blogs_blog_1641

I hated that season finale of The Mentalist.

I have spent every episode since waiting for Red John to come back. Because seriously, if they had ended that the way they had in Season 3, that would've been awesome. I still love that episode's ending and can't help but wish that they had just allowed him to be Red John, because that whole sequence was genuinely chilling. The finale there... was disappointing. And don't get your hopes up for the next season, man - where I am at the moment, it's all just been downhill from there.

 

- Indigo Individual

Another person who watches Once! ^^

 

I was happy with her performance in the finale as well. I normally don't have an issue with the actress playing Snow, but it is kinda hard for me to remember a scene I really liked her in off the top of my head.

The Mentalist: I liked the RJ finale - very intense - but I don't like that it's going for soap opera territory now. While it is logical, and makes sense that it would be that way, I want that show to still be about psychology and solving mysteries, not romance.

 

Some of the recent episodes had some really cool mysteries with twists in them though, so yeah. I'll watch for a little while longer before I write it off as a flop.

The Mentalist: I liked the RJ finale - very intense - but I don't like that it's going for soap opera territory now. While it is logical, and makes sense that it would be that way, I want that show to still be about psychology and solving mysteries, not romance.

 

Some of the recent episodes had some really cool mysteries with twists in them though, so yeah. I'll watch for a little while longer before I write it off as a flop.

I'm keeping my finger hovering over the 'flop' button at all times. They have gone too out of character too many times now, and I'm just about ready to give up on it.

 

the whole first story arc was entirely built around people behaving in ways that were entirely out of character with no justification

 

- Indigo Individual

 

The Mentalist: I liked the RJ finale - very intense - but I don't like that it's going for soap opera territory now. While it is logical, and makes sense that it would be that way, I want that show to still be about psychology and solving mysteries, not romance.

 

Some of the recent episodes had some really cool mysteries with twists in them though, so yeah. I'll watch for a little while longer before I write it off as a flop.

I'm keeping my finger hovering over the 'flop' button at all times. They have gone too out of character too many times now, and I'm just about ready to give up on it.

the whole first story arc was entirely built around people behaving in ways that were entirely out of character with no justification

 

 

- Indigo Individual

 

It's okay - to each their own taste.

 

Which story arc do you mean? 1)The first story arc of the sixth season? 2) The first story arc after the RJ finale? 3) Or the first story arc of the show, period?

 

First arc post-RJ finale, right after Jane was brought into the FBI.

 

- Indigo Individual

 

Yeah, I could see how you could think like that. What particularly stood out as being OOC though? Lisbon going to meet Jane? Jane's demands? Both? The whole thing with the people going after the CBI employees? Everything?

 

I'm sorry, I just don't get where you're coming from. There's some fuzzy lines in there that could be interpreted as OOC, but I'm not sure which lines you are referring to.

 

Going after the CBI. Not only did they defeat a point of that villain - that he was very messed up but hadn't technically done anything illegal yet so they couldn't touch him (and he certainly wasn't a murderer) - that scene with La Roche especially was painful to watch.

 

- Indigo Individual

 

*nods grimly* Fair point.

 

 

*nods grimly* Fair point.

 

 

Also, to actually make some points regarding the finale, I disliked the whole episode. For god's sake, Lisbon should've been smart enough to think that Jane had written that letter when he made such a big point of complimenting the writer and he has fabricated evidence - including on more than one occasion letters - in the past. (also i'm not even going to go into the behaviour of the would-be revengers when they walked into the hotel rooms, the fact that the end was pulled straight out of a 'chick flick' [AND I ENJOY CHICK FLICKS, but i still didn't enjoy that, as it was badly executed and didn't feel like The Mentalist], and how quickly Lisbon ditched her fiancé. Or, y'know, how quickly Lisbon made her boyfriend into her fiancé. Before she ditched him. There's also the fact that we as an audience were asked to feel sympathy for Jane when Lisbon was criticising him after his plan backfired, despite the fact that everything that Lisbon said in that hotel room was true.

 

 

 

I disagree with the above points, for reasons:

1) It was established pretty firmly that her "boyfriend" was pressuring Lisbon in a lot of ways. In fact, it was pretty obvious to me that "boyfriend" character (his name escapes me) wasn't Lisbon's type at all, and she was letting him mess with her to get under Jane's skin. The "I just want you to be happy" lines and Jane delivering food at night told her that it was working.

 

Lisbon is not an cool dude. He made her a condition of his new job, and Lisbon put up with him for all those years he was hunting RJ, and even threw her job out so Jane could get his. I hate to run a shipper's line of arguement, but it's pretty clear that Lisbon wasn't even trying to fight Jane's manipulations here, and was trying to push Jane into revealing his feelings for her. And Jane didn't want to. All that anger was at Jane's cowardice, not at him for manipulating her, and at the same time, it was - she views the manipulation here as a symptom of his cowardice, which it is.

 

2) Lisbon has a love-hate thing going on with Jane. She likes Jane, but she doesn't like the fact that she likes Jane. She can't trust him, because he's a sly manipulator, and she knows. So most of this entire episode sequence is her trying to get him to tell the truth.

 

I don't think she even ever wanted to walk away from Jane. She could have just stayed at her old job in Washington state if that's what she really wanted to do. Instead, she wants to figure out why Jane wants her to work with him again, why he put her on the list. If I were in her shoes, that is exactly what I would do. That sequence at the end is all to put pressure on Jane to reveal his secret. It helps that her anger at his manipulation and cowardice is real.

 

tl:dr -- Lisbon knew, and went along with it to figure out what was going on in Jane's head.

 

 

 

I disagree with the above points, for reasons:

1) It was established pretty firmly that her "boyfriend" was pressuring Lisbon in a lot of ways. In fact, it was pretty obvious to me that "boyfriend" character (his name escapes me) wasn't Lisbon's type at all, and she was letting him mess with her to get under Jane's skin. The "I just want you to be happy" lines and Jane delivering food at night told her that it was working.

 

Lisbon is not an cool dude. He made her a condition of his new job, and Lisbon put up with him for all those years he was hunting RJ, and even threw her job out so Jane could get his. I hate to run a shipper's line of arguement, but it's pretty clear that Lisbon wasn't even trying to fight Jane's manipulations here, and was trying to push Jane into revealing his feelings for her. And Jane didn't want to. All that anger was at Jane's cowardice, not at him for manipulating her, and at the same time, it was - she views the manipulation here as a symptom of his cowardice, which it is.

 

2) Lisbon has a love-hate thing going on with Jane. She likes Jane, but she doesn't like the fact that she likes Jane. She can't trust him, because he's a sly manipulator, and she knows. So most of this entire episode sequence is her trying to get him to tell the truth.

 

I don't think she even ever wanted to walk away from Jane. She could have just stayed at her old job in Washington state if that's what she really wanted to do. Instead, she wants to figure out why Jane wants her to work with him again, why he put her on the list. If I were in her shoes, that is exactly what I would do. That sequence at the end is all to put pressure on Jane to reveal his secret. It helps that her anger at his manipulation and cowardice is real.

 

tl:dr -- Lisbon knew, and went along with it to figure out what was going on in Jane's head.

 

 

I don't actually ship them -- I instantly disliked the character, in fact. It's fairly clear that some of the decisions in the relationship were because of Jane - however, accepting the marriage proposal in particular was out of spite. And if Lisbon knew what was going on during the finale, then she wouldn't have been so angry after she found out about Jane booking the hotel, because she would have realised that it was also part of Jane's plan. I can't say whether or not she wanted to walk away from Jane -- however, I can't see her walking away that quickly from her fiancé, whether or not she had feelings for Jane. She just instantly dismissed him, and going off her dialogue it's a safe bet that she didn't even make him aware of this before she went in to see Jane. A fair amount of this comes about as a result of the episode being rushed, but that's still not an excuse for distinctly out of character behaviour -- Lisbon is thoughtlessly messing with her boyfriend/fiancé's emotions if your theory is true, and based on past experience of Lisbon that does not seem like something she would do. Sure, she would go to great lengths to get Jane to talk, but not at the expense of someone unconnected to the events.

And I'd like to return to the point that you didn't comment on, that being the sympathy we're asked to feel for Jane so that we can be happy when he and Lisbon get together whenever she has just given the audience quite a few very valid reasons to hate him outright. It was very jarring for me; as far as I could tell, the show has never once tried to sugar-coat the fact that Jane is cold and manipulative and cares very little for the emotions of others, only recognising them when they can help or are hindering him in a goal. In that scene we are told that outright, and we are shown that Lisbon knows that, and yet a little while later everything's fine with him and she has ditched her fiancé without giving any notice, meaning that she is effectively cheating on him, which again doesn't seem like something Lisbon would do. Overall, a lot of stuff just seemed kind of unlikely.

 

 

- Indigo Individual