Tiger, Tiger.
All right, 'Red Sky in the Morning' didn't have a great deal of Jane/the team, but I can forgive it for shallow and also slightly worrying reasons.
I'm glad Red John episodes are only occasional. I generally like the Red John episodes, but I do love Jane's usual enthusiastic, irritating self, and in Red John episodes he becomes vulnerable and terrified and furious and irrational and single-minded and a little bit scary. It's fascinating and slightly distressing to watch, but I think the present balance of 'Jane is a delightful lunatic most of the time, with a couple of episodes per season in which he becomes genuinely frightening' is a very good one.
So, in this episode we actually see Red John! And, erm.
...okay, I've never really been interested in Jane/Red John before, but the scene with Jane strapped to a chair and Red John taunting him?
Incredibly freaking hot.
I was a little disappointed by Red John's rather unintimidating voice, and he was wearing a hideous mask, and it still managed to be incredibly hot. Mainly, I suspect, because of Jane's reaction - breathing heavily, desperate to get to Red John but completely helpless, unable to move. Here is the scene, for wrong people like me who want to rewatch it.
When all you want in the world is to find one particular person, I suppose your relationship with them becomes something that isn't quite hatred. Jane longs for Red John. He wants to kill him, of course, but there does seem to be something more complicated than hatred there; at the very least, Jane respects Red John in a way in which he doesn't usually respect killers. I don't want it to happen too soon, because when it does The Mentalist will presumably be over, but I am so interested in seeing what happens when Jane finally catches him.
Does Red John respect Jane? He rather seems to perceive him as an especially shiny toy. I think he does respect Jane's intelligence, at the very least, but he doesn't seem to feel genuinely threatened by him; he just wants to play with him, taking pleasure in the knowledge that he can stay two steps ahead of someone as intelligent as Jane. And also to occasionally creepily caress Jane's arm (and who doesn't?).
I'm intrigued by the fact that Red John only wounded the guy who'd been reluctantly forced into the filmmakers' twisted game. He is very particular about the people he kills, it seeems.
Actual thoughts aside: so hot. Augh.
Whilst I'm under the cut, I want to take a moment to express my delight at Jane forcing Lisbon to pretend they're going to have a threesome with a prostitute in 'Red Letter'. Jane! You are a terrible person and I adore you. Please never stop being inappropriate.
I hope the Jane/Frye plot doesn't stay around for too long. Sorry, Frye, but you're just not... erm, every person in the Serious Crimes unit of the CBI.
In less 'things I shouldn't find hot but do' news (come to think of it, quite a lot of The Mentalist falls under that category), I'm not quite sure what to make of Hightower. When she was first introduced, there was a lot of emphasis on 'if Jane steps out of line, Lisbon is out'. Tension! Conflict! And then that idea never went anywhere and completely disappeared after two episodes. Was the plan just to go 'aha, you thought Hightower would be an antagonist but it turns out she's all right really'?
My main problem with this is 'how am I supposed to know what Pokémon Hightower would have when I can't get a handle on who she really is?' Honestly, Mentalist writers, you have to consider these things. (I still don't know what Pokémon Jane has. Perhaps he doesn't have one; perhaps he had one before, but Red John got to his Persian as well as his family. The Persian was his house Pokémon; he also had an Abra for public appearances, as a psychic would be expected to have a psychic Pokémon, but he gave it away after the Red John incident.
Actually, as actual psychic powers exist in the Pokémon world, The Mentalist probably wouldn't work there at all. Whoops.)
I'm glad Red John episodes are only occasional. I generally like the Red John episodes, but I do love Jane's usual enthusiastic, irritating self, and in Red John episodes he becomes vulnerable and terrified and furious and irrational and single-minded and a little bit scary. It's fascinating and slightly distressing to watch, but I think the present balance of 'Jane is a delightful lunatic most of the time, with a couple of episodes per season in which he becomes genuinely frightening' is a very good one.
So, in this episode we actually see Red John! And, erm.
...okay, I've never really been interested in Jane/Red John before, but the scene with Jane strapped to a chair and Red John taunting him?
Incredibly freaking hot.
I was a little disappointed by Red John's rather unintimidating voice, and he was wearing a hideous mask, and it still managed to be incredibly hot. Mainly, I suspect, because of Jane's reaction - breathing heavily, desperate to get to Red John but completely helpless, unable to move. Here is the scene, for wrong people like me who want to rewatch it.
When all you want in the world is to find one particular person, I suppose your relationship with them becomes something that isn't quite hatred. Jane longs for Red John. He wants to kill him, of course, but there does seem to be something more complicated than hatred there; at the very least, Jane respects Red John in a way in which he doesn't usually respect killers. I don't want it to happen too soon, because when it does The Mentalist will presumably be over, but I am so interested in seeing what happens when Jane finally catches him.
Does Red John respect Jane? He rather seems to perceive him as an especially shiny toy. I think he does respect Jane's intelligence, at the very least, but he doesn't seem to feel genuinely threatened by him; he just wants to play with him, taking pleasure in the knowledge that he can stay two steps ahead of someone as intelligent as Jane. And also to occasionally creepily caress Jane's arm (and who doesn't?).
I'm intrigued by the fact that Red John only wounded the guy who'd been reluctantly forced into the filmmakers' twisted game. He is very particular about the people he kills, it seeems.
Actual thoughts aside: so hot. Augh.
Whilst I'm under the cut, I want to take a moment to express my delight at Jane forcing Lisbon to pretend they're going to have a threesome with a prostitute in 'Red Letter'. Jane! You are a terrible person and I adore you. Please never stop being inappropriate.
I hope the Jane/Frye plot doesn't stay around for too long. Sorry, Frye, but you're just not... erm, every person in the Serious Crimes unit of the CBI.
In less 'things I shouldn't find hot but do' news (come to think of it, quite a lot of The Mentalist falls under that category), I'm not quite sure what to make of Hightower. When she was first introduced, there was a lot of emphasis on 'if Jane steps out of line, Lisbon is out'. Tension! Conflict! And then that idea never went anywhere and completely disappeared after two episodes. Was the plan just to go 'aha, you thought Hightower would be an antagonist but it turns out she's all right really'?
My main problem with this is 'how am I supposed to know what Pokémon Hightower would have when I can't get a handle on who she really is?' Honestly, Mentalist writers, you have to consider these things. (I still don't know what Pokémon Jane has. Perhaps he doesn't have one; perhaps he had one before, but Red John got to his Persian as well as his family. The Persian was his house Pokémon; he also had an Abra for public appearances, as a psychic would be expected to have a psychic Pokémon, but he gave it away after the Red John incident.
Actually, as actual psychic powers exist in the Pokémon world, The Mentalist probably wouldn't work there at all. Whoops.)