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The Mentalist Fandom Overview
Hello and Happy May!!
This is my first time driving one of the many crack vans AND the first time the extreme eye-candy-plus-emotionally-tortured-awesomeness that is The Mentalist is being rec’ed. In order to maintain safety within the vehicle given the extreme newness of the situation, you have my word that I will follow all posted signs and speed limits for the next 30 days. When I remember them.
Let’s start with an overview!
This is my first time driving one of the many crack vans AND the first time the extreme eye-candy-plus-emotionally-tortured-awesomeness that is The Mentalist is being rec’ed. In order to maintain safety within the vehicle given the extreme newness of the situation, you have my word that I will follow all posted signs and speed limits for the next 30 days. When I remember them.
Let’s start with an overview!
ETA: More pics(!) that I was having trouble with last night. Also the link to the kink meme (not sure how I managed to forget that one)
Fandom Overview – The Mentalist
In general, The Mentalist is a crime procedural show currently in its third season that follows the cases of a team from the (fictitious) California Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, a Sacramento-based agency that steps in when jurisdiction is disputed or the local LEOs (law enforcement officers) are out of their depth.
More specifically, The Mentalist follows the quest for revenge/redemption being waged against a sadistic serial killer by the main character.
Who? 
Patrick Jane (played by lovely Aussie Simon Baker) is the centerpiece of the show: a dazzling, eye-catching centerpiece that is prone to tricking those looking at it into thinking it’s something else entirely.
Jane (“like the girl’s name”) used to make his living as a fake psychic. Trained in cold reading by his conman father, he used his considerable skills at deduction and manipulation to play the part of a flashy, television medium. And he was very successful at it. Until the day he agreed to assist the police as a psychic consultant to catch famed serial killer Red John. Going on national television to announce his involvement, his interview angered Red John so much that he killed Jane’s wife and young daughter as a form of punishment. Jane was devastated.
Season one picks up five years after this. Jane has outed himself as a fake psychic and now makes a living as a paid consultant for the CBI, using his same talents of deduction and cold reading (along with a fair amount of hypnotism and sleight of hand) to solve crimes and put their perpetrators behind bars, often through the use of trickery and cons, which the CBI doesn’t always know or approve of.
Jane is attractive (and knows it), extremely intelligent (and vocal about it), and consumed by his personal mission to identify and then kill Red John. He’s entirely willing to play fast and loose with rules, laws, and generally accepted forms of good manners, and he always puts catching the bad guy above sparing people’s feelings. He’s also one of the most emotionally damaged main characters I’ve seen on television in quite a while, which Simon Baker does an absolutely fantastic and subtle job of conveying.
Jane doesn’t trust easily, and he rarely speaks honestly, even to his self-dubbed CBI “family.” He is not comfortable with physical violence in any form, relying instead on his charm, his wits, and his team to get him out of trouble. Most particularly he relies on:
Teresa Lisbon (played by Robin Tunney) 
They have an odd sort of friendship, but the affection between the two is very evident. Jane has told her he intends to kill Red John when he catches him, and in return she’s promised to be there to stop him from doing so and in doing so save him from himself.
Kimball Cho (played by Tim Kang) 
Wayne Rigsby (played by Owain Yeoman) 
Grace Van Pelt (played by Amanda Righetti) 
Other Minor and Not-So-Minor Characters:
Virgil Minelli (played by Gregory Itzin)
The Special Agent in Charge at the CBI until mid-way through season 2. He was kind, supportive, and somewhat paternal as a supervisor, and he seemed to genuinely like the characters of the CBI team. He retired after a traumatic event at the CBI to live as a fisherman but had a brief reappearance in season 3 where he used his former contacts to obtain some information for Jane about Red John.
Madeleine Hightower (played by Aunjanue Ellis)
The second Special Agent in Charge at the CBI, Hightower replaces Minelli in season 2. She has a much more hard-nosed, by-the-book method, and she and Jane have several battles of wills after her introduction. However, she also proves to be dedicated to the agents in her command and does her upmost to protect them. She has two young children and is recently divorced. [Spoiler: In season 3 she goes on the run after being framed for the murder of a prisoner in CBI custody by an agent of Red John. Only Jane and Lisbon are aware of her innocence.]
J.J. LaRoche (played by Pruitt Taylor Vince)
The head of CBI’s Internal Affairs unit, LaRoche is introduced in season 3 when he begins to investigate the suspicious death of a man with ties to Red John in the CBI’s custody. He is tenacious and methodical, and he appears to be highly intelligent. He seems socially awkward, though this may be a front to put others on their guard. The team as a whole dislikes him, as he has managed to offend each and every one of them during his investigation. He becomes Special Agent in Charge after Hightower and is currently in that position.
Sam Bosco (played by Terry Kinney)
Bosco is given the Red John case by Minelli at the beginning of season 2 after the events of the season 1 finale lead Minelli to believe that Lisbon’s team is too close to the case to continue to investigate. This brings him immediately into conflict with Jane, who refuses to stand aside while someone else investigates the serial killer. Their battle culminates in Jane bugging Bosco’s office, getting caught, and then being sent to jail, which he promptly escapes from. However, after Jane proves his worth by assisting on one of Bosco’s cases, the two reach an understanding. Bosco was Lisbon’s partner during her stint as an officer at the San Francisco Police Department, and he has been in love with her since that time, despite being married. [Spoiler: During the season 2 episode “His Right Red Hand,” Bosco and his team are murdered by an agent of Red John in an effort by the serial killer to get the case assigned back to Jane.]
Kristina Frye (played by Leslie Hope)
Introduced in the season 1 episode “Seeing Red,” Kristina lives her life as a psychic medium. Jane denounces her immediately as a fraud and a con, but she maintains that she truly does possess psychic ability. She returns at the end of season 2 to assist local police on an investigation, and she and Jane begin a *very* tentative romantic relationship. [Spoiler: During the season 2 finale, Kristina is kidnapped by Red John after going on national television to appeal to him for help while investigating a copycat killer. She is located in season 3 after being missing for several months and is in a catatonic state. While questioning her, Jane realizes that she believes herself to be dead and holds a “séance” in order to talk to her; however she is unable to give him any information about Red John or what had happened to her while she was missing. Presumably, she is now institutionalized.]
Brett Stiles (played by Malcolm McDowell)
The leader of the cult/self-help group (depending on who you ask) “Visualize,” Stiles seems to enjoy matching wits with Jane. He is charismatic, smooth, and adept at avoiding police entanglements, despite his organization being investigated numerous times. He has implied having some knowledge of Red John, and it was his tip that led to Kristina being recovered. In the season 3 episode “The Blood on His Hands,” he states that he is leaving the country. He is expected to return at some point.
Walter Mashburn (played by Currie Graham)
Mashburn is an excitement-loving billionaire who first meets the team as a suspect during an investigation. Later, he returns as the target of a killer and is placed under the team’s protection. He is clever, irreverent, and openly flirtatious with Lisbon. In season 3, they have a short-lived and casual romantic relationship.
Gale Bertram (played by Michael Gaston)
The director of the CBI, Bertram appears in season 3. He is primarily concerned with politics and media coverage of the CBI, and Jane reacts poorly to him from the get-go (having issues with authority figures). [Spoiler: In the season 3 episode “Red Queen,” Bertram quotes from a William Blake poem, implying to viewers (though not to Jane, as he was not present) that he may be connected with Red John in some way.]
Craig O’Laughlin (played by Michael Winter) 
Red John 
Fandom:
Despite having a large viewing audience, as of the writing of this overview (May 2011) The Mentalist maintains a fairly small (but active!) fandom.
Except for the meta. Oh my, the meta.
For whatever reason, The Mentalist lends itself very well to meta: gender role discussions, character analyses, poetry analyses, language discussions, etc. There are also quite a few lovely vids and screen captures, given the overall eye-candy-ness of the cast.
For fanfiction, I recommend AO3 as The Mentalist has been a featured Yuletide fandom for the last 3 years, and quite a few excellent stories have come out of it.
There are also the Jello Forums for primarily Jane/Lisbon (Jisbon) fiction and discussion.
The brave can also venture into The Pit to find a fairly large quantity of stories, though—as you might expect—there is a large percentage of Mary Sues present.
Finally, the community![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mentalist_slash, though not frequently updated, has some excellent slash stories, and it is my hope that more will come soon.
By way of pairings, Jane/Lisbon is by far the most dominant. And after that, there’s basically a free-for-all pairing/threesome/moresome orgy, though I would say that Jane/Cho and Rigsby/Van Pelt tend to be more common than other pairings.
(There is also fairly consistent allusion to the idea of Red John/Jane in a creepy, obsessed, non-con way which shows up frequently in fandom, so those with triggers should read warnings carefully.)
In Summ:
The Mentalist is a fun show, particularly for fans of procedurals: it’s visually appealing, both by way of cast and by way of setting (some of the locations they choose to film in are gorgeous). It often has snappy dialogue and good chemistry between its characters. And running underneath it all is the tragedy that is Patrick Jane’s past and the uncertainty of his future as long as Red John is free. I highly recommend giving it a try. Or at the very least, stopping in at mentalistlist or the Jello forums for some meta. We got really good meta, and you’re always welcome to join the discussion.
Major thanks go to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pothead for the use of the lovely, lovely screen caps.
Any Mentalist fans reading this overview should please feel free to comment with information and resources that I may have missed!
Fandom Overview – The Mentalist
In general, The Mentalist is a crime procedural show currently in its third season that follows the cases of a team from the (fictitious) California Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, a Sacramento-based agency that steps in when jurisdiction is disputed or the local LEOs (law enforcement officers) are out of their depth.
More specifically, The Mentalist follows the quest for revenge/redemption being waged against a sadistic serial killer by the main character.
Who?
This handsome devil.
Patrick Jane (played by lovely Aussie Simon Baker) is the centerpiece of the show: a dazzling, eye-catching centerpiece that is prone to tricking those looking at it into thinking it’s something else entirely.
Jane (“like the girl’s name”) used to make his living as a fake psychic. Trained in cold reading by his conman father, he used his considerable skills at deduction and manipulation to play the part of a flashy, television medium. And he was very successful at it. Until the day he agreed to assist the police as a psychic consultant to catch famed serial killer Red John. Going on national television to announce his involvement, his interview angered Red John so much that he killed Jane’s wife and young daughter as a form of punishment. Jane was devastated.
Season one picks up five years after this. Jane has outed himself as a fake psychic and now makes a living as a paid consultant for the CBI, using his same talents of deduction and cold reading (along with a fair amount of hypnotism and sleight of hand) to solve crimes and put their perpetrators behind bars, often through the use of trickery and cons, which the CBI doesn’t always know or approve of.
Jane is attractive (and knows it), extremely intelligent (and vocal about it), and consumed by his personal mission to identify and then kill Red John. He’s entirely willing to play fast and loose with rules, laws, and generally accepted forms of good manners, and he always puts catching the bad guy above sparing people’s feelings. He’s also one of the most emotionally damaged main characters I’ve seen on television in quite a while, which Simon Baker does an absolutely fantastic and subtle job of conveying.
Jane doesn’t trust easily, and he rarely speaks honestly, even to his self-dubbed CBI “family.” He is not comfortable with physical violence in any form, relying instead on his charm, his wits, and his team to get him out of trouble. Most particularly he relies on:
Teresa Lisbon (played by Robin Tunney)
Occasionally referred to as St. Teresa or MamaBear!Lisbon by fans, Agent Lisbon is the head of the CBI team that Patrick Jane is assigned to, and she herself is considered by the upper echelons at the CBI to be his official keeper: a job that she frequently finds exasperating and thankless; however that doesn’t stop her from being intensely protective of Jane and the rest of her team. She is strong-willed and righteous, and she doesn’t hesitate to go to bat for someone in need of a champion. The daughter of an abusive alcoholic, she tends to be emotionally affected by cases involving child abuse. She and Jane are frequently shipped together in fandom, though the show itself only hints at the idea of a potential relationship. Someday. Maybe. If Jane comes to terms with his loss and she refrains from killing him in the meantime.
They have an odd sort of friendship, but the affection between the two is very evident. Jane has told her he intends to kill Red John when he catches him, and in return she’s promised to be there to stop him from doing so and in doing so save him from himself.
Kimball Cho (played by Tim Kang)
Cho is Lisbon’s de facto second in command. A former Special Forcers soldier, he maintains a stoic, ever-calm demeanor reminiscent of the military in his role as a CBI agent. Dubbed “Ice Man” during his teenage years as an Oakland gang member, he is the rock of the team. Cho is honorable, professional and dependable, and though he rarely expresses so much as a smile, he is a *master* of deadpan humor. He is the team’s primary interrogator, and he is frequently given the task of questioning suspects. He is also the best friend and confidante of:
Wayne Rigsby (played by Owain Yeoman)
A former arson investigator, it is implied that Rigsby turned to law enforcement to distance himself from his lifelong criminal father, a motorcycle gang member who was recently let out on parole. Rigsby loves his job, and he’s good at it, though he tends to be primarily involved in the legwork of cases: questioning witnesses, chasing down suspects, and providing backup when it’s needed. In season one he crushes on and then later begins an office romance with:
Grace Van Pelt (played by Amanda Righetti)
When season one begins, Grace is the new girl on the team, and she’s eager to prove herself. Fresh-faced and wholesome, Grace is the daughter of a college football coach and sets herself apart from the rest of the team with her open and trusting nature. Young and with a deep-seated belief in the goodness of people, early on Grace frequently finds herself disagreeing with Jane’s much more jaded outlook. There is a possibility that her sister committed suicide, which is one of the reasons she values human life so highly. She is frequently tasked with office research during investigations, though viewers have also had occasion to see her kick ass out in the field. After her relationship with Rigsby ends, she begins dating FBI agent Craig O’Laughlin. They are now engaged.
Other Minor and Not-So-Minor Characters:
Virgil Minelli (played by Gregory Itzin)
The Special Agent in Charge at the CBI until mid-way through season 2. He was kind, supportive, and somewhat paternal as a supervisor, and he seemed to genuinely like the characters of the CBI team. He retired after a traumatic event at the CBI to live as a fisherman but had a brief reappearance in season 3 where he used his former contacts to obtain some information for Jane about Red John.
Madeleine Hightower (played by Aunjanue Ellis)
The second Special Agent in Charge at the CBI, Hightower replaces Minelli in season 2. She has a much more hard-nosed, by-the-book method, and she and Jane have several battles of wills after her introduction. However, she also proves to be dedicated to the agents in her command and does her upmost to protect them. She has two young children and is recently divorced. [Spoiler: In season 3 she goes on the run after being framed for the murder of a prisoner in CBI custody by an agent of Red John. Only Jane and Lisbon are aware of her innocence.]
J.J. LaRoche (played by Pruitt Taylor Vince)
The head of CBI’s Internal Affairs unit, LaRoche is introduced in season 3 when he begins to investigate the suspicious death of a man with ties to Red John in the CBI’s custody. He is tenacious and methodical, and he appears to be highly intelligent. He seems socially awkward, though this may be a front to put others on their guard. The team as a whole dislikes him, as he has managed to offend each and every one of them during his investigation. He becomes Special Agent in Charge after Hightower and is currently in that position.
Sam Bosco (played by Terry Kinney)
Bosco is given the Red John case by Minelli at the beginning of season 2 after the events of the season 1 finale lead Minelli to believe that Lisbon’s team is too close to the case to continue to investigate. This brings him immediately into conflict with Jane, who refuses to stand aside while someone else investigates the serial killer. Their battle culminates in Jane bugging Bosco’s office, getting caught, and then being sent to jail, which he promptly escapes from. However, after Jane proves his worth by assisting on one of Bosco’s cases, the two reach an understanding. Bosco was Lisbon’s partner during her stint as an officer at the San Francisco Police Department, and he has been in love with her since that time, despite being married. [Spoiler: During the season 2 episode “His Right Red Hand,” Bosco and his team are murdered by an agent of Red John in an effort by the serial killer to get the case assigned back to Jane.]
Kristina Frye (played by Leslie Hope)
Introduced in the season 1 episode “Seeing Red,” Kristina lives her life as a psychic medium. Jane denounces her immediately as a fraud and a con, but she maintains that she truly does possess psychic ability. She returns at the end of season 2 to assist local police on an investigation, and she and Jane begin a *very* tentative romantic relationship. [Spoiler: During the season 2 finale, Kristina is kidnapped by Red John after going on national television to appeal to him for help while investigating a copycat killer. She is located in season 3 after being missing for several months and is in a catatonic state. While questioning her, Jane realizes that she believes herself to be dead and holds a “séance” in order to talk to her; however she is unable to give him any information about Red John or what had happened to her while she was missing. Presumably, she is now institutionalized.]
Brett Stiles (played by Malcolm McDowell)
The leader of the cult/self-help group (depending on who you ask) “Visualize,” Stiles seems to enjoy matching wits with Jane. He is charismatic, smooth, and adept at avoiding police entanglements, despite his organization being investigated numerous times. He has implied having some knowledge of Red John, and it was his tip that led to Kristina being recovered. In the season 3 episode “The Blood on His Hands,” he states that he is leaving the country. He is expected to return at some point.
Walter Mashburn (played by Currie Graham)
Mashburn is an excitement-loving billionaire who first meets the team as a suspect during an investigation. Later, he returns as the target of a killer and is placed under the team’s protection. He is clever, irreverent, and openly flirtatious with Lisbon. In season 3, they have a short-lived and casual romantic relationship.
Gale Bertram (played by Michael Gaston)
The director of the CBI, Bertram appears in season 3. He is primarily concerned with politics and media coverage of the CBI, and Jane reacts poorly to him from the get-go (having issues with authority figures). [Spoiler: In the season 3 episode “Red Queen,” Bertram quotes from a William Blake poem, implying to viewers (though not to Jane, as he was not present) that he may be connected with Red John in some way.]
Craig O’Laughlin (played by Michael Winter)
A local FBI Agent who first meets the team when their cars manage to collide. A former NFL player, O’Laughlin played college football under the tutelage of Van Pelt’s dad and remembers him fondly. He and Van Pelt have chemistry immediately upon meeting in season 3 and are now engaged. In a recent firefight, O’Laughlin apparently froze when he was supposed to be providing backup to Van Pelt. Rigsby was the only witness and—after an internal battle—ultimately elected not to tell her.
Red John
The main antagonist of the series, Red John murdered Patrick Jane’s wife and child after Jane stated on national television that he would catch him. He is a serial killer who primarily targets women, though he has been known to kill men and children as well. He typically kills with a knife and signs his work with a bloody smiley face. He is intelligent, resourceful, and presumably quite charismatic, given his extremely loyal network of agents and accomplices. Red John appears to be fascinated with Jane, frequently setting up “games” for him and sending him messages. His overall goal in regards to Jane is debatable. He primarily shows up during season finales, though his shadow is evident in many episodes. [Spoiler: In the season 1 finale “Red John’s Footsteps,” it is implied that his intention is to capture Jane through the use of a proxy, who Jane later kills to save Lisbon. In the season 2 finale “Red Sky in the Morning” Red John saves Jane from a copycat killer before reciting William Blake’s poem “The Tiger,” a fact which Jane has not revealed to his team. Jane currently believes that someone in the CBI is working for Red John.]
Fandom:
Despite having a large viewing audience, as of the writing of this overview (May 2011) The Mentalist maintains a fairly small (but active!) fandom.
Except for the meta. Oh my, the meta.
For whatever reason, The Mentalist lends itself very well to meta: gender role discussions, character analyses, poetry analyses, language discussions, etc. There are also quite a few lovely vids and screen captures, given the overall eye-candy-ness of the cast.
For fandom products, mentalistlist is an excellent resource, and most things Mentalist (by which I mean fic, challenges, episode discussions, pics, etc.) get posted here at one point or another.
mentalistlist is an excellent resource, and most things Mentalist (by which I mean fic, challenges, episode discussions, pics, etc.) get posted here at one point or another.For fanfiction, I recommend AO3 as The Mentalist has been a featured Yuletide fandom for the last 3 years, and quite a few excellent stories have come out of it.
There are also the Jello Forums for primarily Jane/Lisbon (Jisbon) fiction and discussion.
Like all good shows with ridiculously attractive casts, we also have a kink meme that has lots of great ideas that still need filling (hinthint)
The brave can also venture into The Pit to find a fairly large quantity of stories, though—as you might expect—there is a large percentage of Mary Sues present.
Finally, the community
mentalist_slash, though not frequently updated, has some excellent slash stories, and it is my hope that more will come soon.By way of pairings, Jane/Lisbon is by far the most dominant. And after that, there’s basically a free-for-all pairing/threesome/moresome orgy, though I would say that Jane/Cho and Rigsby/Van Pelt tend to be more common than other pairings.
(There is also fairly consistent allusion to the idea of Red John/Jane in a creepy, obsessed, non-con way which shows up frequently in fandom, so those with triggers should read warnings carefully.)
In Summ:
The Mentalist is a fun show, particularly for fans of procedurals: it’s visually appealing, both by way of cast and by way of setting (some of the locations they choose to film in are gorgeous). It often has snappy dialogue and good chemistry between its characters. And running underneath it all is the tragedy that is Patrick Jane’s past and the uncertainty of his future as long as Red John is free. I highly recommend giving it a try. Or at the very least, stopping in at mentalistlist or the Jello forums for some meta. We got really good meta, and you’re always welcome to join the discussion.
Major thanks go to
pothead for the use of the lovely, lovely screen caps.Any Mentalist fans reading this overview should please feel free to comment with information and resources that I may have missed!
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If there's anything in particular you'd like to see make the list, go ahead and PM me! I'm still trying to round out the month.
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If there's anything you'd like to see, please let me know via PM. The more recs the merrier, since the 12 rec limit doesn't apply to small fandoms.
(love your icon)
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Please let me know if there's something you'd like to see rec'ed this month! I will totally abuse my reccing power and make it happen (bwahaha)
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