With Rob mentioning it here and there on Waypoint Radio and the handful of times we’ve heard Austin talk about it ive had The Mentalist on the mind. I started a re-watch last night and remembered just how much i enjoyed it. Is anyone else doing the same? I had forgotten how much i liked the core gang and the relaxed who-dun-it formula.
All 8 seasons are available on amazon prime but i can understand perfectly if people don’t want to engage with that service, I’m sure it can be acquired elsewhere.
I really hope we get that Waypoints episode where we can here Austin and Rob dig into it.
I was curious if there was a Mentalist watchlist out there? Kind of like the Clone Wars with what episodes you can skip? I’m enjoying this so far, especially with an eye towards Zacnyism, but I’m in the middle of a real turd of an episode about a pickup artist, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing that will carry forward in the future.
Cameron Monaghan appearance! It’s funny that this is the same producer as Gotham, because you can see a lot of actors from Gotham in similar roles here. Cameron’s practically doing a dry run for the Joker here at age 12. I didn’t quite recognize him until he did his Joker turn.
I’m 6 episodes in so far and I’m enjoying it well enough. Surprised by how many faces I’ve recognized so far. Good background noise while I’m working. Also surprised that Patrick Jane is involved in the deaths of 3 suspects so far? Dude’s not great at this.
Patrick Jane would have a worse record than Agent Mulder if they didn’t go out of their way to point out that he closes cases all of the time.
Seriously though, I am like 3 seasons in and the show consistenly impresses me. The show itself is a fairly solid procedural, but all of the character work is fantastic when binge watching.
I haven’t seen Person of Interest, and after looking at a synopsis I’m not certain.
I can say that so far it is very similar to other police-type procedurals like Monk, Elementary, Castle, House, Bones. Every episode there’s a mystery, and the quirky but astute protagonist has to solve it 'cause no one else is clever enough. There’s side characters, and an overall mystery relating to the protagonist that doesn’t move much except towards the end of each season.
But I only just finished the first season, so I could be wrong.
I’m at a point with this show where I’m really struggling to keep much interest. Into season 2, and there’s just not much narrative tension. Patrick Jane is never wrong about literally anything, everyone other than Cho and maybe the Gillian Anderson impersonator just aren’t very interesting as characters. The cases themselves are oddly light on details about the people involved in them, and Jane’s solutions to solving them are increasingly disconnected from the cases themselves.
I’ll probably still power through, but this was a particularly bad show to be watching up to the point of mainlining Ted Lasso over the course of a few days.
Season 1 definitely felt like a pretty standard procedural. I forgot how much of these shows are really about like… avoiding or ignoring people’s rights? Like it’s easy to lose count of how many times the CBI just ignores warrants 'cause they are inconvenient, forces people into interrogations without a lawyer, etc. Definitely makes me appreciate The Wire a lot more for focusing on those bits of police work and how often the cops are trying to get one up on people 'cause they don’t want to follow the rules, not because they’re the “good guys.” But in shows like this it’s just standard operating procedure.
There’s a little bit of techno-magic any time they need to look up or correlate information. Another typical trope but it does sometimes jump out and make me laugh. Also a lot of folks faking disabilities which is yikes.
The typical narrative arc of “Patrick Jane finds out the solution way before everyone else, and then does some wild theatrics to make the guilty people expose themselves” is starting to get a little old now that I’m into season 2. And they’re getting more convoluted and honestly a lot more dodgy. Patrick Jane has, several times, lead to the deaths or injury of the people responsible for these crimes, or just people he doesn’t like, and pretty much never sees consequences as a result.
Agent Cho’s dry one-liners are honestly what I look forward to the most. Favourite character by far.
I forgot how much of these shows are really about like… avoiding or ignoring people’s rights?
Yeah, I’m also not crazy about the way the show treats experts as being quickly led astray by their own agendas and easily replaced by “a guy who uses facts and logic”. That hasn’t aged real well. Probably wasn’t great in it’s own time either.
It’s also bothering me how the victims in this show are overwhelmingly women. You could probably thread a line that talks about how women are overwhelmingly the victims of male violence here, but here it mostly feels like an excuse to put a lot of beautiful young corpses on parade. There’s something prurient about it. The male victims in this show are mostly wearing suits. The women are usually in their underwear or in party dresses.
