The Mentalist – Jane’s addiction

We got some interesting progress into what happened to Todd Johnson with being set alight in the interrogation room last time. The introduction to the lead investigator on the case, JJ LaRoche (Pruitt Taylor Vince), reminded me a lot of Forest Whitaker‘s role in season three of The Shield. No, it wasn’t just because they both have some weird eye thing going on. Both characters exhibit a very by-the-book attitude, and no amount of previously impressive police work will sway their favor. LaRoche seems to have almost as keen an eye as Jane has for details, and I feel it’s only a matter of time before he knows Jane’s hiding something. Hell, if it wasn’t for Jane being drunk during their quick talk, I’d say LaRoche should know something is up now.

Bringing in Virgil to help Jane out with his own investigation was a cool touch, and it would definitely be neat to see him as a recurring behind-the-scenes helper for Jane’s cause. If Virgil does enter the picture again, though, I predict he’ll be one of Red John’s victims before long. Actually, I’ll make a prediction now that, should Virgil continue to be a presence for what’s left of this season, he’ll be dead in the finale. Once again Jane’s addiction for the mystery gets someone he’s close to killed.

As for who set Todd Johnson ablaze, I just have no idea at this point. It’s likely someone we don’t know yet, though it’s also possible we find out that Johnson’s involvement with Red John and his being killed aren’t related; that simply a pissed off cop got his revenge on a cop killer. It does seem very out of place for any cop to be so stupid as to leave the lighter behind, though it won’t matter if the killer wore gloves, of course. At first I thought maybe they’d simply find out that Johnson set himself on fire, but that makes no sense for several reasons, one being they’d never have let him in there with a lighter.

Now that Jane has the suspect list, how is that going to help him out in figuring out who the culprit is? How many people could it be that were there in the office, including those Jane works closely with? Imagine if we find out Cho did the deed, just because he was pissed off at Johnson? That would be wild, but it’s unlikely. I mean, who wants to see Cho go to jail? Maybe Jane figures out it was Cho and keeps it to himself? Come on, this show needs that kind of stir-up!

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Dec 10, 2010 @ 00:00 EST5EDT