- Title: The Mentalist – Red and Itchy
- wiki: link
After LaRoche‘s (Pruitt Taylor Vince) home is broken into and he manages to kill one of the perpetrators, he requests Jane‘s (Simon Baker) involvement on the case to find the man who got away (with the mysterious Tupperware box that Jane learned of when he hired someone to steal from investigator’s safe back in Season Three). With LaRoche being blackmailed to stop looking into a security leak within the CBI and Jane only has a single day to find the blackmailer before LaRoche must bend to his pressure of see his life and career ruined.
Despite not knowing what’s actually in the box, Jane agrees to return it to its owner. Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) are tasked with looking into LaRoche’s past to discern what he might have kept locked away in a Tupperware container for nine years while Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and Cho (Tim Kang) talk with the dead burglar’s widow (Meagen Fay) who seems oblivious to the circumstances which led to his death. A little stunt with the woman’s cat and safe (one of Jane’s best yet) proves she knew far more about her husband’s late night business than she originally let on. However, by the time the CBI catches the widow in her lies she already delivered the item to the CBI’s leak.
When Jane discovers a link between the safe cracker and CBI’s public relations officer Brenda Shettrick (Rebecca Wisocky) he knows he has his leak but to catch her, and keep LaRoche’s secret under wraps, he’ll have to convince Lisbon, her team, and a local reporter (Mike Doyle) to go on a wild goose chase for a drug lord which they will use to get Shettrick to incriminate herself live on camera. In the interrogation room Jane piles on with a cruel, though certainly on-target, profile of the CBI’s leak, leaving the broken woman in tears, before returning the unopened container to LaRoche.
The episode ends with Lisbon visiting the ex-con (Mark Dippolito) who raped LaRoche’s mother nine years ago and her discovery of what he keeps in that small plastic container which reminds him of both his mother and how far a man can sink in his quest for revenge. Although I guessed the secret long before the final scene, and would have preferred if the show had left it for fans to figure out the mystery on their own, Lisbon’s reaction is pretty good. I’m always happy to see Vince return and the episode wraps up the ongoing betrayal of Shettrick leaving the door open for next week’s season finale which will once again focus on the man responsible for Jane joining the CBI – Red John.
Am I the only one that thought they were going to do more with Brenda? They showed she was dirty weeks ago, forgot about it, and then rushed to reveal it here. I totally agree with you that they didn’t need to come out and say the man’s tongue was in the box. Like you I figured it out.