DVD: The Mentalist – Season 4
The third season of The Mentalist was rather disappointing and even plain boring. Only at the end did the arc surrounding Red John come back to life, and Patrick Jane shooting the serial killer in a crowded mall was only barely enough to wake us up again and look forward to this fourth season. With Red John being dead and Jane clearly having “murdered” someone, could Season 4 bring back some of the excitement we had with the first season?
Luckily, yes. The makers didn’t make the mistake to move forward as if nothing had happened and we start off with Patrick Jane having to go to court for what he did but managing to convince the jury he did what needed to be done (did you expect otherwise?). Of course, that’s only scratching the very surface as Jane in the meantime found out that the man he killed was indeed a serial killer, but not the notorious Red John.
This sets us up for yet another season of the Mentalist with all kinds of individual cases that cover plenty of murders, victims and killers, but the good thing is that the Red John arc gets a lot more attention. There’s hardly an episode passing by without at the very least Red John being mentioned, and that combined with a bit more action (did the series see its budget pumped up?) improves the quality big time.
Next to Red John getting more attention, we also noticed some other changes. There’s a new chief in town and also more focus to the supporting cast. Cho gets a sexy informant (The O.C.’s Samaire Armstrong), Wayne Rigsby gets a lawyer girlfriend and Van Pelt has some issues with the fact she killed her boyfriend who turned out to be helping Red John. Cho and Rigsby deliver some comic relief which isn’t always equally well-done but does bring some additional fun to the show, but Van Pelt suddenly acting as “bad cop” is truly unconvincing. So this fourth season of The Mentalist isn’t perfect yet, but it’s back on track to becoming an above average cop show.
The image isn’t bad, but the faces of the cast – and then most of all Patrick Jane – tend to look a bit too yellow compared to the rest of their skin. This doesn’t seem to be related to the transfer but rather that the make-up department isn’t doing such a great job. For the rest things are what you expect from a TV show on DVD and also the sound is as expected with some minor use of the surround channels for some additional atmosphere (music mostly) and occasional effects.
6.0
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