26.9.13

Adventures in Fake Journalism: The Mentalist 509

For a little more than half of Season 5, Patrick Jane spent the episodes making a list of everyone he'd ever shook hands with in the hopes of figuring out which of them may have been the notorious serial killer Red John. In episode 509 we got a peek at a couple of pages from the book, and it was an interestingly detailed piece of work, from a propmaking standpoint.

It reads-

BRETT PARTRIDGE
CBI Forensics Dept.
Totally Macabre
Handles RJ Cases

ELLIS MARS
Bumbling sort,
"PSYCHIC"
Todd Johnson Investigation

DEAN HARKEN
Agent at CDCA
Bio Tech Facility
Red Hair

JASON COOPER
Second in command
at Vizualize
STILES COUP

WALTER MASHBURN
Playboy
Unlimited $$
Intrigued by Murder

VINT MOLINARI
CBI Missing Persons
Searched for Kristina F.
Made no Progress

DR LINUS WAGNER
Early Case
In Prison
Copycat RJ

VIRGIL MINELLI
Old CBI Boss
Retired

DR TOWLEN MORNING
Family Doctor
Deceased ?
Early R.J. Victims

OSVALDO ARDILES
D.A.'s office
Road Block

I'm impressed by what a good job they did of writing these little notes in character, reminding us with little details just how paranoid Patrick is, while also putting out some references to earlier episodes for fans who pay close attention to the show.

Also super interesting? This is the first time Brett Partridge's name appeared on the show - earlier I thought that, despite him being a named character in the pilot script, his name never actually appeared until the fifth season ender, but it turns out that it was written in Jane's book half a year earlier. Significant? Probably no more than the fact that Walter Mashburn's name is on there.

Another page is briefly visible in the scene-


But obviously it's not as useful:

(cut off) HARPER
(cut off) Be

ANTHONY ASTRINO

SAMMY CORRADO
Bank Thing No Chance

JANNIE PENVARI

BRIANA MORINI

Two women's names on this list, which is a little strange. Also, I've never seen the name 'Jannie' before. Huh.

Frustratingly, there's clearly a number of other written-out pages in the notebook-


But other than a 'David' at the top of that page, I can't make any of the names out.

Damn it, The Mentalist, why don't you do the normal thing and put PDFs of all your props on your website? Oh, what's that? No one does that? Ah, okay.

Still, good work on the detail, folks.

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