The Mentalist – Recap & Review – Red Menace

photo: cbs

The Mentalist
Red Menace

Original Air Date: Oct 15, 2009.

Liz – Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com

We open on the crime scene in Deerfield, California. A middle aged man in an expensive suit is dead from blunt force trauma and they have to find out whodunit. His identification, phone, and valuables are gone, but his Bluetooth device for his cell phone remains. Jane, ever the pragmatist, pulls it right out of the dead man’s ear and voice dials “Home.” Upon reaching Gordon Hodge’s wife this way, he hands it over to Lisbon. “It’s for you” indeed.

The team arrives at the Hodge household, a not exactly shabby place. Hodge was a criminal defense attorney, but he only had one client: the Sinner Saints motorcycle gang — excuse me, club, of some legitimate business dealings but not many. The wife and son both claim to have noticed he was a bit edgy, but they didn’t know why.

With the succinct maxim “Nomads are sexier than farmers” as to why girls like a bad boy, Lisbon and Jane descend upon the bar where the Sinner Saints make their home. Just like in every show or movie you’ve ever seen, the whole bar goes quiet as they look at the clearly out of place newcomers. Just as Jane is making friends with a bored sadist, the guy in charge (well, as in charge as anyone ever is in a biker gang), Von McBride, intervenes. Now, Von is being played by Mark Pellegrino, who is also showing his mug on CW’s Supernatural this season as Lucifer. Lucifer playing the leader of Hell’s Angels analogues? If I didn’t know better I’d say somebody planned this.

They talk about Hodge for awhile, and it sounds like he was enjoying his life. He liked a party and drugs at that party, so the cushy job of defending Sinner Saints was an okay gig for him. When things really start to get intense is at a scream outside. The gang members are dragging around a woman, who is yelling — not because she’s being dragged, but she’s angry. When Lisbon intervenes they drop her and she runs away, scrambles into a pickup truck and drives away.

Back at HQ, Grace has looked through cell phone records, looking at calls to and from Hodge’s phone, and one name occurs several times — Constance Hoyt. It is not the woman in the parking lot, they have no leads on her, but the person who it is will tickle your funny bone. Von McBride’s girlfriend, who seems to go by Diamond amongst the gang. Lisbon and Grace go to question her, but she speeds away on her bike. Chase ensues, and Grace drives that sensible vehicle like it’s a stock car, finally cutting Constance off, causing a total wipeout.

Rigsby and Cho go to Hodge’s office, and discover that it had already been broken into and ransacked. Nothing was apparently found, but there is a spray painted message on the back of the door — “Burn in hell.” Someone’s unhappy.

When Lisbon and Grace pulled in Constance, Jane jumps to the immediate (correct) conclusion that Constance and Hodge had been sleeping together. She denies it once but Jane is never wrong. Not about these things. Only one other person knew about their affair — Hodge’s wife. They question the wife again, but she says she’d only confronted him the once and he’d promised to stop. So much for that. They manage to fit in one more tidbit before the commercial break: a security camera across the street from Hodge’s office caught the mysterious parking lot lady, Felicia Guthrie, breaking in to the office.

She’s brought in, and tells her story. McBride beat her brother to death over a disagreement and Hodge got him off. Ergo, she was pissed. She claims innocence, but she has a record of things like road rage and stays in psychiatric hospitals. They let her go in order to shadow her a bit.

Jane speaks with Lucas, Hodge’s son, about seeing Felicia running up his driveway. He hadn’t mentioned it, supposedly because he felt bad for her. On a driving lesson (I would not kid you about this) Jane talks with the kid some more, about his relationship with his father and what sort of relationship they had. That night, Rigsby and Cho are watching Felicia’s house when the gang rides up. The two of them stand up to a herd of angry motorcyclists with little more than a gun and a badge and nerves of steel to each of their names, and force the Sinner Saints to ride on. Rigsby, you can enforce my warrants any time you like. Just so we’re clear.

As a woman with anger issues, Felicia is pretty indignant not only towards the gang but towards the CBI when she learns that she is a person of interest in the murder case, and about Jane rifling through her dresser drawers. Although he cavalierly says he was looking in her closet, actually, it’s not too long before Rigsby finds Hodge’s missing cufflink in Felicia’s trashcan. Whoops.

Mrs Hodge and Lucas are both at the station when they bring in Felicia. Jane has brought them all together, asking for Lucas’s statement that he saw Felicia on the day of his father’s murder. At first I thought it was the mother who had done the deed, since she was antsy for Lucas to give his statement and get out of there, but Lucas confesses all. He murdered his father on the side of the road on a driving lesson, and then called his mother. She helped him cover it up.

And yes, Jane planted that cufflink to be able to bring everyone together and extract a confession from Lucas. Lisbon is not so impressed by Jane’s devil may care attitude about framing Felicia for this purpose, and that she deserves some justice. And he agrees.

So we go about justice Jane’s way. Done up looking like he’s coming out of a ’40’s movie in coat and fedora (yow), Jane calls McBride out of the bar and hands him an envelope. A confused McBride is met by members of his gang, just as befuddled as they are by the cash in the envelope — setting him up to look like the informant who Jane had been questioning the gang about throughout the entire show. Just as McBride is getting his ass handed to him by his gang, Jane and Felicia leave into the night. Justice was messy, but it was served the Patrick Jane way.