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The Mentalist: The Complete Second Season
R1 - America - Warner Home Video Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (2nd January 2011). |
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The Show
 Some have argued that there are no original ideas left on television; the same stories are just getting played out in different forms, with the same old twists and same old stories. On face it seems fairly ordinary as many of the crime and police procedurals are just that, a procedure of good cops catching bad guys, or at times gritty cops catch gritty bad guys, with few exceptions. But if you just leave it at that you can miss the intrigue of the general mixture of ideas. On face “The Mentalist” (2008-Present) seems like “Psych” (2006-Present) meets “Monk” (2002-2009) with serious tone and a touch of “Bones” (2005-Present) or “Castle” (2009-Present), though mostly just in the looks department as it’s a dark haired white female lead with a strong-jawed brownish-haired white male lead. But this doesn’t really say anything about the show, as “The Mentalist” is a solid addition to police dramas about consultants mostly thanks to some solid writing, good acting from Simon Baker, and a decent supporting cast. Picking up in the second season, Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) is still looking for Red John, the serial killer who murdered Jane’s wife and child after he went on television as a psychic. Jane is still working with the California Bureau of Investigations through a team headed by Senior Agent Lisbon (Robin Tunney) who solve every few murders that come up between the appearances of Red John. Yet Red John is taken out of their hands early on, given to another unit since it seems like Jane and the rest of the team have grown too close to the investigation, but then Red John is bound to strike again. Jane and gang are put back on the case and the CBI is given a new Sergeant in charge that helps to shake this season up. After the mass emergence of forensic based shows in the early 2000’s, the recent trend towards the civilian consultant with strange abilities or simply a great sense of logic and intuition seems to have come into its own. The popularity may be a simple oversaturation of forensic sciences leading to a move to more social sciences, but there’s also a tinge of the ‘every-person’ in these characters, the superhuman abilities in more average people who don’t hold advanced degrees but rather use the sort of assertiveness, confidence and observation that have been instilled in them from parents to try and guide their way through the crimes. But when you deal with a show that’s based more on the charm of the characters and the wit of the protagonist, you need some serious charisma and charm to pull it all off, where the leads of “Psych” use their duo, boyish charm to pull through, Jane of “The Mentalist” is all rooted in some seriously good acting from Baker. As a mentalist who decries psychics, Jane is open about the way he uses his talents and what they really are, well tuned observation and people skills, but with less visual clues to the audience to see how his thought process works, making it all based on his acting. The supporting cast helps keep him going, Robin Tunney as Lisbon is a nice secondary player as are Tim Kang as Agent Cho and Amanda Righetti and Owain Yeoman as the other two agents, though the last two might be the weakest of the cast. They’re there to help balance out Baker’s screen time and keep some semblance of the police aspect of the procedural intact, since Jane isn’t a cop. The midseason addition of Special Agent in Charge Hightower, played by Aunjanue Ellis, is a good addition to keep the cast going and adds another good character to play off of Jane’s antics while believing in his abilities as an investigator. For a police procedural “The Mentalist” is above average while strongly attached to its genre, it toys a bit with going to odd places, especially in the season finale, and could have been better realized as a non-network show that can dabble in the profane and the odd on a cable network, but then people wouldn’t get to enjoy Baker and his abilities as an actor through Jane’s abilities as a mentalist. The police aspects of the show, actual police procedure and the role of police are mostly ignored and it at times follows the old trends of police procedurals dominated with Black and Latino offenders, but the gravitas of Baker pushes the show above a middling cop drama. Above all its supremely watchable, even if it is something you leave on screen while taking care of something else in the room, it’s enjoyable to have on screen that can pull you in whenever you feel like engaging the show. Episodes included on the set are: - “Redemption” - “The Scarlet Letter” - “Red Badge” - “Red Menace” - “Red Scare” - “Black Gold and Red Blood” - “Red Bulls” - “His Red Right Hand” - “A Price Above Rubies” - “Throwing Fire” - “Rose-Colored Glasses” - “Bleeding Heart” - “Redline” - “Blood In, Blood Out” - “Red Herring” - “Code Red” - “The Red Box” - “Aingavite Baa” - “Blood Money” - “Red All Over” - “18-5-4” - “Red Letter” - “Red Sky in the Morning”
Video
Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, the show has a nice look to it that comes through in the visual presentation, but with some unfortunate looking technical mishaps that came in the transfer. The show has a bit of fuzziness to the colors and contrast that come through even in upconversion, or maybe even because of it. The show’s native format and filming would be well suited to high definition and it has a good production value to the show, but the transfer is overall underwhelming.
Audio
Like the visuals, the English Dolby Digital 5.1 transfer on the audio is a little underwhelming. The soundtrack of the show and the incidental noises in the murder investigations are well put together and add to the overall feel of the show, but the transfer at times can feel a bit hollow where dialogue can get lost behind noises when it feels somewhat unintentional. Another nice sound presentation slightly held back by some of the technical features. Oddly enough the only other spoken language included is Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1, but each episode has English for the hearing impaired, French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and Thai subtitles.
Extras
Across the 5-disc set there’s an assortment of special features, mostly deleted scenes but with an additional featurette and an 11-part documentary on the final disc. DISC ONE: The only special feature on this disc are deleted scenes, or as the disc calls them "Lost Evidence" on the season premiere “Redemption,” all the scenes are played together for a total of 3 minutes and 9 seconds but have intertitles for each scene that give a title and runtime for each scene, described below: - “She Lived Alone” runs for 17 seconds. - “What’s the Good News” runs for 43 seconds. - “It’s You We Want to Speak To” runs for 45 seconds. - “What are You Sorry For” runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. DISC TWO: More "Lost Evidence" aka deleted scenes, but for two different episodes this time. On the Episode “Red Bulls” there are 2 deleted scenes, running for a total of 2 minutes and 5 seconds: - “No” runs for 14 seconds. - “The Rest of a Miserable Life” runs for 1 minute and 42 seconds. The other episode is “Throwing Fire” which has two scenes that run for 56 seconds total: - “Teresa’s Frustration” runs for 24 seconds. - “I Wouldn’t Kill You For Anything” runs for 21 seconds. DISC THREE: This time the "Lost Evidence" deleted scene is only on the episode “Blood in, Blood Out”: - “Never Far From Prison” that runs 35 seconds. DISC FOUR: Another one-shot of "Lost Evidence" deleted scene on “The Red Box”: - “He’s Telling the Truth” which runs for 28 seconds. DISC FIVE: No more deleted scenes, but instead we get a featurette and a documentary broken down into a large series of parts with the cast. First up is “The Art of ‘The Mentalist’ with Chris Long” which runs for 13 minutes and 51 seconds, Luke Jermay a mind reader/person who uses similar skills to Jane in the show discuss the art of mentalism and mind reading as it’s shown in the series. Along with director Chris Long, the duo focus on the opening scene of the season and the types of body language, eye movements, and little clues that Jane reads in the show and how these ideas al go into the production side of the show. It’s a really enjoyable featurette not just if you want to try and learn to read body language better, but if you want to read how you portray this on camera and how they had to cast and produce the show to give the right clues to the audience and make it all believable. Next is “Mentalism: A Subliminal Art” which is watchable as one long documentary or broken down into 11 parts. All told the documentary runs for 55 minutes and 37 seconds, it's a look at mentalism, again with Luke Jermay, but this time broken down into different segments with different actors: - “The Art of Mind Reading with Simon Baker” runs for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, Jermay and Baker discuss the role of mentalists and how the art is done, while Baker tries to explain how he portrays this on camera and his envy over Jermay’s real life abilities. Baker reveals his native Australian accent, always odd to see non U.S. actors flow in and out of accent to me but something I always need to see, plus Jermay reads Baker’s mind and actually hints at the clues he looks for as the mind reading goes on. - “The Art of Suggestive Imagery with Robin Tunney” runs for 7 minutes and 8 seconds, this time Jermay meets with Tunney to try and show how to influence people with body language and verbal cues to try and get Tunney to draw an image, it’s another fun look at how Jermay does what he does. It’s interesting to watch because it’s different than a magician explaining his tricks, but rather it’s all in the execution and watching it happen that makes it fun to watch. - “The Secret of Cognitive Persuasion with Luke Jermay” runs for 5 minutes and 47 seconds, Jermay continues to reveal techniques, this time using five cards and trying to teach the viewer a party trick to try and make someone choose a specific option from five cards. - “The Art of Knowing Secrets with Owain Yeoman” runs for 5 minutes and 7 seconds, Jermay works with Yeoman to talk about muscle reading and how you can determine what someone is thinking. “The Art of Hidden Objects with Amanda Righetti” runs for 4 minutes and 7 seconds, this one does similar mentalism tricks of muscles and communicating ideas, but this time with hiding a watch under a series of cups. “The Secret of the Pendulum with Luke Jermay” runs for 3 minutes and 53 seconds, Jermay this time goes through how to make a pendulum with a weight and string, and then how to make it move with your mind. - “The Art of Suggestive Imagery with Tim Kang” runs for 7 minutes and 25 seconds, Kang and Jermay look at a series of Rorschach ink blot cards, a pen and pad of paper, while influencing the image he was going to draw. - “The Art of Intuitive Deduction with Bruno Heller and Writing Staff” runs 6 minutes and 9 seconds, Jermay meets up with the writing staff of the show, asking them to write up words on pieces of paper and he could identify who wrote down what on the paper, as well as guessing what people are thinking or what words, as well as some talk of the inherent deception of mentalism. - “The Secret of Interactive Mind Control with Luke Jermay” runs 1 minute and 44 seconds; Jermay does a bit of suggestion through the screen with the viewer. - “The Art of Muscle Reading with Amanda Righetti” runs for 9 minutes 6 seconds, Jermay has Righetti hide an object in the room and uses muscle reading to try and find the object in the room. Afterwards the two talk about how the muscle reading works to interpret heart rate and tiny movements as they grow closer to the desired location. “The Secret of Ideomotor Manipulation with Luke Jermay” runs 1 minute and 29 seconds; Jermay does one final neat trick involving a chair, leg and finger movement.
Packaging
The set comes in a 5-disc amray case, housed in a cardboard slip-cover, with a handy 10 page booklet with episode guide included.
Overall
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