Season 2 premieres this Thursday at 10pm.
I may have said this in the first season thread, but the Red John episodes really get to me. I wish I could dissect and understand what exactly it is about the way the show handles them that makes them so effective. He's so competent, for one, that there's a genuine sense of menace that something really, really bad and unexpected could happen.
I find it particularly interesting because the show is really a mishmash of other recent shows. The basic faux-psychic hook is very similar to Lie To Me and Psych, and yet I like it more. The not-at-all-by-the-book thing is similar to both Life and... whatever that Jeff Goldblum show was, and I liked those a lot. And the story-arcing serial killer that the main character is obsessed with is the same set-up as Women's Murder Club. So I should find this show really derivative, or at least very much a conglomerate of, if not clichés, standard cop show checklist items.
But I don't. I really like the team of detectives. In fact, Robin Tunney's character seems to be the least developed, other than the fact that everyone seems to fall in love with her. I love Agent Cho like life itself. Not only is he hilariously deadpan, super buff, but I loved that thing he did -- tiny character moment -- where he toasts the fallen comrade, but doesn't drink, instead setting his shot down and opening a bottle of water.
So smart, and so charismatic. And when it's a Red John episode, so genuinely nerve-wracking.
They did something with this episode. Everyone sounded all slurred and stuff, that I was wondering if they slowed the audio feed or something.
I agree with everything you wrote. I am surprised at how much I like this show. The Red John episodes are particularly awesome and this last one was fantastic. I did not expect them to acutally kill off Bosco at the end. I I love how they showed again the lengths that Jane will go through to get answers - including cutting of Bosco's morphine.
I started watching the show because my friend Paula is a Simon Baker fanaticand she would not stop talking about it, and I've really been enjoying it. The characterization is top-notch, and all the actors carve out unique personalities. The show's not afraid to make Jane a really loathsome individual, if an exceptionally entertaining and sympathetic one. Tim Kang as Cho is one of the most interesting personalities to emerge on a cop show in quite a while.
<-the Red John episodes really get to me. I wish I could dissect and understand what exactly it is about the way the show handles them that makes them so effective. He's so competent, for one, that there's a genuine sense of menace that something really, really bad and unexpected could happen.->
Well, at the macro level I see them doing this through three methods:
One, they all but strip out the otherwise-present humor from the show. It makes the RJ eps seem much more serious and stark in relief. Most of this is done via Jane - who's usually the engine for 80% of the humor - who understandably becomes deathly serious when RJ is involved.
Two, RJ's crimes tend to be decidedly more gruesome, horrible and/or nervewracking than the typical cases they're involved in.
Three, they (of course) deny us RJ in the flesh. The devil you don't know is always more menacing than one you can see. Mixed with the uber-competence of Hannibal Lector-like proportions they've given RJ, he's elevated to a Boogie Man mythic level. As contrasted to, say, the jilted spouse of the week whose knocked off their Significant Other for the life insurance.
In short: the characters are scared, the crimes are scarier and the criminal is scarier.
Interesting about denying us Red John in the flesh. As I was writing my post, I was thinking about the legendary anecdote about Orson Welles in The Third Man where he took the role in part because he was talked about so much before he appeared that the character was almost mythic when he first shows up. But while we haven't seen Red John's face, we have seen him. We've seen him in the police station, we've seen him in the basement, and we saw him in the flashback with the wife and husband doing laundry (the wife looked uncomfortably like Robin Tunney, which confused me for a moment). I don't think he showed up in the blind girlfriend cellist episode, but I expected him to show up any moment, and that expectation made him very palpable.
But when we have seen him, or seen his silhouette, I've noticed he doesn't have that... Seven quality of added sound effects or little cues to make him seem magical or special. And the absence of those little horror movie clues actually makes him more spooky, because it makes him more ghostly, and less likely to be caught.
Oh, but you're totally right about the tone changing because of Jane's reaction. I'd noticed that, of course, but I know it'd never occurred to me that such a simple thing would affect my own engagement in the drama.
When I said they deny us him, I meant that we always know that one of the characters-of-the-week will be unmasked as the guilty party. We see them; they are given character.
RJ is hidden - obscured - from us. What we know is either related from INSANE cohorts, gleaned from his methods or, very rarely, from highly-charged, but limited, communiques. We're left to fill try and fill in these large blanks.
Dear The Mentalist,
There's a reason why so many of us have gotten tired of Lost. No more flashbacks, please.
Yours, etc.
It was a rather lame episode... (But I am no where near tired of LOST... lol). But I don't think we will see much of this in the future unless it pertains to Red John.
The car dealership one was pretty awesome. They cast enough character actors to make you confused as to who the killer would be, and they were all great. Jane's long plan for ferreting out the killer was hilarious.
Amy Price-Francis has like, no luck.
Wow, the reconizable character actor who had barely any lines was the killer! DUH!
Cho's reaction to Lisbon's phone call was yet another memorable moment from Cho.
Baker's scene with the daughter (Yes, that was quinnn from Zoey 101) was fantastic. Just a well played scene by the both of them.
