Little Red Book is the second episode of Season 4 of The Mentalist.
Summary[edit | edit source]
Lisbon is under suspension and the rest of the team has been reassigned. Jane is reinstated as a CBI consultant and has to work with a new team, but he works to get his former team reinstated.
Recap[edit | edit source]
The entire team is reassigned and Bertram admits that he needs Jane because of his record. Even so, Jane got off easy. The rest of the team was either cooling their heals on suspension or on odious tasks like door security. Jane just got reassigned to another team.
Jane uses his skills to dismantle Haffner’s team and replace it with his own, starting with making sure they all didn’t like, or trust, him. Offering his opinion on the murder victim, Marcus Kuzmenko, he mocks them all, saying “This man’s dead. I’m all but certain of it.” Shortly after that, he openly mocks Haffner himself by lifting weights at the gym Kuzmenko worked at while Haffner “took the lead” on questioning. When Jane finally steps in, he only wants to know how many of the clients Kuzmenko was sleeping with. When the owner refuses to answer, he finds one of them himself, making her fall off the treadmill by asking if the victim was a “gentle lover” or a “brute”.
Back at the office, Haffner decides he needs help with Jane and recruits Cho to spy for him. Meanwhile Jane is already plotting against him. He lays the groundwork for pitting two of his new team members against each other and tells Wayne Rigsby, who’s been stuck on security to arrange a meeting with the team to recruit them to the plan of saving Lisbon’s job, since apparently suspension really means fired at the CBI and Cho comes back. A short while later, the trouble he’s set brewing is brought to a head when one of the team, a short guy with an obvious Napoleon complex, finds a pair of tacky disco lifts on his desk and assumes that his big, burly teammate left them as a joke. He’s hauled off for starting a brawl, leaving room for Grace, fresh from a counseling session, to fill the opening.
The actual murder case is secondary to the story. It seems that one of the victims coworkers was seen lurking around his house the night before the murder. They bring Villanueva in for questioning. He says that he confronted the victim about some money problems, but that it was all worked out. According to him, Kuzmenko had just come into some money recently and it was all good. Jane tells Haffner he wants to go back to the victim’s house and look around for evidence. Haffner plays perfectly into Jane’s hands by sending another teammate with him. One who’s easily hypnotized by Jane while they’re there.
Jane decides it’s time to spring the trap and put this case to bed at the same time. He sends Van Pelt and Rigsby to the house to beat Haffner to Kuzmenko’s book of high-profile lovers, having convinced Haffner that it’s probably some politician’s wife that’s gotten him in this level of trouble. Cho then goes and tells Haffner of the plan, which makes you wonder even more what’s going on with him. After the heads up, Haffner meets them at the door with the book in hand and berates Jane for his efforts to beat him to the killer. While his shadow was hypnotized, Jane planted that book to make Haffner look bad in the end. Meanwhile, he gets Lisbon to help him take down the real killer by meeting him at the gym with some of that “glowy spray stuff”. He’s got it all figured out, but he’s not telling anyone else. He calls the gym to let them know they’re coming and, as planned, the killer panics and hides the murder weapon. Jane says the right things, drops the key words and behold, the gym owner looks guilty and, indeed, a bloody hand weight is found in the trunk of her car. She was afraid that the new gym Kuzmenko was planning to open would put her out of business, and, she’d also thought she meant more to him. Typical woman scorned and case closed, with Haffner looking like an ass for running off after false leads. Bertram, of course, is mad at Jane for being a problem, but Jane makes it clear that unless Lisbon is brought back, he plans to continue being a problem. Bertram has no choice but to reinstate the whole team.
In amongst these activities, there is a little more activity on the Red John matter. Lisbon arranges with J.J. LaRoche, who’s apparently leaving major crimes and actually a decent guy, to see Sally Carter. It turns out she’s committed suicide by sharpened spoon and has left a long note about how lost she was now that her God, Red John, was dead. Jane, still not satisfied that Carter was Red John, in turn brings Rosalind Harker, the blind woman known to have lived with Red John, to identify Carter’s body. She feels his face and says no, he wasn’t Red John.
Cast[edit | edit source]
Main Cast[edit | edit source]
- Simon Baker as Patrick Jane
- Robin Tunney as Teresa Lisbon
- Tim Kang as Kimball Cho
- Owain Yeoman as Wayne Rigsby
- Amanda Righetti as Grace Van Pelt
Recurring Cast[edit | edit source]
- Michael Gaston as Gale Bertram
- Reed Diamond as Ray Haffner
- Pruitt Taylor Vince as J.J. LaRoche
- Joshua Bitton as Rick Tork
- Alicia Witt as Rosalind Harker
- Kate Norby as Sally Carter
- Bradley Whitford as Timothy Carter
Guest Cast[edit | edit source]
- Allison McAtee as Jocelyn Chapin
- Rick Peters as Ed Masterson
- Matt Bushell as Mike Vilanueva
- Omar J. Dorsey as Anthony Niskin
- Annie Tedesco as Ann-Marie
- Eddie Davenport as Markus Kuzmenko
- Vernee Watson as Psychiatrist
- Gregory Zarian as Man
- Carolyn Barnes as Woman
- Aldoro Gomez as Alfred Tennant
- EllaBridget Marks as Fallie Gatsby
- KaylaMaria Marks as Nallie Gatsby
Trivia[edit | edit source]
- This is the first appearance of Red John suspect Raymond Haffner
