Red Sky in the Morning is the twenty-third episode and season finale of Season 2 of The Mentalist.
Summary
Patrick Jane's and Kristina Frye's first date is interrupted by a report of Red John striking again, which is discovered to be the work of a copycat. But when Kristina reaches out to the real Red John, both she and Jane find themselves in great danger.
Review & Recap
Piggy backing off last week’s conclusion, Jane and Kristina are out on a date. It gets a little awkward when she gives their waiter an impromptu reading. The angst arrives abruptly, and Jane excuses himself to the restroom where it’s clear his calm is disturbed — the handling of his wedding band being the only action giving us a clue into his thoughts.
He returns to the table, and starts to say something to Kristina — perhaps to end the date early — but his phone takes care of that for him. Grace is on the other end, and she has something he needs to see: Red John has struck again.
Patrick and Kristina. Could be Red John is in restaurant and hear: "Roll Tide"?
Though Kristina winds up at the station with Jane, he makes a point of telling Hightower not to let her come investigate the body in the video sent to them: “Red John is mine.” After that Kristina leaves.
Poor Marley Sparrow has died, and despite the return of Brett Partridge, Jane determines that this wasn’t Red John, but a copycat. Forensics guy fobs him off.
Marley’s friends Ruth and Dylan mention a boyfriend, Grady Shipp, and one of her professors mentions a criminology course she taught last year that Marley took. Red John was mentioned a few times, as the title of the course was basically “Serial Killers as Marketing,”. When CBI regroups at a bar, Jane and then the rest of them watch on the television in horror as Kristina Frye reaches out to Red John, all compassion and bright-eyed hope for the future.
Hightower has Jane going off on Kristina in her office, he points out that Kristina is doing exactly what he did himself, calling Red John out on television. Kristina is convinced the difference is that when Jane did it, he was lying. Hightower breaks in that the problem is they don’t have an obligation to protect her, but Kristina seems okay with that. Jane is not.
Grace finds an address in Marley’s address book not written in her handwriting while searching for the boyfriend, so Rigsby and Cho go to check it out. It leads them to an abandoned building where they find a room full of Red John smiley faces painted all over the walls with pig’s blood. Someone goes running and gets away but drops a lens cap on his way out.
Taking Jane’s suggestion to check the university film club, they reconcile the film club register with the professor’s criminology class list and find one name in common: Wesley Blankfein. This case more or less falls into the background for a moment when Lisbon gets a call from the FBI — the real Red John has struck again, this time killing the woman who interviewed Kristina on TV.
After Jane checks out the crime scene with Lisbon and gets all shirty about being there instead of with Kristina, he does go to her home momentarily. They have a fight, because Jane wants to protect her, and then he leaves. When he makes the call later to apologize, Kristina is gone, having given a bunch of armed guards and Grace the slip.
A bag was packed and she took her passport and credit cards, but since Red John is obviously involved at this point, Jane doesn’t allow them to rule out kidnapping or being lured away. Jane is irritated because the missing persons unit is taking over, and despite Lisbon and Hightower telling him to sit down and relax, he is clearly running a million miles a minute.
A threat to unleash the therapist on him finally gets him to back off, but instead of staying still, he takes a photograph found in Wesley’s Red John/Marley shrine and goes to that location. Instead of waiting for Lisbon like he said he would, he goes into the abandoned building and promptly gets knocked out .
He wakes up cling-wrapped to a chair. Wesley is in front of him, declaring he’s about to be sacrificed to the glory of Red John. He seems to finish, but Jane has picked up on the artifice and advises him to try again, directing his own death scene. Dylan and Ruth, Marley’s killers who are holding Wesley and his mother against their will, are not amused. They want Wesley to kill Jane while they film it for the psychotic slasher film they are making using real murder.
Suddenly, all three are shot — Red John has arrived, and is aggravated by the imitation. Jane desperately tries to see what is going on, but the action is happening behind him. In his desperation, Jane knocks his chair over to the side, bringing him face-to-face with Wesley, who is lying on the floor moaning in pain from having been shot in the leg (the only one of the three to be shot at a non-fatal spot). While helpless on the floor, Jane hear's Ruth's tortured, dying screams for mercy as Red John ends her life by slashing her throat.
Finished with them, Red John approaches, rights Jane's chair and brings his grotesque, masked face right up to Jane. Jane reacts with disgust and fear, but there is nothing he can do to get away as Red John tauntingly holds his now-bloodied knife near Jane's face and speaks a few words — the opening lines to a poem by William Blake (“Tyger, tyger, burning bright” etc), followed by, "Roll tide" which was the 'psychic sign' Kristina Frye had conveyed to the waiter during her date with Jane. This possibly indicates that Red John or a minion was spying on them during the date and would continue to watch Jane's every interaction.
Two days later at CBI, Lisbon asks Jane if he is okay. Jane brushes it off, goes home, and lays on his single mattress under the fading smiley face still murmuring the poem, “Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
Cast
Main Cast
- 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
Guest Cast
- Carrie Finklea as Ruth
- Stephen Sowan as Dylan
- Cameron Van Cleave as Wesley Blankfein
- Kathleen Wilhoite as Margo Ketchum
- Eva Mah as Marley Sparrow
- Angela Martinez as Jaqueline Sandoval
- Tracy Fraim as FBI Agent Fenton
- Kevin Will as Waiter
- Anne Gee Byrd as Neighbor Lady
- Ayo Sorrells as Dorm Monitor
Trivia
- This is the first time the audience (and Jane) are given a clue to the existence of the Blake Association.
| Season 2 Episodes |
| Redemption · The Scarlet Letter · Red Badge · Red Menace · Red Scare · Black Gold and Red Blood · Red Bulls · His Red Right Hand · A Price Above Rubies · Throwing Fire · Rose-Colored Glasses · Bleeding Heart · Redline · Blood In, Blood Out · Red Herring · Code Red · The Red Box · Aingavite Baa · Blood Money · Red All Over · 18-5-4 · Red Letter · Red Sky in the Morning |