The Mentalist 2X22: Red Letter

Am I the only one who was slightly disappointed by the lack of Red John in this episode? I was so sure they were gonna throw something about him in at the end and go heavy in the finale next episode. That said, I enjoyed this episode. But, to the fair, I enjoy pretty much all these episodes. I don't know what it is about Jane, but just watching him on screen makes me happy.

Okay, so we've got a guy who's ready to give a speech on human trafficking at a human rights convention. But, right before he's due to go on stage, he gets a text calling him away and he ends up dead. Sad. We spend a lot of the beginning of this episode thinking he died due to the contents of his speech (he was about to call out an anti-trafficking company for trafficking themselves), but that ended up being a red herring of sorts. (But they totally did it, right?)

After we talk to the widow (who doesn't seem all that upset- except for when Jane accusing both her and the dead of cheating and she throws a saucer at him), we're directed to his research assistant (who I could not figure out who he was and afterwards looked it up, he's Diggle's brother from Arrow). He ends up giving them the name of the guy who runs the company that trafficks, even though they are anti-traffick (as we all should fucking be). But he pawns it off on some other guy who was hitting on the dead guy's wife.

When we meet up with him, we find that he's already with the other psychic (yeah, Kristina is in this episode a lot). Plus, we also find out that the dead guy punched him for chatting up his girl. He claims he thought it would be fine since he found a sex worker leaving the dead guy's room (spoiler alert: it was his daughter).

Cho and Rigsby head off to check out a remote location that has something to do with a cell tower (I can't really remember exactly what). When they get there, they find a bunch of trafficked people trapped in the back of a semi truck.

They end up talking with the research assistant again and he tells them that he used to procure sex workers for his boss. So, Jane and Lisbon proposition one so they can get info about the situation.

Ready to make a long story short?

Turns out, the dead guy had been being black mailed by his assistant. He'd been opening his mail and found out he had an estranged daughter. He hired a sex worker to pose as the daughter to demand blackmail money, which he was splitting with her (the sex worker, not the daughter). But, the actual daughter had been trying to find her dad and she managed to track him down. When she showed up, he thought it was a trick, since he'd already 'met' his daughter and sent her away.

Jane teams up with Kristina and they hold a seance like event to contact the dead guy and see who killed him. (When research guy falls out of his chair, I scream, sorry about that). Jane determines that research guy is the culprit. And he confesses (he also killed the sex worker he got to pose as the daughter) and claims he did it because he was tired of puttin gup with his shit.

We've also got some Jane and Kristina moments in this episode. I don't like it. Not so much because I want him with Lisbon, but more so because we don't need another psychic around. I like the one I've got, thank you.