robin tunney

CBS is promoting this Thursday's episode of The Mentalist as "the episode you've been waiting for." Not sure about that, but this preview below does seem rather intense. Three people are murdered in the CBI office and Red John might be involved? Yikes.

[Watch clips and episodes of The Mentalist and other shows at SlashControl.]

(S02E07) "This man ... I don't even know what he is. He is an accident waiting to happen." - Bosco about Jane

Don't adjust your computer screen. The picture above was not tempered with: Jane and Bocso are in the same area and are not at each others' throat! As Bob hinted at the end of his review of last week's The Mentalist episode, the "Jane and Bosco having to work closely together on a case" episode we've been expecting since Bosco joined the show has finally arrived!

(S02E05) "Spooky!" - Patrick Jane

As soon as the introduction sequence played out, I was excited at the thought of seeing how Patrick Jane and more down-to-earth Lisbon would deal with a spooky case.

I knew Lisbon would not believe in ghosts but what about Jane? Would he believe in them for real or would he fake believing in them for the case or would he not believe in them at all?

This spooky episode, perfect for Halloween time, also finally (!) gave us some relationship advancement between Rigsby and Van Pelt.

(S02E04) "Everybody is. I am." - Jane, on people who are geeks

Is Patrick Jane really, really brave or just clueless?

I've been wondering that the entire series. He's not a fighter. He's not even one of these "strong, silent" types who acts wimpy but is secretly a karate master or former Navy Seal or whatever. He honestly doesn't have any physical skills but he insists on interrogating people who could turn his bones into mulch. Like tonight's confrontation with bikers in a dive bar. Or maybe he was comfortable because Lisbon was there with a badge and a gun. I think he's done it in the past with no backup though, so I'm not sure if he's brave or just oblivious or doesn't care.

(S02E03) "I didn't lie ... he made risotto." Lisbon, to Jane, about a certain cooking show with "the angry man" she watched on Tuesday

Hypnotism is a lame shortcut in TV shows and movies. Hypnotists seem to do it so easily, and the subjects seem to be put under so quickly and then remember just enough to solve the puzzle or at least advance the plot to another point.

That's why tonight's hypnotism of Lisbon by Jane was so satisfying. I groaned when it started, but I like the fact that he hypnotized her without her knowing it, how she made a comment about Rigsby and Van Pelt while under, and how the hypnotism didn't really work in the end.

(S02E02) Tonight's episode of The Mentalist was an incisive look at how the ... HEY THAT WAS STARSKY!

Yes, Paul Michael Glaser made an appearance in this episode, and it's good to see him in something else besides those fix-your-credit commercials.

This season seems to be about the personal lives of Jane and Lisbon a lot more than the first season was, how the search for Red John is affecting both of them (Jane is on the outside of the investigation; Jane is seeing a psychiatrist because of what happened in the season finale). Last season I didn't want every other episode to be about Red John, and I still don't, but I'm more intrigued by the Red John investigation than the murder-of-the-week. Where last season the tension in the CBI regarding cases and who was in charge was scattered here and there; that tension seems to be a theme this second season.

(S02E01) "If you sit by the river bank long enough you'll see the bodies of your enemies float by." - Patrick Jane

Where will the second season of The Mentalist go? Will we focus on Red John the whole time or will we get cases of the week until we have a Red John episode? It looks like it's going to be more of the latter (though there's a big plot development concerning the Red John case in this season opener), and that's just fine.

I do wish the cases were more Columbo or Murder, She Wrote-ish, though.

CBS has posted a season one recap of The Mentalist, and if you don't watch the show you'd think that every single episode was a hunt for Red John. They're not, of course. This recap doesn't give you a feel for what Jane and company do on the show but it does give you the background on that case and Jane.

I just saw a promo for the new season and the gang is getting a new boss this season. It starts September 24.

I was happy with the way The Mentalist ended its first season. It didn't go overboard with a season finale cliffhanger scenario with someone in a coma, an explostion, or someone vanishing, it just had a case end and the characters learn something from it. Sure, the episode focused on Jane's nemesis Red John, so there was more urgency and importance to the plot. But he was never caught (though we did learn some facts about him, which will lead nicely into next season). What did everyone else think?

(S01E18) This was a fun episode of The Mentalist, reminiscent of parts of the psychic episode, "Seeing Red," in that we got to see Jane in a comfort zone of his, something that he knows well. The difference is that Jane believes in hypnosis.

And we got to see Jane do his thing tonight ... his hypnosis thing anyway. He was clever enough to put the tracer in Rigsby's pocket, but my favorite episodes of The Mentalist are when Jane knows whodunnit ahead of time and sets them up. When Jane is a step -- or two -- ahead of everyone else, he shines.

(S01E17) "This is a goat turd about six months old." -- Cho, about Jane's "fossilized worm"

Ah, a few things I love about The Mentalist showed up in tonight's episode: a quote from Cho, a setup from Jane, and Lisbon and Jane banter. Top that off with a couple of my favorite guest stars and you've got yourself a fun episode of The Mentalist.

Oh, and we can't forget Jane doing his Jane things: trying to get Rigsby and Van Pelt together in a car for three hours, monologuing about the beauty of the desert, teasing Lisbon and Faulk (the "Boom!" line) and smiling throughout everything.

(S01E16) "My other senses are heightened. They're super-heightened. I'm like Daredevil." -- Jane on his blindness

Now, this was an interesting episode of The Mentalist. We veered from the formula a bit, and I liked it. We got to find out a lot more about Jane's past, albeit Red John-free. Sadly, this episode was fairly Cho-free, as well, but we did get a lot of Rigsby / Van Pelt payoff.

Mostly what this episode was about, though, was Jane's questionable past: the lies he told to people, the money he unabashedly took, and the lives he ruined with his greed and his false representation of his psychic abilities. Jane is clearly carrying around a lot more guilt than just his family being killed, although that was obviously the defining moment for Jane.

Here we are in the middle of the March sweeps period (March this year instead of February, because we were supposed to switch to digital TV on February 17 and Nielsen was worried that would screw up the numbers) and The Mentalist is a repeat tonight. Not only that, but it's the third week in a row where the show has been a repeat.

Hmmm...I wonder why CBS has made this decision?

(S01E15) The Mentalist never fails to entertain, even when the case is obvious. There was something about the writing or directing of this show early in the season; I could peg every killer nearly the moment he or she was onscreen, because of the weird shifty thing they did.

Well, that didn't happen in this episode; instead, they dropped the biggest, most obvious clue in the history of procedurals. I kept hoping that it was a red herring, but no. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy this episode; I loved the twists and turns the case took, but I hated knowing, absolutely knowing, who the killer was, in that different way than just the shifty stuff.

See what we found while investigating the set of 'The Mentalist.'

What do you get when you cross Simon Baker's devastatingly charming smile with a vengeful serial killer on the loose? Ratings gold for CBS, or as you probably know it, 'The Mentalist.'

The biggest (OK, only) breakout hit of the fall TV season, 'The Mentalist' has already garnered the People's Choice Award for "Favorite New TV Drama" and reached heights of close to 20 million viewers -- becoming the only freshman series to top Nielsen's weekly primetime ratings since 'Desperate Housewives' first debuted in 2005.

AOL TV visited the set at Stage 14 of the Warner Bros. lot in L.A. to interview the show's stars Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman and Amanda Righetti and creator Bruno Heller. Keep reading to see what they think makes the show so successful and to find out more about the CBI offices. -- By Maggie Furlong