'Michael': a Glee tribute episode I actually liked? This is unheard of!

At some point, Santana appears to have become my absolute favourite Glee character. I could never have anticipated this back in the first series! Also, I'm oddly delighted by what a cartoon villain Sebastian is.

BUT THIS ISN'T AN ENTRY ABOUT GLEE; THIS IS AN ENTRY ABOUT THE MENTALIST. Have some thoughts up to 'My Bloody Valentine', mainly about how scary Jane is.



'Always Bet on Red':

I love love love the reactions when the boat explodes. Lisbon and Cho run towards it; Jane, of course, immediately runs away and hides. He is the opposite of Gryffindor.

When Darcy was talking about how Panzer's murderer had evidently studied Red John obsessively, I thought at first that she suspected Jane had personally killed him after manipulating the television interview to make it look as if Red John had motive to do it.

Lisbon thinks that Red John is trying to get closer to Jane! I'm so fascinated by this line of thought. I'm also intrigued by the fact that, in protecting Darcy by fake-closing the Panzer case, Jane was also, in a sense, protecting Red John.

The framing was a really twisted thing to do, whatever the motive. Jane just gets wronger and wronger. Where on Earth is this going to end up?

Jane's always concealed things about himself, but there's a surprising amount of honesty between him and Lisbon nowadays. He told her the man he shot wasn't Red John, and because of that she was able to work out that he intentionally set Panzer up to be killed. Is she afraid of what he might become?


And then there was 'My Bloody Valentine', which I spent the entirety of getting all heart-eyed over Van Pelt. You are the queen of my heart, Grace. (That scene between her and Jane at the end! I 'ship Jane with everyone in the CBI, yes, but I think I may 'ship him with Van Pelt a tiny bit more than I 'ship him with the others.)

I want more Lisbon and Van Pelt interaction. I want an episode consisting almost entirely of Lisbon and Van Pelt working together. I am so fond of the friendship and respect between them.

I was really inexplicably pleased that Van Pelt kept the necklace. I sort of wanted her to wear it around her neck, as a constant reminder that, yes, Craig betrayed her and tried to kill her and basically ruined her life, but fuck you Craig because she got through it and now you're a colander.

Van Pelt's hallucination of Craig says that he did love her, he didn't want to kill her, but he had to make a choice between her and Red John. That may or may not have been the real Craig's reasoning, but the question remains: how do Red John's accomplices become so very devoted to him? We've seen many characters who have been willing to kill or die for Red John, and their actions usually seem to me to be based in love for Red John, rather than fear of him. What is it about Red John that inspires that love?

Unsettling thought: is this what's happening with Jane and Lisbon? Lisbon is generally prepared to challenge Jane, but she'll protect and defend him even when she doesn't necessarily agree with what he's doing. She used to conceal his mad plans for catching criminals; she's now concealing much darker things for him (the fact that he deliberately had Panzer killed, for one). Where do the boundaries of Lisbon's loyalty lie? Is she Jane's friend or his accomplice? If she moves from one to the other, how long will it take her to realise that she's crossed that line?

Speaking of Jane's increasingly visible dark side: I thought for a moment that he actually intended to lead Mob Guy into accidentally killing himself with the vodka. Jane, does it worry you that the sentence '...is Jane committing murder again?' can plausibly flit across my mind when I'm watching?



On a lighter note: oh, Jane, of course you used to read phone books.