photo: cbs
The Blood on His Hands
Original Air Date: Oct 7, 2010.
Liz – Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com
A tattooed lady washed up on a bank of the Sacremento River, found by a jogger. Track marks between her toes indicate a shady past (discovered by Jane — manicure, but no pedicure), but before we can even fully comprehend that we’re jumping plotlines. The FBI agent on Kristina Frye’s missing persons case calls Jane because they have a lead. A call with Kristina’s voice was traced to a house, but by the time they got there they were gone. All that was left was a doll under a cot on the floor, with Red John’s signature smile painted on the wall.
The agent in charge doesn’t want to hand over the case despite Lisbon’s insistence, and to her surprise, Jane agrees. When Lisbon asks him why, his answer is chillingly concise: Red John let Kristina make a call that could be traced. Red John is playing a game.
The lady is identified as Celia Giovanovitch, and her tattoo as a symbol that Visualize members wear. Visualize, if you don’t remember, was the cult from last season, led by Bret Stiles (Malcolm McDowell). As a member of the cult she beat drug addiction, and worked there as a member of security for church officials. While speaking with some of Stiles’s underlings and the group’s lawyer, Julius Coles, Jane sneaks off to go snooping.
He goes looking for Stiles, giving some poor working stiff a hard time along the way. He sneaks into a seminar being given by Stiles, who tells him, “How nice to see you!” the same way a cat talks to a canary. Their talk is rife with tension and understatements, like Stiles calling Red John a “perfectly unpleasant sort of fellow.” No joke there. Stiles says if he could get Jane closer to Red John he would, but it’s with the subtext that he definitely knows something Jane doesn’t and Jane is not going to get it out of him, by his usual means or otherwise.
While Cho has to turn down member offers to the path of spiritual clarity, Jane sees Celia’s room on the premises and takes to reading her books. He winds up taking a nap on Celia’s bed (which is unsurprising, considering his sleep deprivation). Rigsby talks to Celia’s fiancé Heron, and finds out this was a designed (i.e. arranged) marriage by church higher ups.
The enigma continues when Jane leaves the Visualize headquarters and finds a fortune cookie on the hood of the car — “A friend is in danger and needs your help.” (… in bed. There, I said it!)
They check in on Heron, who is from a family of old money but is otherwise not noteworthy. Upon his return, Jane advises them that Celia had trouble with church dogma and they should look for someone she would have been talking with, like a friend who had left the church. They find Lucy Joel, who fears for her life if she tells them anything, but she spills that Celia had been having an affair with someone in the church and the last time they had spoken she had to do something, but didn’t say what.
When Rigsby and Grace leave Lucy’s, they have a brief talk about them. She lied and it bothers her that he’s seeing someone. Of course it does, because you’re still in love with him you silly girl. Before this conversation can progress further, Rigsby notes that they’re being tailed. So Grace pulls an awesome stunt that I’ve only seen in The Fast and the Furious and gets them rammed by FBI. So, really, the whole thing is sort of a wash.
The driver of the vehicle is Special Agent O’Laughlin, who was tailing them because the FBI has been on Visualize for years with tax fraud and racketeering and worse (oh my), and they believe Stiles has someone in law enforcement. O’Laughlin and Grace then have a moment, where they recognize each other’s surnames as big college football names. Whatever, they lost me at “football.” But you can practically see the hearts in Grace’s eyes. Holy new love interest, Batman.
Jane surmises that the FBI has someone in Visualize, and takes a paper sack to ferret this person out. He pops the bag there, where Brother Wench blows his cover to Jane by reaching for his gun at his hip when startled by the loud noise. They want Celia’s “vent videos,” where all sins were confessed to the camera, because Celia almost certainly named the man she was having an affair with.
They all get caught because Jane gets into the secure room where the tapes are kept, and when Stiles and his cronies show up to berate them, Jane rather convinces Stiles to go along with it by only saying he’s going to surrender the tapes — and exposing Celia’s killer, since s/he is the one who will protest. Coles immediately protests and tries to cover it up, but as Jane says, “That sounds like lawyer speak for, ‘I did it. I did it. I’m guilty!'”
Coles cuts a deal with the FBI for turning over on Visualize, but it was not meant to be. Heron, fueled by a furious calm, shoots up Coles and is taken into custody. He says that no one else knew and it was his idea. Yeah, sure it was, Heron.
Jane gets a text message to meet Stiles, and isn’t exactly pleased to see him. But he hands over something for Jane, a card with an address on it. He says Red John is throwing him a party… Okay, I’m just going to say it. Stiles gives me the creeps, and not just in a “Wow, this is an awesome antagonist” sort of way. He creeps me the heck out.
The team bursts into the house at that address, guns blazing, and the house is empty, except for a blank-faced Kristina Frye in one room. When nothing can entice her to speak, Jane pulls out what I can only describe as an act of faith, even though he defiantly declares, “I am not a believer.” He lights a candle, and in the fashion of a séance, he calls on the spirit of Kristina Frye. She tells him the after life is wonderful, and she hardly remembers her life — it seems “unimportant.” When she denies knowing anything about Red John, he loses his patience and extinguishes the candle.
There’s a small coda, but that is for all intents and purposes the episode. So, the return of Kristina Frye — I don’t know, guys. Is she a victim? Or an abandoned and discarded sidekick, just like the rest of them? And what does this Stiles guy know anyway? The mystery continues!
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