Happy Anniversary, Darling.
I have just watched 'Red Rover, Red Rover', episode 4.23 of The Mentalist. Here is my reaction! amy_wolf is not allowed to read this until she has watched the episode.
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
Right. Erm. It's hard to know what to say, besides 'help please protect me from my scary favourite character'. Let's give this a go.
Red John left that 'Happy Anniversary' card on Jane's car. Jane must have known it was Red John (I knew it was Red John, and I'm fantastically oblivious), but he didn't seem to have an especially strong reaction to it. I find myself wondering whether Red John leaves him a card every year. Not always on his car, obviously, because then Jane would know to keep watch, but one way or another a 'Happy Anniversary' card always finds its way to Jane on the day he lost his family.
I loved that Jane made the little girl forget about Red John. At first I thought WHAT HE'S TRYING TO PROTECT RED JOHN WHY, and then I thought oh, he's protecting her, that's charming but less interesting, and then he outright threatened harm to Wainwright if he tried to question the girl and it became fascinating again. And a bit scary.
BUT NOWHERE NEAR THE SCARIEST JANE WAS IN THIS EPISODE.
OH MY GOD JANE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
And he seems to be trying, at the end, trying his very best to get kicked out of the CBI. I have to ask myself: his behaviour in this episode. Stealing the asthmatic man's inhaler and withholding it until he got information. Outright torturing the perpetrator into confessing. Is it because Red John has got to him, or is this just how Jane behaves when remaining in the CBI is no longer important to him (or when he believes it's no longer important to him, at least)? That is, would Jane previously have been torturing suspects all over the shop were it not for his desire to keep his job? There's an unsettling thought.
What is Jane going to do now? What is he without the CBI? He's given up on the CBI; he seems to have given up on Red John; they are the only two things in the world he has to live for. There is absolutely nothing else in his life. He's just going to walk out of that building and dissolve into smoke.
Another question that occurs to me: when Jane showed Lisbon what he had done to the perpetrator, did he do so because on some level he wanted her to stop him? Or did he genuinely believe she was going to react with 'yes, I think this seems a perfectly sensible idea' rather than 'JANE, JANE, YOU CANNOT BURY SUSPECTS ALIVE, YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT'? Because either explanation is absolutely fascinating.
And the thing is that Lisbon has been Jane's confidante in all the messed-up things he's been doing recently. Is this the point at which she looks up and realises how far she's fallen? This man has already essentially committed two murders (although obviously it gets a bit cloudy when you use a murderer as the murder weapon), and she's stayed quiet about it. He is now showing her a man locked in a coffin and saying 'oh hey look what I did'. At this point, is Lisbon beginning to realise exactly how screwed up her relationship with Jane is?
I love The Mentalist, and I love Jane, but both are absolutely terrifying me right now.
I haven't yet seen the fourth-series finale; please don't tell me anything about it!
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
Right. Erm. It's hard to know what to say, besides 'help please protect me from my scary favourite character'. Let's give this a go.
Red John left that 'Happy Anniversary' card on Jane's car. Jane must have known it was Red John (I knew it was Red John, and I'm fantastically oblivious), but he didn't seem to have an especially strong reaction to it. I find myself wondering whether Red John leaves him a card every year. Not always on his car, obviously, because then Jane would know to keep watch, but one way or another a 'Happy Anniversary' card always finds its way to Jane on the day he lost his family.
I loved that Jane made the little girl forget about Red John. At first I thought WHAT HE'S TRYING TO PROTECT RED JOHN WHY, and then I thought oh, he's protecting her, that's charming but less interesting, and then he outright threatened harm to Wainwright if he tried to question the girl and it became fascinating again. And a bit scary.
BUT NOWHERE NEAR THE SCARIEST JANE WAS IN THIS EPISODE.
OH MY GOD JANE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
And he seems to be trying, at the end, trying his very best to get kicked out of the CBI. I have to ask myself: his behaviour in this episode. Stealing the asthmatic man's inhaler and withholding it until he got information. Outright torturing the perpetrator into confessing. Is it because Red John has got to him, or is this just how Jane behaves when remaining in the CBI is no longer important to him (or when he believes it's no longer important to him, at least)? That is, would Jane previously have been torturing suspects all over the shop were it not for his desire to keep his job? There's an unsettling thought.
What is Jane going to do now? What is he without the CBI? He's given up on the CBI; he seems to have given up on Red John; they are the only two things in the world he has to live for. There is absolutely nothing else in his life. He's just going to walk out of that building and dissolve into smoke.
Another question that occurs to me: when Jane showed Lisbon what he had done to the perpetrator, did he do so because on some level he wanted her to stop him? Or did he genuinely believe she was going to react with 'yes, I think this seems a perfectly sensible idea' rather than 'JANE, JANE, YOU CANNOT BURY SUSPECTS ALIVE, YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT'? Because either explanation is absolutely fascinating.
And the thing is that Lisbon has been Jane's confidante in all the messed-up things he's been doing recently. Is this the point at which she looks up and realises how far she's fallen? This man has already essentially committed two murders (although obviously it gets a bit cloudy when you use a murderer as the murder weapon), and she's stayed quiet about it. He is now showing her a man locked in a coffin and saying 'oh hey look what I did'. At this point, is Lisbon beginning to realise exactly how screwed up her relationship with Jane is?
I love The Mentalist, and I love Jane, but both are absolutely terrifying me right now.
I haven't yet seen the fourth-series finale; please don't tell me anything about it!