- Title: The Mentalist – Cherry Picked
- wiki: link
As Jane (Simon Baker) continues to try and find leads into who helped Lorelei (Emmanuelle Chriqui) escape from prison the CBI’s newest case involves a murder and kidnapping of the chief designer at a communication software firm and his wife. The case is hampered from the onset by the victim’s brother (Neil Hopkins) refusing to risk his sibling’s life by working with the police and the arrival of Brenda Shettrick (Rebecca Wisocky) on the scene ordering Lisbon (Robin Tunney) to work the potential PR nightmare with kid gloves.
While walking the crime scene Jane finds an even more troubling fact about the case – the people who were kidnapped aren’t the rich computer designer and his wife (J.R. Cacia, Brooke Langton) but their house sitters who have nowhere near enough money to pay the $5 million ransom. As it turns out neither does the rich software designer who is far less rich than anyone, included he, believes.
Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and Cho (Tim Kang) scour surveillance footage which leads them to the woman (Skye P. Marshall) who owns the van used in the kidnapping while Jane antagonizes the kidnapper into letting one of the hostages (Anne Dudek) go as the family tries their best to come up enough money to buy back the husband. Although the true motives behind the kidnapping aren’t exactly what CBI have been led to believe, Jane organizes an impromptu performance to capture one of the kidnappers (Wes Chatham) and get the other to incriminate herself.
The mystery of the week works well with a couple of nice twists towards the end. Jane’s other investigation leads him to the prison guard (Michael Shamus Wiles) who the FBI used to help them smuggle Lorelei out of prison and gets him one step closer in his search for Red John, and certainly can’t help the ongoing rivalry between the FBI and CBI.
