The Mentalist - Spoiler Alert

Years ago, I predicted that at the end of Bob Newhart’s Vermont-based Newhart sitcom, it would be revealed that that entire series had just been a bad dream of his character, Dr. Robert Hartley, on his earlier sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show. Several months later, at the very end of the very last episode of Newhart, my prediction proved to be right, and my wife and I still laugh whenever we think about it.

Nowadays, one of my favorite TV programs is The Mentalist on CBS.

If you don’t follow that show, then this Journal post won’t make much sense to you.

But if you’re a fan, don’t read any further unless you’re willing to take a chance that what I tell you about the show might end up coming true later on.

Still reading? Okay, let’s continue: As you know, The Mentalist is about Patrick Jane, a former professional mentalist-turned-crime-investigator whose incredible powers of perception allow him to “think like a criminal” and “get into other people’s minds.”

Although he is a very attractive and likable fellow himself, Patrick Jane knows that you can’t really trust anyone, no matter how attractive and likable they are.

That’s because years of closely observing human behavior have taught him that everyone lies and everyone has hidden secrets.

But everyone’s behavior eventually “gives away” their lies and hidden secrets to those few who are perceptive enough to notice.

I have a theory about how The Mentalist series will end. I kept my theory in mind while I watched the past few episodes, and nothing that happened in them contradicted it. In fact, a few things that happened actually made me feel stronger about it.

So, based on my theory, I’d like to suggest what I think would be a brilliant, irony packed and shockingly memorable way to end The Mentalist:

In a final (probably two-part) episode, Patrick Jane finds what appears to everyone else to be an insignificant piece of evidence. But remember — Jane is incredibly perceptive.

So, as the episode unfolds, Jane keeps recalling that one piece of evidence, and it repeatedly triggers flash-backs to each of Red John’s hideous murders.

But something is different about these flash-backs: He sees them in a way that his mind has never been allowed to see them before — through the eyes of the murderer himself.

Is his newly found ability to get completely into a criminal’s mind going to allow him to finally catch Red John?

Through Jane’s gradual epiphany of clarity and self-awareness, both he and we come to realize that it’s not really his powers of perception that are allowing him to imagine what Red John must have seen.

Our own powers of perception, honed over time through watching his, allow us to see that Jane’s obsession with Red John has always been even more personal than we had imagined.

That’s why he has always promised his law-enforcement colleagues that when he finally finds Red John, he’s going to kill him before he can be arrested. And then he will happily face the consequences of that action.

He hasn’t just been obsessed with Red John — he has been mentally ill.

Seriously delusional.

Ever since the very first Red John killing.

And now that he is finally coming out of the fog of that mental illness, he can finally figure out the secret that he has successfully hidden from everyone — including himself — until now.

The hidden secret that only his own superior powers of perception were finally able to figure out.

Jane has finally caught Red John.

Because Jane has finally realized that he himself is Red John.

In the final scene of the final episode of The Mentalist, his law-enforcement buddies frantically race to his apartment — the same apartment that we saw in the very first episode of the series, where his wife and daughter had been slaughtered by Red John — while inside the apartment, Patrick Jane is keeping his promise to kill Red John — by committing suicide.

Slow fade to black and silence.

Five seconds of black.

Roll credits; Cue music: A lone voice soulfully singing Amazing Grace.

Man, I should’ve been a writer.

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Entertainment, Future, Psychology

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 2:10 am.