- Title: The Mentalist – If It Bleeds It Leads
- wiki: link
The CBI is called in to investigate the death of a television reporter (Jennifer Peo) who was working on a story involving black market auto part sales before her car was tampered with causing it to go over a cliff. Lisbon (Robin Tunney) fights off the producer’s (Amir Arison) attempts to get her on camera while Jane (Simon Baker) gets the dirt on the victim from the weather girl (Mircea Monroe), as well as a slap in the face.
As Jane abandons the case to try to break into the Federal prison where he believes the FBI stashed Lorelei (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Lisbon talks with the news anchor (Ted McGinley) who was sleeping with the victim, and Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and Cho (Tim Kang) look into an auto mechanic (V.J. Foster) implicated in the reporter’s story. Grace (Amanda Righetti) tracks down the last person to see the victim alive, a magazine editor (Jeremy Glazer) who was planning on printing a story implicating a rich entrepreneur (Henry Ian Cusick) in the genocide of an Amazon Rainforest tribe to further a multi-million dollar geothermal project.
Unable to get anything from the cagey entrepreneur, Lisbon tries another tack by questioning the man’s assistant (Rhea Bailey) who can’t tie him to the murder but does admit the dead reporter was investigating her boss’ Amazon project. Jumping back into the case with one of his trademark stunts, Jane agrees to an on-air interview with the news program’s anchor where he unmasks the killer live on television. Although they capture the man responsible for tampering with the car, the CBI is unable to tie the millionaire to the crime, or the murder of his assistant which he stages as an apparent suicide.
“If It Bleeds It Leads” represents one of the few episodes of the series where a murderer not named Red John gets away with his crime. The cryptic visit from an agent of Homeland Security (Kevin Corrigan) ends the show on an interesting note as he obviously knows more about both Lisbon’s case and Patrick Jane than he’s letting on.
I loved all the gueststars in this one. Monroe, McGinley & Cusick were all great.