The Mentalist – Recap & Review – Red Herring

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The Mentalist
Red Herring

Original Air Date: Mar 4, 2010.

Liz – Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com

Since I’ve been watching Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu, I was tickled when we began with chefs, not to mention a cooking contest. Chef Jeffrey Barnes is the first to present his dishes to the judge, but never manages to make it. His vision is blurring, and he collapses. CBI is there because one of the chef’s father is a senator, so connections make for an important case. Initially they think he may have died from head trauma from fighting Duesterberg, the contest’s administrator, but Jane directs the coroner to check Barge’s mouth after tasting some of his food. His tongue is swollen and discolored — he’s been poisoned.

The coroner’s report says that Barge died from ricin poisoning. The first people the team talks to are the chefs — since they are all competing for a large cash prize — and the second is Barge’s wife, Abigail. They were separated over Jeffrey’s drinking problem, and hadn’t spoken in months. Jeffrey’s brother Kevin interrupts their meeting, and begins to dump on poor Abigail — although as Abigail points out, Kevin is clearly intoxicated and drinking runs in the family. He protests though, saying that Jeffrey had been sober. She does slip, however, and has to admit that Jeffrey had called her the night before and said he was sorry — but she hung up on him, so there was no real conversation.

Jane visits Rigsby in Jeffrey’s hotel suite, testing food and beverage for ricin, but he is not having any luck. Jane, however, uncovers a bottle of gin in the toilet tank — which accounts for an apparent relapse in Barge’s drinking — which is then tested and proven positive for ricin. With a fake out, Jane and Rigsby manage to pull in one chef who reacted with relief. She admits that she bought him a gin because she was looking to take him out of competition, but she did not know about the ricin.

Grace trots out Jeffrey’s phone records, revealing that he had an hour long phone conversation with his restaurant after he called Abigail. Lisbon and Jane visit the restaurant and talk to Eliza Green, Jeffrey’s sous chef, and Abigail, who is going over the books with Eliza. Eliza says that Jeffrey had been talking to her about changes in his contest menu, and Jane tries to needle her into showing some resentment, but she is quite cheery. They leave and are sitting in Lisbon’s car; Abigail leaves not much later and is attacked and has her purse stolen. Before the assailant can get away, Jane opens the car door and clotheslines him. He pulls the mask off, revealing Kevin. In interrogation with Lisbon, Kevin tries to get himself a deal by saying he has valuable information about who killed his brother. Lisbon calls his bluff by going to walk away, but he relents and says his brother had borrowed money from Sean Horlick.

Cho and Jane go to the restaurant to talk to Eliza about the business and look at the books. Jane again tries to needle her into admitting something, but all he manages to learn is that her own try and a business failed when she was denied a liquor license, and when he asks why she never hooked up with Jeffrey, she says, “I never liked waiting in lines.” Meanwhile, Rigsby and Grace go to see Horlick who wasn’t getting his money back from Jeffrey. But he reveals that Jeffrey was seen staying at the Ritz — further revelation shows that the room was paid for in cash, which means someone was looking for secrecy: not Jeffrey, but who he was having an affair with.

In the kitchen, Jane puts another chef, Julia St. Germaine on the spot and asks if she was having an affair with Jeffrey. He observes that Julia and her husband Arliss’s rhythms have been off in the kitchen — and that she didn’t deny it. At CBI, Julia reveals the affair had been going for five months. But suddenly, she wants water, and falls over, like Jeffrey in the beginning.

Like Jeffrey, Julia is dead of ricin poisoning. Cho gives the astute observation that with two lovers dead from the same thing, they would do very well to look at the husband. He and Jane go to speak with Arliss St. Germaine who rebuffs them, and says to talk to Abigail about the fight she and Jeffrey had a couple weeks ago. When they do, at first she is resistant but when Jane compares her appearance now to a photo on the wall and correctly guesses she’s newly pregnant, she admits it — and the fight was when she told Jeffrey. They also find castor beans in Julia’s house, which puts her in a not so great position.

Jane then calls Lisbon away for urgent reasons, which turns out to be a memorial dinner for Julia and Jeffrey. Surprise! Jane starts a fire in the kitchen and in the commotion, puts Julia’s pepper in the soup. With the chefs, Jane, Lisbon, Duesterberg, and Eliza all gathered around the table, they all dig in to the soup — and are all surprised when it is peppered. Jane tells them he added pepper from Julia’s shelf to it, and Eliza immediately begins panicking. She tries to pin it on another chef before confessing that she had poisoned the pepper and the gin, because Jeffrey had gotten Julia’s father, a senator, to help block her liquor license on her restaurant. Jeffrey called to apologize in his drunken state, but instead she made her revenge.

Abigail is released, and tells Lisbon to tell Jane that he’s a mean, irresponsible sadist — which he later agrees with. We get to see the more sympathetic side of Lisbon, briefly, as she tells Abigail she understands that living with an alcoholic is hard but by all indications, it looks like Jeffrey wanted to change for her and their child. At the episode’s end, she pulls a bottle of liquor and glass out of her desk drawer, but after contemplating it for a moment, replaces it.

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