The Mentalist: The Thin Red Line (Episode 108)

Jane makes friends wherever he goes.We open up at the Davis Motor Inn, a ridiculously craptastic motel.  A police car pulls up and a young officer immerges.  The motel director leads the cop to a room in which gunshots sounded, and the cop knocks on the door.  When nobody answers, the cop (who looks absolutely terrified by the whole situation) finds the door unlocked and opens it to what is quite possibly the least gruesome crime scene in the history of crime scenes.  He doesn’t seem to appreciate the complete lack of gore and quickly spins away from the room, panting hard.  Buddy, I suggest that you stay away from Quentin Tarantino movies.

The next day Lisbon, Jane and Van Pelt arrive on the scene.  Their boss (who has appeared in other episodes, but I’m pretty sure has never been named) briefs them on the case; the victims were a young woman named Patrice Madigan and a man named Joseph Purcell.  Purcell was set to be the star witness in an upcoming narcotics trial centered on a man named Rick Carris.  Therefore, they suspect that Carris or one of his people killed Purcell to shut him up.  While everyone looks around the room, Jane notices a baby bottle lying on the floor.  They also find a bag of what Bossman thinks is cocaine but is actually powdered milk.  Jane takes a set of keys from the dead woman’s hand and goes out into the parking lot to find the car.  Everyone follows him as he opens the car door and disappears inside for a moment, only to immerge holding a little baby.  There is oohing and ahing, and Jane smiles brilliantly at the cooing child.  Why CBS didn’t put a warning on this scene is beyond me, because this is clearly hazardous to ovaries everywhere.

The little bundle of joy turns out to be Patrice’s daughter Kaylee.  She’ll go into foster care until Patrice’s family can be located, and Jane looks heartbroken when he has to give her over to a woman from social services.  He should be forced to interact with children at least once per episode, because he is ridiculously adorable with them.  After Kaylee is taken away, Detectives Blakely and Presiado of the Davis Police Department meet with the team, since the CBI will be working with the local police on this one.  Side note, but Blakely is a dead ringer for a villain from that other show I recap.  Even though IMDB says that they are not played by the same actor, this episode is now a crossover for me.  I expect the Winchester boys will arrive any minute and have a battle of hotness with Jane.  Anyway, Blakely is the father of the nervous cop who first arrived on the scene.  He and Presiado are a bit persnickety about the CBI getting all up in their narcotics case, and they are positive that Rick Carris killed the victims.  Jane suggests that Patrice could have been the target, and Presiado gets very pissed that he doesn’t immediately assume Carris did the deed as well.  This, of course, means that Carris really is innocent and that Patrice really was the target.  Transparent plot is transparent, show.  Once the detectives and their bad attitudes go off to investigate their completely inaccurate theory, Jane shows Lisbon a bridal magazine he found in Patrice’s car with a Lacey Wells listed as the subscriber. Hopefully this chick still lives at the same address, because if the dress on the cover is any indication this magazine is from 1986.

Lacey does live at the same address, and she informs Jane and Lisbon that Patrice lived there as well. She is genuinely upset when they tell her about Patrice’s death and invites them into her home.  She says that Patrice had been living with her for a few months, since the drug trial drama started with Purcell.  He was apparently her baby daddy, and he’d called her the night before asking her to bring him some food.  Patrice took Kaylee with her because Lacey had been drinking and Patrice was a responsible mom.  She also had a talent for making ends meet, and once managed to come up with over 10 grand when Lacey got them charged with possession of crystal meth.  Since Patrice “wasn’t the hooker type” (read: she had all of her teeth) Lacey figured that she had a sugar daddy.  In fact, Patrice would occasionally get in a blue car with a tall, thin man with dark hair, and come back with a couple thousand dollars a few hours later.  Lacey asks if social services plans to bring Kaylee back to her, since she knows that she would be unfit to raise her.  When Lisbon says that she’s been placed into foster care, Lacey tries to get confirmation that they’ll take good care of her.  Aw.  This poor woman is pretty messed up, but she has a good heart.

While she was at Lacey’s, Lisbon got a call from Rigsby and Cho saying that there was a tip on where Carris is hiding out.  Now the two arrive at the location, ready to kick ass and take names.  Detectives Blakely and Presiado arrive with a team and immediately start going in for the bust, but Rigsby and Cho try to get them to wait like Lisbon asked them to.  Presiado is a rude bitch to them, saying that this is “real police work.”  Rigsby gives as good as he gets, asking if they’ll do as good a job at this as they did of protecting Purcell.  Oh, do you need some ice for that burn?  He and Presiado almost come to blows, but Cho breaks them up.  And I’ve never noticed this before, but Cho has some impressive guns.  He needs to go to the vet, because his pythons are sick!  Presiado and company run away from Cho’s massive biceps go in for the bust just as Lisbon and Jane arrive and the three agents go in while Jane hangs back.  He stands near a fence and sees Carris running towards it, so he pushes a large rock in front of the gate.  Carris runs into the gate and falls over when it doesn’t open, allowing Team CBI to make the bust before Team Police.  And that, my friends, is what we call pwnage.  It’s a beautiful thing.

In the interrogation room, Carris is stretching obnoxiously to show that he’s not afraid of Lisbon and Cho.  He insists that, while he’s beyond pumped that someone killed Purcell, he wasn’t the one who did it.  Cho pulls out a recording from Purcell’s answering machine on which Carris says “I’m gonna do you my own self.  I’m gonna look you in the eye and cut your heart out and shove it down your throat.”  Well, that’s incriminating.  Carris, who apparently subscribes to the OJ Simpson school of defending oneself, says that really would have cut Purcell up if he’d killed him, not shot him like the real killer did.  Regardless of how shitty this argument is, there’s no concrete evidence against Carris, so they don’t have much of a case against him.

The team orders some food, including a pizza with pineapple on it.  Van Pelt knows that Cho will complain because he doesn’t like pineapple, even though she doesn’t complain when they order the Mexican food she hates.  “Sometimes you have to go along to get along,” she tells Jane, and he tells her that sometimes you have to be a bitch to get what you want.  “I know you know how,” he says without malice, and double jeopardy points go to anyone who can figure out the point of this scene.  When the rest of the team arrives they discuss their case against Carris.  Turns out he has an alibi, since an exotic dancer he hooked up with vouched for him.  She knew the time that they did it because they were watching TV while having sex, and “the Scottish guy [was] talking to the actress who married the country singer.”  I’m roughly 95% sure that they’re talking about Moulin Rouge!, in which case show gets massive points for having great taste in movies.  Jane doesn’t think that Carris is responsible for the murders, and reiterates the possibility that Patrice was the target.  Considering that Patrice was somehow able to make the meth charge disappear, they theorize that she had a cop boyfriend and realize that Presiado fits Lacey’s description of the guy Patrice drove around with.  He also owns a blue car and carries a .38 gun, the same caliber used on the victims.  They decide to investigate him privately before questioning the detective, because accusing a cop is just asking for trouble.

Apparently all their suspicions about Presiado were well founded, as Lisbon and Rigsby approach him and Blakely to question him.  As soon as he figures out what’s going on he flips out on them, but Lisbon is like “don’t make me bounce you on your bitch ass.”  She will have none of this shit, thank you very much. So, after a little more bitching, they head down to the station with Presiado in tow.  Jane shakes his hand in the interrogation room and very obviously takes his pulse.  Smooth.  They cut the crap and Lisbon tells Presiado that they think he was having a sexual relationship with her.  He tries to tell them that she was a “confidential informant,” but that can’t be true because she’s not on record.  Presiado then admits to paying her for sex, but he says he didn’t care about her or what she did at all.  Jane takes his pulse again, just as awkwardly as the first time.  Lisbon asks what he was doing the night of the murder and he says that he was passed out drunk at Detective Blakely’s house.  Presiado hands over his weapon for them to check over and threatens violence against Jane when he takes his pulse again.  Jane seems to get threatened with violence quite a lot.

Once they leave the room, Jane muses about how cops are always bad liars, Lisbon included. She doesn’t think he knows when she’s lying, but he proves her wrong by outing a lie about her Thanksgiving plans the previous year.  Lisbon, by this point you should really know that Jane is all-knowing.  Stop fighting it.  Jane also says that he knows Presiado was lying because of the way his pulse changed.  One could argue that his heart rate changed because he was weirded out by Jane constantly grabbing his wrist, but I digress.  They decide to head over to Blakely’s house so Jane can talk to his wife, since Blakely won’t say a word against his partner. 

When he gets to the house, Blakely’s police officer son opens the door.  His name is Sam and he tries to refuse Jane entrance, but his mother comes to the door and invites Jane in.  Once they’re in the living room, Mrs. Blakely waxes poetic about how proud she is of her husband and son.  Sam tells her to STFU and initially refuses to leave the room when Jane asks him to, because he is constantly acting shifty and suspicious.  But I’m sure that’s got nothing to do with the murders, right?  In any case, his mom kicks him out Jane asks her to verify Presiado’s story.  When she does Jane tells her that Presiado admitted to having an affair with Patrice, and Mrs. Blakely giggles at the accusation.  Turns out that Presiado is hopelessly impotent to the point where even Viagra can’t help him.  Well, that certainly explains his anger issues.  Mrs. Blakely says that Presiado must be protecting someone else, and her face suddenly looks stricken as she comes to a realization.  She’s visibly upset when Sam reenters the room, and she accuses him of knowing about his father’s affair.  He tries to tell her that she’s got it wrong, but at that moment Blakely pulls into the driveway and Mrs. Blakely goes out to meet him.  She runs up to him, saying “you swore on your son’s life that you would never betray me again!”  He yells at her to get in the house, and when Jane approaches him Blakely punches him in the nose.  “Assault!” Jane squeaks as Lisbon arrives, and she is once again exasperated by his unfailing ability to piss people off.

Back at the station, Bossman is none too happy that Lisbon arrested a distinguished officer like Blakely.  She didn’t really have a choice, since Blakely assaulted Jane, but Bossman is kind of a jerk and gives her crap for it anyway.  Cho gets to interrogating Blakely, who says that he was merely helping Patrice out by giving her money, no sex involved.  He also says that his service revolver was stolen from his car but refuses to talk more on the subject without his lawyer.  Meanwhile, Lisbon, Jane and Van Pelt meet with Sam.  They tell him that they know his father is innocent and that they need his help to prove it.  Van Pelt pulls up security camera footage of the parking lot from the night of the murders.  It shows a man getting out of his car, and they say that he is Carris’ man, Q-Tip.  They manage to enlarge the picture so that they can read the car’s license plate.   Carris insists that Q-Tip went to kill Purcell, but he and Patrice were already dead by the time he got there.  He also says that Q-Tip saw the real killer and that if Carris is set free Q-Tip will meet with the police and tell them what he saw.  The team doesn’t buy it for a second, but they want to play along with Carris so that they can find Q-Tip and arrest him.  Lisbon asks Sam to keep the Davis Police from interfering with the operation when they release Carris, but not to tell anyone about it besides his police chief.  Sam readily agrees, but makes sure to get the details of the operation to give to the chief.

Later that night, the team is preparing to catch Q-Tip.  Well, “preparing” might be a strong word, since Van Pelt and Rigsby are eating in their car and Cho is reading a book in his.  Sam is also cruising around town.  Lisbon reports where the car is over the radio and tells the team to be there in ten minutes.  Cho, Rigsby and Van Pelt all say that they will not be able to make it there in time, so Jane asks Sam to go ahead of them.  Sam agrees and quickly come upon the vehicle.  He can see a figure sitting in the driver’s seat, and he shoots it through the window several times.  When he surveys the damage, though, he finds that he’s shot a mannequin.  Suddenly the team surrounds him, guns blazing, and takes him into custody.  Okay, I get that he wanted to eliminate a witness, but this has got to be the stupidest crime I’ve ever seen.  The team was going to arrive minutes after him and they knew that he would be first on the scene.  Since he used his own gun there was no way to pin the crime on anyone else, so I can’t fathom how he thought he was going to get away with this.  Intelligence fail, Sam.

Once Sam is back at the station Jane explains that they edited to camera footage in order to trick him.  Lisbon asks Sam to tell them what happened the night of the murders, but Sam refuses to say anything.  When his father is escorted into the room, though, he isn’t able to keep quiet.  He explains that he asked around on the street when his mom suspected his father of having an affair and he found out about Patrice.  “You gotta understand,” he says, “this integrity crap was banged into me my whole life…And this whole time he was keeping a whore on the side!”  He asked his father if it was true and his dad said no.  Sam didn’t believe him, so he followed Patrice to the motel room that night.  He burst into the room because he thought he would find his father with her.  Purcell thought that Sam was one of Carris’ men and pulled his gun, so Sam shot them both dead.  “I had no choice,” he said, which makes perfect sense considering that Patrice was unarmed.  He freaked out and drove away, and since he was the closest cruiser to the scene when the shots were called in he went back.

Once Sam’s done, Blakely explains that Patrice was actually his daughter.  I’m sure that was supposed to be a shocking reveal, but it was pretty clear from the moment we found out that Blakely had an affair way back in the day.  Seriously show, get some better plot twists.  Blakely says that he found out about Patrice four years before when her dying mother called him.  He couldn’t bear to tell his wife the truth so he kept it a secret, though she does know now.  We cut to the Blakely house an indeterminate amount of time later.  Both Blakelys are sitting around looking devastated when there’s a knock on the door.  After a minute Mrs. Blakely opens it and finds Jane on the doorstep holding baby Kaylee.  He hands the baby over to her grandparents, saying that they are all she has.  I’m not sure how realistic this drop off is, but goddamn if it isn’t cute.  The Blakelys accept the child and Jane walks away, a huge smile lighting up his face.