- Title: The Mentalist – Panama Red
- wiki: link
The murder of a botanist working at a local pot farm leads the CBI to talk with the victim’s former college advisor (Susan Gibney), boss (Troy Ruptash), and co-worker (Paul David Story) in the course of the investigation the CBI discovers the man’s night job at a tobacco company where he was working secretly to grow a mass-producible strain of marijuana that could potentially be worth billions.
In the episode’s B-story Cho (Tim Kang) takes a break from the case to help Tamsin Wade (Monique Gabriela Curnen and the Rapid Response Team to hit a counterfeiting ring. Their raid leads to an unexpected reunion between Cho and Summer (Samaire Armstrong) leading to a serious conflict of interest for Cho. Dragging Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) in with him, Cho hunts down the man (James Jordan) and makes a deal behind Wade’s back with District Attorney Osvaldo Ardiles (David Norona) to keep Summer out of prison.
After discovering the tobacco company bugged the scientist’s work station, Jane pulls another elaborate stunt using the counterfeit money and a forged note to send the pot farmers, the tobacco company’s head of security (Michael Whaley) and two of the executives (Jack Laufer, Nicole Bilderback) on a wild goose chase involving a mysterious buyer willing to pay to dollar for the missing seeds.
Although overly-elaborate Jane’s stunt gets the CBI both a thief and a killer in an amusing series of events that ends with a very stoned Rigsby in a hotel room with two suspects. The B-story puts a nice coda on the Summer storyline as well as put Cho on the hot seat with Wade. And the episode ends with a humorous scene involving Lisbon, Jane, and the victim’s puzzle box that reminds us Lisbon is willing to let Jane have his fun, in order to solve a case, but not at her expense.
