The Mentalist – Recap & Review – The Scarlett Letter

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The Mentalist
The Scarlett Letter

Original Air Date: Oct 1, 2009.

Liz – Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com

Our favorite CBI team is investigating the apparent suicide of nineteen-year-old Kristen Marley, who jumped off a bridge. But as always, Jane sees something that everyone else doesn’t see and makes local law enforcement look like a bunch of monkeys. One of Kristen’s shoes is missing, which doesn’t make any sense. Who would walk to the middle of the bridge with one shoe to jump off? It is deduced that she was killed and then placed there — or, as Rigsby helpfully added, thrown off the bridge. Oh, Rigsby.

Kristen Marley was working as an aide to a Senator, Melinda Crew. Lisbon and Jane speak to the senator and her husband, who upfront categorically deny any affair between the husband and Kristen, although Jane is quick to point out they have no spark. Of course, he puts it a little less delicately, as in, they are not having sex, but that is Jane for you. (If alarm bells do not go off for you at this point, you have not been watching the show long enough.) Outside the capitol, they meet Minelli and his old friend Walter Crew, who is also Melinda’s father. Walter is guest star Paul Michael Glaser, and the only thing I can see when I look at him is Perchik. (That’s right, Perchik. Not Starsky.)

Back at the station, we witness Jane and a weird obsessive-compulsive moment about where his couch is, Lisbon is late for mandatory counseling (in what appears to be a set up for next week’s episode), and Jane shows off again. He says to look for a lover as Kristen’s killer, and some kind of token of remembrance, because Kristen was a collector. And just to top off this busy day, he sees Bosco and deduces that he has new information in the Red John case. He gets kind of the crazy eyes and obsessive, and Bosco tells him that when it comes to Red John he’s like a crack addict in need of a fix. And it not totally inaccurate.

Cho and Rigsby are making a visit to Kristen’s stepmother, who called her several times on the day of her death. Oddly enough, Kristen’s stepbrother Harlan had also been in contact, naming her as his alibi for a carjacking that he was accused in — although she was not amenable to this arrangement. He had been missing since, and it turns out that the stepmom has been hiding him in her closet. They bring him in and he’s pretty shifty about whether or not he was threatening her via text message. While Grace works her charms on him, Cho and Rigsby search his car and find Kristen’s missing shoe in his trunk. He is subsequently arrested, but they hold on to sending him to be arraigned until Jane makes his rounds. He claims he will have the real killer there in less than twenty-four hours.

Jane’s first stop is to see Walter Crew, and he summarily pins him for sleeping with Kristen. At first he denies, but denying things to Jane is a pretty stupid thing to do. His next stop is to see Melinda and her husband, and ransack her office. Melinda gets righteously indignant and the husband is all “do what you have to do,” so it’s really hard to know who to believe. That night, Jane has the ace in the hole, and he leaves a message for Lisbon telling her that he left the bit of evidence he was looking for in her desk.

And then comes the denouement. In the dark, someone is sneaking into Lisbon’s desk… SURPRISE, Jane catches the janitor, Cavileri, who had helped him move his couch. The awesome evidence left in Lisbon’s desk? A note that says, “Ah ha.” Snap, Jane. It was a trap devised by Jane and Lisbon to catch the mole in the department. Of course, the roles reverse quite quickly, and the pseudojanitor gets a letter opener to Jane’s throat and gets Lisbon to toss away her gun and handcuff herself to the door, when they are interrupted by a security guard. Cavileri flees and jumps into a car, and is in an accident trying to get away.

They call Melinda, Walter, and her husband to the station and then the really sordid part of the plot comes out. Not that both men had been sleeping with Kristen, oh no. Father and daughter had been sleeping with Kristen. Let that sink in for a minute. In a crime of passion, Melinda killed Kristen with a bookend. And if you think that’s the end of it, no, it is not. The CBI used Cavileri’s body to obtain a confession. Cavileri died in the car crash. And just as icing on the cake, Jane bugs Bosco’s office to get information on further developments in the Red John case. His obsession knows no bounds.

I am excited about this season already! I had missed Jane’s crazy eyes when he gets on to Red John, and huge props to Simon Baker for that. Next week it looks like for once he won’t be the craziest person in the office. Rigsby hit a wall in his Dating Grace Van Pelt mission, and Cho said what we are all thinking: you are going to die alone. So in short, yes, I am excited for this season. I’m eager to see where Jane’s crazy eyes, Lisbon’s continued required therapy, and if Rigsby will ever be able to stutter out an invitation out to Grace. What do you think, viewers?