encounter with Red John in stride. Yes, he continues to allude them, and no, they still do not know what happened to Christina, but getting caught up in it is not going to help them solve the case. Jane is not so level headed.

I absolutely loved how Lisbon manipulated him into helping on the case after he indicated that he was not interested. Finally, we are getting to see her have the upper hand. Jane's team mates are now starting to get to know him well enough that they can give him back what he gives them. And, in those final moments of the episode, where Lisbon pointed out that Jane has been pulling away from his friends, and he admitted that he was pretty terrified since everyone he cared about ends up getting hurt by Red John.

I am hoping that this new Jane lasts. I like that he is fallible, that the sheen of perfection which he projected to often last season is gone. I don't want his arrogance and self-promotion to disappear entirely, but balance is key. Let's hope that we see more of Lisbon achieving the same results as Jane through real police work - that was definitely my favourite moment of the episode.

Season 1 of The Mentalist won me easily; Season 2 was still quite good, but got stuck in some patterns that were not as interesting as they ought to have been; I hope and believe that Season 3 will have grown from that and continue to give us just enough of Lisbon, Cho (Tim Kang). Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti), and Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) to balance with Jane. Are you hoping for the same thing?

No comments:

Post a Comment