The Mentalist 6×02 – “Black-Winged Redbird” – Recap

This episode of The Mentalist (Black-Winged Redbird) starts with a man dying in a car explosion.

Meanwhile, we see Betram arriving at the house where Lisbon found Partridge. Jane is already there. Lisbon was found by the SacPD, unconscious but alive.
Jane yells that he needs a bottle of water, and then he washes Lisbon’s face from the blood. A powerful scene, in which we see in Jane’s face all the fear and the tension.

The next scene shows us Lisbon entering the CBI. She looks fine, and she walks towards her office. However, we see her face slowly fading to horror as she sees CBI Director Bertram painting the Red John smile on an office’s window, while the bodies of Cho, Rigsby, Van Pelt and Jane lie on the floor. They are all dead. Reede Smith (another one from the Red John suspect list) is next to Jane’s body, his hands covered with blood. He asks Lisbon to give him a hand. Lisbon’s shock grows as another suspect, Ray Haffner calls her name and says “I’m sorry about this”, and he is about to kill her… but Lisbon wakes up. She’s safe in a hospital’s bed. It was “just” a dream. Jane is by her side, he tells her that everything’s all right. He explains to her what happened. She recalls that Partridge is dead, but Jane has to tell what Red John did to her.
Lisbon says that she will have the GPS trackers removed by Van Pelt.
The two talk again about how could Red John know about Jane’s memories, things he could only know. Lisbon seems to believe that Red John could be psychic, but Jane has another idea. Sophie Miller. His former psychiatrist. Jane must have told her about those memories, and Red John had access to those informations somehow. Jane calls her, but Sophie isn’t answering her phone. Jane decides to pay her a visit, but to his horror he finds Sophie’s head in her kitchen’s oven. Red John killed her.

Meanwhile, Lisbon is back at the CBI, after she received a chilling visit by Ray Haffner, who seems very interested in her and the progress in the Red John’s investingation.
Before removing the GPS trackers, Van Pelt tells Lisbon that 3 of the 7 Red John suspects are together: it’s Betram, Smith and sheriff McAllister. Jane then goes to Betram’s office and interrups the three while they are discussing some case. Jane tells the three that he’s getting closer to Red John. After Jane’s gone, Smith tells Betram that he has to find out what Jane knows.
As the case of the week is solved – the car exploded due to a collision with a drone, and the man who was inside the car committed suicide to cover his company that designes drones from scandal- Jane with the help of the team discovers that Red John underwent some sessions with Sophie Miller, under the false name of Jay Roth. He made the files of those sessions disappear, but he also made a terrible mistake. Sophie Miller in fact, used to dictate all of her sessions to be then transcribed by an outside company. But Red John couldn’t know about this important detail. This company has kept a copy of all Miller’s records.

The last scene of this episode shows Jane and Lisbon listening to Sophie’s voice while she describes Red John’s features:
“Mr. Roth came in complaining of a recent issue with severe acrophobia.
He’s middle-aged, in good health, with no stated prior history of psychiatric issues.
He has no living family, but many friends on whom he relies for company and emotional support.
He’s well-spoken, good posture, self-possessed.
In the waiting room, he sat calmly in one place, needing no distraction.
Though I note, he is an excellent whistler.
His self-presentation is pleasant, but there are hints in his behavior of a damaged and narcissistic personality.
He says he deals with conflict and adversity easily, though.
I’m not convinced he’s being truthful about this.
In fact, much of what he said, though spoken convincingly, did not match what I can only call my instinctive response to his presence, though I cannot point to identifiable clinical behaviors
that indicate this.
I sense something deceptive and dark in his emotional makeup.
However, there is every indication that his phobia issues are real
whether acrophobia or some other issue remains to be seen.”

Thanks to Sophie Miller, Jane and Lisbon have made a step forward, while Red John can’t know about it.