Towards a poetics of "The Mentalist"
"It's there, and then it's gone."
It's taken us the best part of a year but my better half and I have finally finished watching all seven seasons of US television programme The Mentalist (2008-15).
To be perfectly honest, we had to skip a few episodes due to the fact that my streaming service subscription was about to expire. But it's not like we missed much; the actors, scriptwriters and producers all seemed to be pretty much phoning it in long before the series finale, S7E13.
Perhaps there was something in the fact that S07 featured just 13 episodes that also signalled its impending fate. Whatever the circumstances, I honestly can't quite believe we sat through (almost) 151 episodes of one television programme. What were we even thinking?
Starring Australian heartthrob Simon Baker as celebrity "psychic" Patrick Jane, The Mentalist is a police procedural with a twist: Jane works as a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI), helping them solve an improbable number of crimes using his knack for "reading" people.
It almost doesn't need to be mentioned that Jane is handsome and witty and hates guns. He has a way of getting inside the minds of criminals of the low-level and mastermind varieties.
He also has a habit of turning up at crime scenes and asking to use the kitchen (or bathroom), whereupon he happily fixes himself a cup of tea. He's just that kind of guy.
On the subject of Simon Baker (about whom one could probably write a monograph), let me just observe that, had my stars aligned differently, he and I may have ended up attending the same high school in the northern rivers town of Ballina in the 1980s. I am not at liberty to say more on the matter.
Then again, one of the stories going around primary school in Ballina was that the high school kids liked to 'flush' the younger kids' heads down the toilet on their birthdays. Meaning that, had those stars of mine aligned, I may well have received such a present at the hands of the man who would go on to play Patrick Jane.
Interestingly, Baker also starred in the searingly raunchy film clip for Melissa Tkautz's smash-hit 1992 single, "Read My Lips".
Coincidence, or . . . ?
But back to The Mentalist.
Over a period of time that we are led to believe may span way more than the seven years Jane & Co. spent inside the studio zone, Jane seeks out and eventually faces the nemesis of his back/origin story: the serial killer Red John, who had abducted and murdered Jane's wife and young daughter.
The programme's other narrative arcs pretty much write themselves: Jane's run-ins with the higher echelons of the CBI, who hate what he does but have to admit he gets results; the interactions between the members of the CBI team to which Jane has been assigned; and Jane's dalliances with a string of female criminals (some of whom may be just a tad attractive).
Not to mention (although here we are, of course) Jane's slow-burn "professional" relationship with his boss, Theresa Lisbon (played by Robin Tunney), who is the programme's true emotional core.
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But most of these details could easily have been cribbed from IMDB or WikiPedia. What is the true meaning and import of The Mentalist as a product of the cultural logic of late capitalism?
And can we speak of a 'Mentalist' poetics towards which we may slowly, lurchingly, move?
The answer to these slightly-tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless valid questions must surely be a resounding, "Huh?"
But just for argument's sake, allow me to posit three examples of a potential Mentalist poetics which, should some future über-intellect choose to take up this invitation to construct a fully-fledged Mentalist discourse, may well come in handy.
By way of background, I'm using "poetics" in this context to refer to the set of gestures, structures, forms and devices that collectively comprise The Mentalist in its audiovisual form. You may not be okay with that definition but nobody's holding a gun to your head.
The first example is the programme's most obvious: the repeated reference by new characters (including those who may only have one line in a single episode) to Patrick Jane's former career as a "psychic", and Jane's swift rebuttal and correction of same.
In Jane's world (and, therefore, the world of Mentalist poetics) there is no such thing as a psychic, even though Jane readily admits he previously took advantage of many people by posing as a psychic under the direction of his grifter father.
The message could not be clearer: existence and non-existence amount to the same thing.
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The second example is not so much a dialogic device or visual gesture as a gigantic meta spoiler. Namely, that, by S6E08, Jane has faced and eliminated his nemesis, Red John (although, once again, we can never be sure that he has actually done so). Meaning that, to all intents and purposes, the entire rationale for the programme no longer exists.
Thus, in some respects, the remaining episodes of season 6 (and, to a lesser extent, season 7) represent, in an uncanny way, the "afterlife" of Patrick Jane. In S6E09 -- which Simon Baker himself directed -- we find him living an anonymous life on a Mexican island, still speaking bad Spanish and wowing women of all ages, including undercover FBI agent Kim Fischer (Emily Swallow) who has been sent to the island to coax Jane home.
On returning from the afterlife, Jane sets out his terms for agreeing to work for the FBI as a consultant but these are rejected and he decides to call the FBI's bluff by going to prison instead. Is it stretching the analogy too far to suggest that this interlude within the Jane afterlife actually represents a kind of purgatory or limbo?
The FBI's eventual acceptance of Jane's terms (including his stipulation that his couch from CBI HQ in Sacramento be brought to Texas: ridiculous!) also provides the showrunners with an opportunity to switch locations to Houston (another season set in Sacto being, perhaps, a bridge too far) and introduce a bunch of new characters alongside Jane, Lisbon and Cho.
Jane's second life (trainspotters will also note the updated title sequence and slightly remixed theme song!) then generates new storylines and character arcs, the most notable of which is the mini "buddy-movie" storyline featuring Jane and his FBI supervisor, Dennis Abbott (played by former Playgirl model Rockmond Dunbar).
Abbott's role, which treads a fine line between camp and comedy, is to verbalise what has remained unspoken for five-and-a-half seasons. Namely, the feels that exist between Jane and Lisbon. But even the most astute of viewers would have been hard-pressed to notice any kind of sexual tension between Jane and Lisbon up until this point.
Abbott's love, which dares not speak its name, motivates him to continually inquire after Jane's feelings for Lisbon, to the point where we realise, with a woozy sense of inevitability, that the two long-term colleagues are destined to kiss at the end of season 6. Which they then duly do, albeit in a manner that friends might kiss after a long separation, rather than as lovers.
In this context, Season 7 truly represents the "death" of The Mentalist as a programme, and as a poetics. The actors are treading water. Jane and Lisbon are already together. The crimes keep on coming, and Jane keeps on solving them. Virtuoso stuff it may be, but stultifyingly dull is another apt term.
The terms of this encore death having been set at the start of the season, the playing out of the wedding in the show's finale (complete with a slight return by those serial heavy petters, former agents Rigsby and Van Pelt) provides us with enough material to proclaim a poetics of The Mentalist in name if not finer details.
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But there have been many other deaths in The Mentalist.
My third and final example of a Mentalist poetics occurs in the final scene of S3E17 of the series, entitled "The Red Mile", in which Jane witnesses Sacramento coroner, Dr Steiner, commit suicide. It's a deeply touching (if troubling) scene, where we see Jane at his most human, rather than merely a performer of tricks and sleights of hand.
And yet. Here, again, we come face to face with the existence/non-existence trope: to borrow Jane's words, as he plays a coin trick for the dying coroner, "It's there, and then it's gone." Likewise the cup of tea that Jane makes for Steiner is there (being sipped) and then gone (Jane gently removes it from Steiner's dead hand).
What is the message here? Steiner asks Jane to "witness" his death in order to avoid an investigation and autopsy. But clearly, in the studio zone, witnessing and not witnessing a death amount to the same thing. Steiner is already dead by the time Jane takes his cup of tea. Likewise, the coin in Jane's hand has already disappeared.
Poignant? Maybe. Manipulative? Okay, sure. But an example of a Mentalist poetics? This is the kind of "Hell, yeah" moment I am trying very hard to not avoid talking about.
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Thinking about The Mentalist again today, I was reminded of Australian writer Alan Marshall, whose autobiographical trilogy, and especially its first instalment, I Can Jump Puddles, may be familiar to readers of a certain vintage. Fun fact: the 1980s television adaptation of I Can Jump Puddles starred Jason Donovan in a very minor role.
Like Patrick Jane, Marshall worked as a circus fortune teller/psychic and wrote extensively about his techniques for “reading” people. The similarities between Marshall's version of himself and Bruno Heller's character of Patrick Jane are almost uncanny.
I wonder how Marshall’s life might have turned out had he used his skills to solve crimes instead of following the less well-trodden path. Of course, we will never know . . .
Then again, going by the latest news involving Simon Baker, perhaps we can outline one possible alternative timeline.
Police reported seeing Baker's Tesla electric car driving erratically in the fashionable Byron Bay region where he lives at 2.11am on Jul 20.
That was hours after a faulty software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike created worldwide technological havoc, disrupting airlines, hospitals, government offices and financial systems. Crittenden said the outage knocked police systems offline and an electronic breath test could not be completed on Baker.
She said police resorted to an “old-fashioned sobriety test”.
Police reported Baker was unsteady on his feet and smelled of alcohol. He told police he had consumed four glasses of wine over dinner since 6pm, roughly eight hours prior. He was alone in the car.
Sometimes I like to posit an alternate reality for myself. My family remains in the northern rivers rather than moving to another country town. I eventually move from primary school to the high school across the road. On my birthday, some of the older kids grab me by the arms and legs and rush me into the boys' toilets.
Just as my head is about to be flushed down the toilet, Simon Baker, who would have been just two or three years older than me at the time, enters the toilet block, quickly twigs to the situation and gives one of my assailants a dead leg. Maybe a crow peck for one of the others. They flee, and I find myself alone with my rescuer, chest heaving, pulse racing.
Simon Baker lifts me up by the arms and brings me to my feet. Suddenly I'm embarrassed, my cheeks flaming. He laughs that easy laugh of his, tousles my hair and says, "Happy birthday."
Then he gestures for me to get on out of the toilet block. Of course, he's got business of his own to deal with, and we won't dwell on that here. I walk out of those toilets slightly stronger, definitely changed.
But I will never see Simon Baker again.
"It's there, and then it's gone."