11 Years Later, CBS' Finale Flop Was an Insult to Its Main Character
Updated
Jasneet Singh is a writer who finally has a platform to indulge in long rants about small moments on TV and film in overwhelming detail. With a literature background, she is drawn to the narrative aspect of cinema and will happily rave about her favorite characters. She is also waiting for the Ranger's Apprentice novels to be adapted... but the cycle of hope and disappointment every two years is getting too painful to bear.
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The Mentalist was one of the more low-key cop procedural gems of the 2000s, but it still drew in audiences during its seven-year run on CBS due to the eccentric yet endearing character of Patrick Jane (Simon Baker). The psychic-con-artist-turned-CBI-consultant dominated the show with his witty charm, winning smile, and harebrained antics that always managed to corner the criminal-of-the-week in the end.
Although Jane was the face of the show, he was supported by a stellar cast, including the team's ever-reliable and rule-adhering leader Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney). Although Jane was the face, Lisbon was always the yin to his yang, his grounded counterpart, offering a few laughs whenever the two interacted, as well as an iconic will-they-won't-they romance. However, Lisbon was also always undermined throughout the show in favor of Jane's tricks, ultimately culminating in a finale where she is utterly failed as a character.
Lisbon and Jane's Marriage Ruined 'The Mentalist' Finale
The Mentalist's finale, "A Twist of Fate," revolves around Lisbon and Jane's wedding, which is disrupted by the re-emergence of the elusive serial killer, the Lazarus. They use their wedding as a ruse to apprehend him successfully before continuing with the ceremony and completing their nuptials. Just before the credits roll, in a serene scene of the two of them lounging next to a lake, Lisbon reveals that she is pregnant, bringing the show to a teary-eyed ending. After so many years of uncertainty and tantalizing chemistry, these final moments are essentially fan service, concluding the show to satisfy the fandom's desire to see the two come together. While these scenes are undeniably adorable, ultimately, it only benefits the character arc of one half of the couple.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Detective Should Solve Your Case? Columbo · Benoit Blanc · Jessica Fletcher · Marlowe
Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you who should be assigned to your murder. Four of the most famous detectives ever put on screen, and four completely different ways of getting somebody to admit what they did.
🕵Columbo(Columbo)
🧣Benoit Blanc(Knives Out)
🖨Jessica Fletcher(Murder, She Wrote)
🚬Philip Marlowe(The Big Sleep)
01
What do people assume about you when they meet you? Pick the one that sounds most like you.
02
Pick a coat. No wrong answers here.
03
How do you get information out of people? One answer only.
04
How would your friends describe you? Be honest.
05
Pick a drink. Pick the closest answer.
06
Where do you do your best thinking? Pick the closest answer.
07
What is your car like? Think about the one on your drive.
08
What makes you good at reading people? Last one. This is the one that decides it.
The Case Is Assigned Your Detective Is…
A great detective is really just a personality with a method attached, which is why we keep remaking the same four of them. Here is yours, what it says about you, and the case for them being the best in the business.
Columbo
You let people think you are not a threat and then you simply never go away. Columbo is the only major detective show that tells you who did it in the first ten minutes, because the pleasure was never the puzzle, it was watching a rich man slowly realise he is in trouble.
- You are underestimated constantly, and you have stopped minding because it keeps working.
- The show invented the inverted detective format for television and nobody has bettered it since.
- Peter Falk won four Emmys for the part and played him across five decades.
- Your flaw is that one more question is rarely one more question.
Benoit Blanc
You are the most interesting person in the room and you know exactly how to use it. Rian Johnson built Blanc as a gentleman detective who is also an outsider everywhere he goes, which lets him be charming at people who would never otherwise talk to him.
- You read a room in seconds and you are not above performing a little to speed things up.
- Rian Johnson was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Knives Out in 2020.
- Wake Up Dead Man arrived on Netflix in December, making three Blanc films in six years.
- Your risk is enjoying the performance so much that people stop taking the point seriously.
Jessica Fletcher
Everybody tells you everything, and you have never once asked them to. Jessica Fletcher is a crime novelist from a small town in Maine who is so warm and so obviously trustworthy that suspects confess to her essentially as a social courtesy.
- You are the person friends call first, and you have a frankly alarming amount of information about everybody.
- Angela Lansbury was nominated for the Emmy twelve times for this role and never won once.
- The show ran twelve seasons, and Jamie Lee Curtis is now bringing the character back.
- Your flaw is that being told everything is only a gift if you know what to do with it.
Philip Marlowe
You expect to be lied to and you are almost never disappointed. Chandler wrote Marlowe as a man with a rigid private code in a city that has none, which is why he takes the case, solves it, gets nothing out of it and takes the next one.
- You are the most cynical person your friends know and the one they would call at four in the morning.
- Bogart played him in The Big Sleep in 1946 and the plot is famously impossible to follow, which matters not at all.
- Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum and Liam Neeson have all taken the part, and every version says something about its decade.
- Your weakness is a code so strict that it mostly punishes the person holding it.
For Jane, having a wedding and a baby on the way is a full-circle moment. He started the show grieving the murder of his beloved wife and daughter and being driven by the obsession to avenge them by killing the infamous serial killer, Red John. As such, this finale denotes the moment he can finally move on with his life with a new life, allowing him to find happiness again. However, it unfortunately reduces Lisbon to a trophy for Jane, as it holds almost no significance to her arc. You could argue that it demonstrates growth from being overly dedicated to work to now having a life outside it, but with The Mentalist's habit of sidelining Lisbon in favor of Jane, it doesn't feel like a milestone for her.
'The Mentalist' Continually Undermined Lisbon's Character
What makes Lisbon simply a trophy for Jane during their finale wedding is how she has been treated throughout the show. In her initial characterization, she was depicted as being a "tough boss," always adhering to the rules and cracking down on them when required. One of the most memorable times she has done this was when Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) were secretly in a relationship despite the bureau's rules against dating co-workers. When Lisbon found out, she was extremely conflicted since she was close with both of them, but eventually decided to set an ultimatum, which led to them breaking up (until they got back together later in the show). She wasn't necessarily opposed to bending the rules for the sake of catching a criminal, but needed to be in the loop.
However, her strictness completely disappeared when it came to Jane. Having a soft spot for someone is one thing, but Lisbon constantly allowed Jane to treat her like a doormat. Unabashed and unconcerned about the potential consequences, Jane would frequently go over Lisbon's head and get her in trouble with her boss. As the show continued and Jane's escapades became more serious, Lisbon would react more viscerally to them, often feeling infuriated and betrayed, but this would last an episode before Jane was back in her good graces. What's worse is that it never improved, and Lisbon never learned. The Mentalist would repeat the cycle over and over again.
The most egregious time this happened was during the huge reckoning in Season 6, when Jane confronts each of the Red John suspects and initially pretends to include Lisbon. But after roping her into an intimate moment of watching the horizon together, he leaves her on the side of the road alone. For Jane, it was a significant moment where he would confront his grief and need for vengeance; thus, it is fitting he should act this way (even though we were hoping he would change, too). For Lisbon, it should be the last straw, but she simply chases after him like she usually does. This not only meant Jane was undermining her, but the show then made her seem like a pushover whenever he was involved, a trait she never really grew out of.
Lisbon Became a Narrative Function in the "Patrick Jane" Show
Unfortunately, Lisbon simply got lost in the "Patrick Jane" show, as everything, from the narrative beats to their relationship, was always on his terms. One of the closest times Lisbon would have been able to conceivably evade this fate was when Jane disappeared for a year after killing Red John. During this time, she ended up in a dead-end job at a police department since the CBI was disbanded (another ludicrous detail, since Lisbon was always dedicated to her professional life and would have bounced back better than that), but was brought back into Jane's world when he was forced to return by the FBI. He essentially strong-armed Lisbon into also taking a job at the FBI, making them co-workers once again, where Lisbon got over his disappearance and coercion fairly quickly.
So, as heartwarming as the finale wedding was, it was also the final nail in the coffin that cemented Lisbon's position as an accessory on Jane's arm. Sadly, Lisbon was never a character with a genuine capacity for development; the show never allowed her that type of freedom. Ironically, neglecting Lisbon's character is also a disservice to Jane's development, as he never faced any serious repercussions from her. In the end, he only saw an accelerated growth in the final season when he moved on from his past, and even then, it didn't feel earned. Jane deserves someone who is more than just his shadow, more than just a point of contrast to him or a romantic trophy. Superficially, it's joyous to see them walking down the aisle, but dig a little deeper and The Mentalist utterly failed Lisbon.
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