<p>I just finished the show. Very pleased. Don't know what to do now...
...no more episodes! I actually knew the major plot points before watching,
as I watched a bunch of clips on YouTube, figuring I'd never actually want
to watch a police/crime/murder modern TV show. So I knew who Red John was,
although I forgot if it was McAllister or Bertram. 99% sure it was McAllister
but when Bertram went on the run I was fooled right up until the concluding
Chruch scene began, then it all came back to me. Anyway, I knew that
Jane and Lisbon join the F.B.I. and I knew that they get together and get married.
</p><p>Did that spoil the experience as I watched through the show in its entirety?
Not at all. Knowing that Jane and Lisbon wind up together actually made it so
much more enjoyable. I hate not knowing an outcome like that and being in suspense,
wondering, thinking, figuring that they might actually not write them together. So that
was cool, and knowing the Red John thing (down to McAllister and Bertram at least)
was also not a problem.
</p><p>And I definitely do not have a problem with how they resolved the Red John saga.
I would however like to be able to go back and make sense of all the things in the show
before the reveal. Like, why does Red John lose to Jane in rock, paper, scissors?
Was he letting Jane win every time? Surely Red John would not have been that outfoxed.
</p><p>As far as McAllister making sense or not making sense, do you remember in his
debut episode where he INSISTS that Grace Van Pelt go with him, during the
team's trap to catch the killers? He certainly seemed like he was going to turn out
to be the killer just as in the killer of the week for that episode's crime... But now
looking back, knowing that he was Red John, was he going to kill Van Pelt? Does his
actions in those moments fit with him being Red John or is it more likely that the
writers simply wanted us to think that he was that week's killer, and it doesn't really
fit with him being Red John at all, and they just wrote the reveal on the fly?
</p><p>I really want the "clue on the wall", the "He Is Mar..." thing to make sense.
I assumed from the very moment of that "He Is Mar" shot, that it meant,
"He Is Married"... like somehow that guy that wrote that had figured out that whoever
Red John was he was a married man. I have not gone back and watched the episode
where McAllister first appears but I have read the plot summary and I really don't think
McAllister was married, right?
</p><p>And as far as how Red John knew Patrick's list of seven suspects two months
before Patrick narrowed it down to seven... I have no idea. Red John might not
have known every man that Patrick had met and shook hands with but he certainly
could have known a much smaller subset of men that Patrick most likely had
met that were also in the area of all the Red John murders... But I don't know.
Did he have real psychic powers?
</p><p>I don't like that Red John's last spoken words were "I have real psych..."
like he was going to say "I have real psychic powers"... Was that "real" or
was that Red John toying with him even in that moment because he knew
Patrick would never believe in real psychic powers?
</p><p>If he did have "real" psychic powers wouldn't he have known about Patrick's
bread crumbs/bird trick/setup in the Church? You could even argue he did, and let
it go down because he had that fake nun/woman in the waiting and thought she
would successfully kill Patrick? But then again, if he's a psychic...
</p><p>You may love the show for its "atheism" so to speak and agree with Patrick
that there are no such thing as real psychic powers... but then how do you explain
the Gabriel character in the final couple episodes that clearly has "real psychic powers"
and is not a trickster or a fake. The killer in those episodes, Keller Jr., killed Gabriel
and wrote "FAKE" on him but that's only because Gabriel couldn't do a very specific
thing Keller was asking... in no way does it show or indicate or reveal that Gabriel was
indeed a fake. So what say you there?
</p><p>And what about Kristina Frye for that matter? She certainly was never shown to be
any kind of charlatan or fraud and she seemed to be a real psychic. So...
</p><p>Back to Red John's final moments- did he act in a way befitting a total psycho serial
killer? Running and pleading and begging for his life? Wouldn't "Red John" the horrible
serial killing monster be a little more... psychotic and crazy and glib or something in
those types of moments? I don't know...
</p><p>All that aside, the only real problem I had with how they wrote the Red John stuff
was that they seriously overpowered Red John. I mean he could have done anything
he wanted in any way at any time to anybody he wanted... Patrick and the CBI were
powerless. It was really over done. They could have evened that out a bit.
</p><p>Anyway, I've done a quick "gematria" study on the show. I use the English alphabet,
where A=1 and Z=26, and reversed where A=26 and Z=1 and a couple subsets of that
(it's really just the alphabet frontwards and backwards, nothing convoluted)
and I have it on my blog here:
The Mentalist
</p><p>Well,
cheers!
</p>