I Know Where You Live: The Mentalist

After catching its second episode, I've made a point of not missing this very fine new procedural starring Simon Baker. The premise could have gone very awry in the wrong hands. Patrick Jane (Baker) is a cold/hot reader (a what? more on that soon) who had a good living performing as a stage psychic. When he casually answered a late-night talk show question about what kind of man an unidientified serial killer would be, he came home one night to find a note on his bedroom door reading something along the lines of, "I don't appreciate you slandering me in public. If you're really a psychic, you won't need to open the door to know what I've done to your lovely family." Yikes.

Five years later, no longer performing for obvious reasons, Patrick is a licensed PI who consults for the California Bureau of Investigation on homicides. A 'reader' is a real profession and skill - hot readers are the psychics who ask you for some personal information, or to see an object you own, and use the clues (and statistics) to tell you something accurate about yourself. Cold readers, like Patrick, are the ones who only need look at the way you sit in a chair to know that your father was a football coach. This premise is the first thing that sets The Mentalist apart from weaker, loopier shows, because Patrick's skill is an actual skill, requiring years of study and refinement. As for the man himself, his personality still retains what drove him to the stage in the first place; he clearly loves to perform, but the writers don't overdo it. As a career performer, Patrick has a charming and easy manner, and he's very comfortable with the fact that he's very good at his job. Of course, though the unsolved murder hasn't come up in the plot yet, it remains a significant background factor...but we only know this because of a quick scene showing Patrick going to sleep on the floor of the same bedroom his family was killed in, complete with the happy face painted in blood by the killer still on the wall. I personally would be interested to see the show progress with this remaining stagnant, in the past, and looking at how that colours Patrick's life as opposed to the eventual "I think I found the killer!" we can probably expect.

The second thing that sets The Mentalist apart is the cast of characters. Robin Tunney as the cop Patrick works most directly with has a perpetual frown, but never slides into shrewy, bitchy, or tritely cold territory, and is in fact none of the above. Her Agent Lisbon is a person, though the writers are being inconsistent in deciding when she recognizes Patrick's assessments as being based on knowledge and when she doesn't ("speed of plot" syndrome, I believe it's called). That being said, she doesn't think he's a nut case, and she respects him, and when she needs to take him to task for being a bit too inconsiderate of things like procedure and law, there's no "cop-vs.-not" tension, simply one professional explaining something to another. Rounding out the players are Tim Kang as a seasoned officer, and Owen Yeomain and Amanda Righettit as a younger pair. Kang's Det. Cho is someone who's clearly seen a lot, and handles it on the job in a very matter-of-fact way without coming off as disconnected, and as a person, he's well-adjusted (as a homicide detective should be, to qualify the psych profiles) and has a nicely quiet humour. Yeomain's Rigsby is more of a California boy, younger and easily excited with an easy, happy manner, constantly vying with Righetti's Van Pelt to be the one to impress the boss, but still the kind of person who would be make detective - he knows restraint. Van Pelt isn't a stereotype of a young woman trying to prove herself as a cop, but rather a young cop trying to prove herself as a cop - but again, not in any kind of pushy, out-of-the-way manner. These are some of the most normal people you'll ever see on screen. And, most importantly, they're all good cops. This week's episode opened with a brilliant scene of everyone waiting around the California-Nevada state line to hear the verdict on what state a disembodied hand near the line belongs to. Patrick does his thing, looking at how the nails are groomed, lines where rings were worn, etc., and calls what kind of job was held by the man the hand belonged to, which leads to a wonderfully normal (and funny) wager between him and Cho in the amount of how much change is in Cho's pocket. Which leads to a shocked rebuke from Van Pelt ("you can't gamble on body parts!"), and Rigsby's cheerful disagreement ("You can't do that in California. But...(takes a step) we're in Nevada now! So it's okay!" or something along those lines). It was so comfortable, and natural, and real, and even more so because the boss, Lisbon, wasn't involved, because she was doing her job and consulting with the leader of the Nevada team to determine jurisdiction.

Comfort is the keyword here. This show is very comfortable with itself, its premise, its characters, Patrick's job, its larger-than-life (California) setting - everything about it is comfortable. It's not self-conscious, or trying to prove something, or trying to manufacture drama. It just is, and that is why it works so very well.

The Mentalist is a CBS show; we watch it here in Edmonton on Access, Mondays at 8.