The Mentalist

The Mentalist

Episode 20: Something's Rotten in Redmund

By: Carlos Uribe

The Mentalist is a show about Patrick Jane, a mentalist, who solves crimes.

Spoilers Ahoy!

This week Patrick Jane solves another case and Rigsby officially becomes a dad when his girlfriend goes through labor. In a surprising move by the series, Rigsby isn't shown having any last minute worries as he waits for his girlfriend's water to break. The episode largely ignores his entire ordeal except for a couple of scenes. It felt a bit odd when the cast was talking about how cute Rigsby's baby is since it really did feel like it was added in to the episode in the last second. The episode focused on the weekly case, and it wasn't even that interesting of a case. It was all about a straight arrow english teacher who got killed. A straight arrow teacher that apparently goes to see hookers and has some ecstasy in his car.

He actually has drugs in his car and goes to see hookers for a good reason. The one hooker he likes to see is a former student of his. It's not creepy because he's not sleeping with her. He feels like he failed her because she had dropped out of school due to an abusive step-father. He had tried to help her but she kept refusing his help. He was trying to get her to improve her life and to get a GED. She kept refusing and she even fought with him. She didn't kill him and is actually really helpful to the police. His death encourages her to finally improve her life as she decides to quit being a prostitute and to get that degree. That might explain why he is seen being with a hooker, but that doesn't explain the ecstasy in his car.

It turns out that he had actually confiscated the ecstasy. They were actually made by one of his students. This student is a straight-A student but he is being bullied by the other kids. He wants to be accepted by them and to be cool so he decides that he's going to give them free drugs. He pretended that his drug lab is actually a science project to his negligent parents. The teacher had been trying to protect him from the bullies, which is how he found the ecstasy that the kid was carrying at the time. He convinced the teacher that he had merely found the drugs. He didn't kill the teacher since he's a good kid, well except for the whole drug thing. The kid is being charged with making illegal drugs by the district attorney so he doesn't get a happy ending like the prostitute. I guess that sucks for him, doesn't it?

So if it wasn't the fake drug dealer or the hooker, then who killed him? It turns out that while the teacher had been jogging, he saw something that he shouldn't have seen. He saw the drama teacher and the lead in her play, who is a student, making out. He decides to tell the principal and the cops but he is killed before he could do either by the drama teacher. In the end, it was a pedophile that had killed him. The weekly case might not have been the most interesting case, but seeing Patrick Jane helping out the school play and finding the “bad kids” was fun. His exposure of the school principal, who secretly had cameras in the school bathrooms, was also great.

The episode was just good enough. It didn't ever stop entertaining, but it definably wasn't that good of an episode. The episode might have tried to make itself more than just a weekly case by including a child birth but it simply felt added on and could have easily fit in another episode. It was an episode where if you see it, you'll enjoy yourself, but you're not missing anything if you don't see it. See you when the show returns in almost a month.