The Mentalist – ‘Jumped The Shark’ With Psychic’s Prediction?

This will probably be something that goes on for a while until the series tries to approach it again, but let me know your views. It goes like this:

Patrick Jane ends up finishing the episode called ‘Seeing Red‘ with a bit of a quandary for me – because it seemed to imply that he got a valid ‘psychic message’ from the character Kristina Frye, who featured in that episode as a professional medium.

Since Jane’s wife and daughter had been murdered five years before the series began by a serial killer known as “Red John”, it was already pointed out that a quick internet search could have provided her with all the information she needed (let alone the fact that as a TV psychic, his ‘shiny suits’ could have caught her attention long before. I have heard from one source that it’s fairly common practice for all the ‘psychics in the industry’ to be aware of one another).

Jane has consistently demonstrated a very hard-nosed ‘goat’ attitude of a convinced skeptic – he was a practicing TV psychic, he does go into a little detail (varies every episode, but in general, he comes across as an authority) in regards to cold-reading and some of the ‘tricks of the trade’ in regards to how people are fooled by psychic claimants. His disdainful attitude towards Frye is pretty well established from the start of the episode (she’s not really a very nice person anyway, quite frankly – I certainly have issues with her sleeping with her former client’s boyfriend whilst she was ‘treating’ the client for emotional problems).

Yet Frye’s parting message of ‘your daughter didn’t suffer any pain as she was asleep when she was murdered by Red John’, and his bursting into tears (let alone the pro-psychic police officer Grace sensitively shutting the door as he shed those tears alone in the interrogation room), seemed to indicate a hit, perhaps? A sudden ‘change of heart’ on the part of Jane?

Was it implying that Grace was being vindicated after all her former bull-headed insistence that ‘psychics are real’? I did, however, like Jane’s blank response of ‘that would be really sad’ when she did try her insensitive approach of bringing up his family as possibly being ‘disappointed’ that he didn’t believe in an afterlife.

Then I recollected that I had heard (and read in several crime novels) that in cases of violent death, an autopsy can at least give an appoximation of how much pain a person suffered? Or was that a fallacy? For example, ‘Measurement of substance P and met-enkephalin in the serum of violent death victims‘:

Very often the allocation of putative damages for wrongful death and the determination of aggravating factors in the sentencing of an individual convicted of homicide by a jury is based on a subjective determination of the amount of pain suffered by the victim. This study was designed to determine whether the quantitative determination of peptides involved in nociception and inflammation offer the potential to provide an objective basis for an assessment of pain prior to death.

…Although owing to a number of variables, a direct correlation between peptide concentrations and the level of pain may not be possible, the results of the study indicate that a presumption of antemortem pain may be possible with future study.

Certainly it’s of interest in cases of prosecution, as demonstrated in this blurb for a book called Medical-Legal Aspects of Pain and Suffering. There could be physical evidence that indicated that his daughter did suffer, beyond what chemical analysis could show, such as blood patterning. The case of the space shuttle Challenger is one case that was raised in court in matters of pain and suffering experienced prior to death.

I’m uncertain whether autopsies are mandatory in case of sudden or violent death, but in the case of the serial killer Red John, I would find it odd if they did not investigate the bodies for further clues (indeed, to at least ascertain if it wasn’t a copy-cat killer… something that the very first episode tackled for its plot, in fact).

So – was Jane crying because she was wrong; his daughter did suffer and it vindicated everything he felt about psychics taking advantage of people in pain? Or did she strike a nerve, a hope he had? Or was she in fact, correct?

Either way, one could say it was a lucky or unlucky guess. But I think that it certainly has struck a little blow towards the skeptical attitude this show usually contains. What are your thoughts?

Tagged as: autopsy, criticism, forensics, prediction, psychic, Seeing Red, serial killer, skeptic, The Mentalist, TV series, violent death