The Mentalist
I have seen the pilot for CBS' new procedural The Mentalist. I LOVED IT.
Simon Baker (The Guardian, Something New) plays a mentalist and former-celebrity "psychic" Patrick Jane, who now helps the police full time as a private consultant after the murders of his wife and child. Robin Tunney plays the leader of a crime unit which Jane works for, and her team includes a ladies man (Owain Yeoman), a sardonic and surprisingly foul-mouthed Asian guy (Tim Kang), and the firmly religious ingenue (Amanda Righetti). But it's really Jane's show.
I can see where people (including myself, before I saw it) are coming from when they describe the character as being somewhat like Gregory House (and in that sense, he is also a lot like Sherlock Holmes, if Holmes decided to pretend to be a medium) - they're both incredibly brilliant and arrogant, dazzling and exasperating their colleagues with their antics. They live to solve puzzles, and both have a penetrating (if not exactly generous, in House's case) insight into human nature. But House's great deception is that he is such an abrasive personality that the audience, as well as the characters in the show, are always searching for some hidden depth which does not, in fact, exist. What you see is what you get with House, although what you see is spread out over the three members of his team and his two friends, Wilson and Cuddy - between them, the many aspects of House are on display. If you peel back the layers, or even peer into his subconscious, all you'll find is...more House.
Patrick Jane on the other hand is like a series of Chinese boxes each so tightly locked, you'll begin to doubt if there's anything at the centre of it. All we really know about Jane by the end of the pilot is that he lives like an automaton. His consuming obsession is finding a particularly vicious serial killer that has eluded the police for years. His work is like that of a confidence artist, and Baker has the right face and charisma to pull it off - reading people, inspiring their trust. Jane can be eerily calm one second, warm and genuine the next. He doesn't signal his breakthroughs, unlike House, because admiration is not at all what he is interested in - not any more. Jane is still an effortless showman, but he is no longer in it for the applause. The crimes he solves might be predictable, but what Jane will do from moment to moment is a mystery.
Simon Baker (The Guardian, Something New) plays a mentalist and former-celebrity "psychic" Patrick Jane, who now helps the police full time as a private consultant after the murders of his wife and child. Robin Tunney plays the leader of a crime unit which Jane works for, and her team includes a ladies man (Owain Yeoman), a sardonic and surprisingly foul-mouthed Asian guy (Tim Kang), and the firmly religious ingenue (Amanda Righetti). But it's really Jane's show.
I can see where people (including myself, before I saw it) are coming from when they describe the character as being somewhat like Gregory House (and in that sense, he is also a lot like Sherlock Holmes, if Holmes decided to pretend to be a medium) - they're both incredibly brilliant and arrogant, dazzling and exasperating their colleagues with their antics. They live to solve puzzles, and both have a penetrating (if not exactly generous, in House's case) insight into human nature. But House's great deception is that he is such an abrasive personality that the audience, as well as the characters in the show, are always searching for some hidden depth which does not, in fact, exist. What you see is what you get with House, although what you see is spread out over the three members of his team and his two friends, Wilson and Cuddy - between them, the many aspects of House are on display. If you peel back the layers, or even peer into his subconscious, all you'll find is...more House.
Patrick Jane on the other hand is like a series of Chinese boxes each so tightly locked, you'll begin to doubt if there's anything at the centre of it. All we really know about Jane by the end of the pilot is that he lives like an automaton. His consuming obsession is finding a particularly vicious serial killer that has eluded the police for years. His work is like that of a confidence artist, and Baker has the right face and charisma to pull it off - reading people, inspiring their trust. Jane can be eerily calm one second, warm and genuine the next. He doesn't signal his breakthroughs, unlike House, because admiration is not at all what he is interested in - not any more. Jane is still an effortless showman, but he is no longer in it for the applause. The crimes he solves might be predictable, but what Jane will do from moment to moment is a mystery.