The Mentalist 1X23: Red John's Footsteps

Okay, so, we’ve finally gotten the Red John episode that I knew was coming. And I’m kind of disappointed, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed this episode (plus, I actually got some predicts correct- go fucking me), but I think I’ve built up what I wanted from a Red John episode too much in my head and it couldn’t possible compete. So basically, I just screwed myself over. Sigh.

Anyway, we catch a case that is a Red John signature. Cho (I think it was Cho) tries to write it off as a coincidence, but as they area standing there, a skywriter draws our smiley face logo in the sky. So either someone went through a lot of trouble to prank us, or this is our guy. 

Oh, and not only do we have a dead girl, but her sister, who she was with when she died, is missing. Lisbon and Jane head over to talk to the parents and they find out she had recently started seeing a drug dealer and just generally, not a nice guy. So we head over to talk to him, but his dog scares the piss out of me, and he jumps out the window during the distraction.

Thankfully, the dogs ends up leading us right to him, so we can drag him downtown. He claims that someone called him and told him to stop dating the girl. He thought it was stupid, and blew the guy off. Then, he ended up with a pig’s head in his bed. Fun. 

Meanwhile, Grace goes to talk to the skywriter and they manage to trace the online order to a PO box. There’s a letter inside, and Cho and Rigsby track down it’s owner. Turns out, this nice blind lady used to ‘date’ Red John. (I’m obviously using that term loosely). She’s 100% certain he’s a lovely, nice man. But, when Jane is talking to her, he can see a Red John smiley face painted on the wall.

She also tells them that he once brought a friend over for Thanksgiving. The same overly gum chewing sheriff we ran into at the parent’s house (although, we don’t quite know that yet). We head over to the convenience store to look at video from Thanksgiving and see if we can identify the gum buyer. And it’s the sheriff!

Make a long story short, they find out that there’s a farm nearby where Red John might be. Jane wants to head over there immediately, but Lisbon argues they need a warrant. They have this fight in front of the sheriff and Lisbon drives off telling the sheriff to shoot Jane if he does anything out of line. Jane convinces him to go to the farm, which he accepts.

As soon as they get there, Jane finds the missing sister alive. However, the sheriff turns on him. Turns out, he’s the son of one of Red John’s previous accomplices. And Red John has procured this young girl just for him. While he’s berating Jane for being stupid, Lisbon comes down the stairs. The argument was an act, and she never actually left.

So, we get the guy and save the girl, but Jane is pissed that Lisbon came back too soon. He thought they could have waited and Red John would have showed. She convinces him that we’ll get some info from the accomplice. 

But, when we get outside, he pulls a key from his belt, unlocks his handcuffs, grabs a cops gun and shoots him. He then pulls the gun on Lisbon, but before he can fire, Jane shoots him. He saves Lisbon, but the kidnapper dies, along with his lead to Red John.