The Mentalist/YMMV

• Affably Evil: Brent Stiles. Also O'Laughlin. Red John is closer to Faux Affably Evil.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Bosco. Because he was a jerk to Jane, mainly because he suspected that Jane was putting Lisbon and her career in danger, and/or flirting with her (and in Bosco's book, these were pretty equal crimes), he was not a fan favourite. Add forty-five minutes of Lisbon looking beautiful and distraught after his shooting - hey presto, everybody cries when he snuffs it after admitting that he loves her.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Jane a guy who likes to mess with people for the giggles and because it's fun, and does police work out of boredom and altruism? Or is he a guy warped beyond all repair by his family's murder who messes with people and hunts out murderers to inflict pain?
• Arc Fatigue: It has been three seasons and still Jane is nowhere closer to Red John. Apparently the writers think the audience can just forget the trailer of season three finale and say the man Jane killed isn't Red John. Damn shame, because the finale is epic.
• Author's Saving Throw: That damned reset buttony season four premiere. It basically negates all the epic Gambit Pileup in the season three finale.
• Complete Monster: Red John, albeit of the Affably Evil variety. One of the first things we learn about him is that he murdered a small girl and her mom in revenge for the father insulting him on TV. He has killed 8 men and 16 women, the latter his preferred victims, 4 via an accomplice he later killed. He seems to have moved on from killing women for kicks and now is obsessively fixated on Jane; most of his recent victims are either to cover his own tracks, bar the two copycats he killed for "cheap imitations" of his work. Unusually, he actually somehow associates with other serial killers and seems to control them to a degree too.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Jane breaks out of jail using a pen, a piece of muffin, and the warden's muscaphobia. We later see him walking down the road in his regular clothes.
  • Virgil Minelli's speech to the reporters in "His Red Right Hand" counts.
  • Let's not forget Cho in "Bleeding Heart"--who turns an interview with a reporter for a documentary on its head and starts interrogating the reporter about his life on camera.
    • And Lisbon tasering Mr. Andrews.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Rigsby's class reunion entrance to Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper" in "Rose-Colored Glasses."
• Darker and Edgier: If you compare this show to other cop's procedural. His constant dickery aside, this show is about Jane's quest of vengeance. He was not actually interested about justice, truth, and law enforcement. All Patrick Jane wants is to murder the murderer of his family.
  • Contrast Psych, especially. Two shows with basically the same premise, but Shawn is happy-go-lucky and solves crimes for fun and profit, where Jane is troubled and self-hating, only using his position at CBI as a means to find Red John.
• Designated Hero: Jane.
• Idiot Ball: Van Pelt grabbed it firmly at the end of season 3, when she hangs up on Rigsby. While she and O'Loughlin are at the place where a protectee is being kept. Did it not occur to her that he may have something important to say? O'Loughlin's Red John's accomplice.
  • Lisbon also grabs this since she didn't keep her phone on her while protecting Hightower from an extremely dangerous serial killer, and therefore didn't get Jane's warning until the assassin walked right into the cabin.
• Jerkass Woobie: Patrick Jane, arguably, yes he is quite the jerk, but considering that his wife and daughter were murdered by a serial killer, you do have some sympathy with him.
• Magnificent Bastard: Patrick Jane is the epitome of this trope. He is brilliant, charismatic and manipulative. He runs rings around poor Lisbon, the rest of the team and the criminals. Nobody ever knows the full plan except him and, on the rare occasion something goes wrong, he will get out somehow. The audience want Patrick to succeed in catching the murderers and to eventually get Red John even though his methods are often questionable.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Subverted in an interesting way in both "Blood In, Blood Out" with Jon "Why squirrel hate me?" Sklaroff and "Red Letter" in Rick Hoffman. Sklaroff's character is guilty of some drug charges and Cho pretends to kill him to get the real killer to confess. Hoffman's character isn't the killer, but is running a human trafficking ring through his anti-human trafficking organization.
  • Seemingly lampshaded in "Blinking Red Light." Jane tells Lisbon to go with her gut and pick the suspect who looks like he did it. She immediately chooses William Mapother. Subverted in that he was innocent; double subverted when the killer turns out to be played by David Paymer.
• Relationship Writing Fumble: Jane and Lisbon are a possible case.
• Replacement Scrappy: The new CBI Special Agent in Charge, Hightower, is an epic bitch to the team. She broke up Van Pelt and Rigsby, scolded Lisbon continuously, and hang Jane's fate on the team. By Season 3, she was getting better, though. In fact, she saved Jane's life.
• Snowball Lie: Seems to be getting that way after "Always Bet on Red", as Jane goes so far as to forge evidence to hide the fact that he lied to the jury and really didn't kill Red John.
• Tear Jerker: In an extremely rare moment, we see Jane cry in private after a supposed psychic calls him out on the one thing he had been wondering since the murder of his family: had his daughter been awake when she was killed?
  • And Bosco's deathbed confession of his love for Lisbon, and her reply. I didn't even like Bosco, and I was on the verge of tears.
  • Lisbon finding a tape of Jane at the end of "Every Rose has its Thorn." It may double as a Ship Sinking.

Patrick: (on a video recording) I'm looking for someone who... someone I can trust, someone strong. Someone at peace with themselves. Someone better than me. Someone who knows the worst side of me, and still loves me.
Erica: (off camera) Sounds like an amazing woman.
Patrick: She was.

• • When Jane met an accomplice pretending to be Red John. Especially when he describes to Jane what they smelled like before they died.
    • The death of The coroner in the episode 'Red Mile'. Watching him slip away while Jane focuses his attention on a simple coin trick is heartbreaking.
  • Basically any flashbacks of Jane's, including Jane coming home to find his family murdered, or his time in a mental ward.
  • Jane breaking down, saying that he cannot keep up following Red John and telling Lisbon that he might just stop. This is after burning all the information he has on Red John and basically drink himself to sleep.

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