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Saturday 25 April 2015

The Mentalist 7.11 "Byzantium" Review

                                         Image result for the-mentalist byzantium photos
A couple sit in a car in the woods and the man, Donnie (Nick Fink) hears a noise outside before they are both shot.  He drives the car but it overturns and the killer shoots off the woman, Megan (Flavia Watson).  Cho (Tim Kang) and Lisbon (Robin Tunney) arrive at the CS and she hasn't heard from Patrick (Simon Baker).  She needs to see him but he hasn't returned her calls or answered them.  The park ranger, Jill (Toni Trucks) tells them Megan was dragged from the car and and Cho thinks the killer may have been trying to get her back up the hill, but couldn't.  9 mm casings were found there. Cho tells Lisbon they need Patrick on the case and she says she'll call him.  When she does get through, he's sitting outside his Airstream with tea and watching the Grand Canyon.  He doesn't pick up, infact he rejects her!

Cho tells them Donnie and Megan were missing a finger nail each.  Abbot (Rockmond Dunbar) says they do need Patrick and she handles it by sending the Highway Patrol to find him and take him in for questioning in Austin.  Patrick laughing cos he knows it must be Lisbon.  Yeah that officer did get a little carried away frisking him!!  Ooh he was all hands, ha!  Jill tells Cho about some poachers in the area, the Whitmore brothers.  They go to arrest them and Cho gets rough with one of them.  Their alibi checks out.  Abbott has a word to Cho about this and he says he got carried away in the moment, after getting caught off guard,  but it won't happen again.  As Abbott thinks he's still letting off steam over Vega.  He suggests he should go back and see his therapist at the Rangers.

Wylie (Joe Adler) answers the phone and a woman, Ree (Anastasia Phillips) walks in with her brother, Gabriel (Alex Saxon) telling him her brother has information about the murder.  He wasn't there but he saw it, saying he's a psychic.  He tells Wylie he feels the pain inside but doesn't show it on the outside, though he's crying out loud, obviously still lamenting Vega.  Wylie tells Lisbon and Abbott that they need to speak with him.  Abbot thinks the couple could've come across some drug scene.  Lisbon is sceptical of course after working with Patty for seven years, there's no such thing as a psychic.  Though it was kind of good to round this show off with a psychic storyline even if he was a fake one, cos that was kind of the crux of the show to an extent.  especially with Patrick having played that same con game.

Gabriel tells Abbot he's leaving and heading to a new place and he's got doubts.  Lisbon being very Patty here and tells him everyone has doubts.  Though it was funny he couldn't tell Lisbon anything about her.  Gabriel adds the man wanted to take them with him but couldn't; that he took a piece of them instead.  Six months ago he spoke to a man who had "much wrongness in him, it was like staring at the sun" and even if it's not the case, it's true about the fingertips.  Okay, quickly, I'm going to add that this reminds me of Red John and his acolytes, seriously it does.  The sun and wrongness in him.  Remember that scene with the Red Barn when Patrick was soaking in the sun and the smiley face was behind him.  I just can't help but think it's got something to do with that past.  Maybe I'm wrong, shall see next ep. Abbott tells Lisbon he's right about all of that but nothing was released to the press, or the vultures, as Cho refers to them.

Lisbon asks for a description and Gabriel tells him he was white and he's not good with faces, cos he only sees what's on the inside.  Lisbon suspects Gabriel of being the killer, as does Patrick when he turns up.  She has experience she tells Abbott.  In walks Patrick and they talk.  Lisbon would've sent him his cup but she didn't know where he was.  Oh Patty you heartbreaker, you always drive Lisbon to tears!  She hates he didn't answer her calls, first she thought he missed it, second time that he was busy and third time, she thought he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere and she hates that.  He tells her where he was and that she'd have liked to have seen the Grand Canyon too.  She makes him promise that he won't miss her calla again.  He tells her he needs the time to think and that's all he needs, just time, but she can't do anything for him.  Ooh, that must've been a bit of a low blow for her.

Abbott welcomes him back, but he replies that he's not back.  Abbott wants him to meet someone and takes him to Gabriel as he's leaving.  He tells him that Patrick isn't FBI and Patrick knows cos he saw it in his face or his clothes.  Gabriel tells him he's a fake and he replies there's something inside of Patrick that he can't let go.  Was that another Red John reference, or something about the job and not wanting to be here.  Patrick tells him it's just the human condition.  Gabriel posits the number 3 and it'll come to him in 3.  Which Patrick says is a common number.

Especially when he drives to a bar and has a beer or several and plays video games.  Noticing the barmaid's name has the initial AJ and so that must be her in the top three with her name appearing three times.  Of course we're now getting to see all those three turning up purposely.  She asks him to help with the beer case and then takes his keys so he doesn't drink and drive.  He misses another call from Lisbon.  Patrick also mentions she has three children.  Oh boy, suddenly that three's getting around.  Before he leaves he tells her that her name's Amber (Melora Walters).  He takes a walk, stares at the moon.  Next day he wakes up in the woods and doesn't know where he is.  Seeing a three legged dog running through the woods too, he finds him.

Cho finds Gabriel doesn't have a record, but he doesn't have an alibi for the night.  Wylie asks if he can come with Cho cos he doesn't want to sit here, behind a desk and they're short handed.  He has kept up with his shooting training.  They watch Gabriel outside his house and he talks with a neighbour.  Wylie finds Cho's book, Dostoevsky's The Idiots and asks him if it's good.  He also asks if Vega was good at this, as Cho tells him sometimes they do sit and wait.  He thinks he's ready to be out in the field and doesn't want to answer calls and Cho asks him if he wants to do this or if it's cos of Vega.  This is what he wants to do.  Cho speaks with the neighbour, who just asked Gabriel about a date she's got.  She doesn't believe in psychics, but does believe in Gabriel.

Wylie sees Gabriel fall over after he's waved to Wylie and he tells him he's got a pain in his side, but that she's not in pain.  Wylie asks if he's referring to Michelle Vega.  Then mentions white bones wrapped in red clay.  (Hmm, the colour red coming up.  Red Smiley face.  Sorry.  But Byzantium is a colour and it was the colour of the Byzantium empire and red was used to represent the colour of majesty in this empire.  SO?? does this possibly mean Red John wasn't Red John, the one Patrick killed, or...)  Patrick meanwhile comes across a lake and a cabin which is for sale.  Heck he's going to buy that!  Wylie finds an area near the CS which has red clay and says it can't hurt to check it out. They take a dog unit out there and soon the dog finds a body.  When they dig, they find five altogether, so they're dealing with a serial killer, Lisbon says.  Which Cho repeats back at the office. Abbot calls Patrick for help and he doesn't know where he is, but he's with the dog.

He says sorry to Lisbon for not answering the phone, that was his fault.  He says he's back and still working out things.  It's good to see her and she cautiously tells him the same.  Telling him about the unmarked graves and back at the office, she says they all had one fingernail missing.  Three were homeless and two were foreign exchange students.  Cho brings in Gabriel.  Patrick asks him about his seizure and he's fine now.  Then shows him the photos of the bodies in the grave.  He didn't want to see these things and Patrick understands cos hes used to be him.  Telling him he knows Gabriel spent a year of his childhood with illness and learned the piano.  Who else played the piano, well there was Red John's blind woman, Rosalind Harker (Alicia Witt).  He asks who told Patrick this and he replies no one.  Then he says he's lying and Gabriel didn't want these visions.  Patrick says he doesn't have visions and neither does Gabriel.  He knows the killer will kill again tonight, well he got that right.

Cho didn't find anything at Gabriel's house and Patrick says they need to keep him here.  Ree walks in with a lawyer,  who's got a writ of Habeus Corpus being signed by a judge and brought in.  The lawyer gives a statement and then tells the press about the serial killer, allowing Gabriel to reveal this to them.  Well that was his mistake.  Gabriel says the FBI want to frame him, that the killer is evil and can't stop the killing.  Cho and Wylie stake out his house again ad they see someone running.  It's the neighbour and she wants to get home quickly.  Cho enters and finds Ree shot. As Wylie is hit by someone.

Wylie doesn't recall who it was and he doesn't want to answer phones, as Cho tells him getting hurt is part of the job.  Patrick tells him to close his eyes, take a deep breath and listen to sounds.  He doesn't hear any, but he smells his uncle's fish shed.  Not the fish, but beer smells. He and Lisbon head to a nearby brewery, where they find Gabriel hanging from his arms, dead and his shoe missing. With the word fake etched in his arm.  Oh come on, he's got to have some Red John connection, or, or it'll have been seven years of we did really finish in a bum note with the RJ reveal!  It'd be nice to come round full circle.  Patty be Red John!! ha.  Okay I have resigned myself to the fact that he's not, but at least I can have some fun!

The other reason I thought of Red John was if you recall Patty taunted him on TV and the next minute his wife and daughter were killed by him.  Now Gabriel went on the TV to announce the serial killer and finding the five bodies and as soon as he did that, along with Ree,  Cho and Wylie find Ree dead and then Patrick finds Gabriel dead too.  Again with fake written all over his arm.  This again points me to Patrick and how he was a fake too and the serial killer obviously thought Gabriel not only may know who he is, but also that he spoke of him on TV.  I'm probably completely wrong, but I liked the idea of where I was going with this, thinking outside of the box.  It'd be nice if they did mention Red John again one last time.  As long as we also get a conclusion to the list and the names on it as well.  Giving us closure and peace of mind!  Ha.

Remember Byzantium: red.  I mean why not go for a red in the title, but no, it had to be this cos there hasn't been a red in the title this entire season, that's why and in season 6 when the Red John saga was over!  So they couldn't very well have it overtly stuck in our faces like that, with the use of 'red' again, maybe that'd be too much of a giveaway and so it had to be more subtle.

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