The Mentalist (TV Series) Scarlett Fever (2009) User Reviews

Death at a posh residence in Sacramento, California...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 17 February 2009]

Another intriguing episode of THE MENTALIST with Simon Baker as the man who has a good reading of people and plays upon instincts to trap a murderer's confession.

As usual, the dialog is crisp and to the point and Baker has to find out who wanted to kill a woman named Scarlett at a house party where the woman was poisoned and fell to her death from an upper floor railing. Naturally, most of the guests have some sort of grudge to hold against the victim. But after the second murder of a young female on a massage table, Simon realizes where the trouble lies after a perceptive conversation with one of the guests.

He plots with the first victim's child, a young boy, to get the murderer to reveal their guilt.

It's clever and well done with another sly performance from Baker, who seems to be enjoying himself immensely in this handsomely produced series.

The Country Club

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 1 December 2021]

In Sacramento, during a party at the businessman Victor Marquesa's house, his wife Scarlett falls from the balcony on the floor of the room and dies. CBI assume the case and soon they learn that Scarlett was poisoned, drinking a beverage spiked with raticide. They investigate Victor and his managers and find that he had been embezzled and is near bankruptcy and Scarlett, who had a small jewelry business, was supporting their lifestyle. They head to the country club where Scarlett was the president and interview several futile woman. When another woman, who is the prime suspect, dies in the club, Patrick Jane plots a plan to catch the killer.

"Scarlett Fever" is another episode of "The Mentalist" with many twists. The conclusion is corny, but not so bad, with Patrick Jane exposing the identity of the criminal in the end. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Scarlett Fever"

Death at a country club

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 17 November 2017]

Scarlett Marquesa is throwing a party for her country club friends but the night ends badly for her… she is poisoned then falls over a balcony to her death. The only obvious clue is a note written in lipstick. The CBI are called in and soon there are plenty of suspects; Scarlett's husband, his financial director who had been stealing funds or any of the women at the club who wanted the prestigious position Scarlett had recently been elected to. It soon emerges that Scarlett's jewellery business was keeping the family afloat; she seems to have been making more than one would expect for the items she made. Later there is a second murder and Jane hatches a plan with Scarlett's young son to expose the killer.

This was a pretty solid story. The murder was typical of so many TV series; a death among a group of rich, backstabbing people. That may be a little cliché but it is an effective way of providing plenty of relatively unsympathetic suspects. There are plenty of motives and a twist or two before the killer is exposed. As usual there are some good laughs the best of which was probably the early scene where Jane is told off for hypnotising a suspect in an unrelated case and the final scene where Rigsby has a date with one of the Country Club women… he is clearly way out of his depth! The cast, both regulars and guest stars to a solid job. Overall not a classic episode but still a lot of fun.

Gravity

[darbski · 10/10 · 4 December 2017]

**SPOILERS** Very good story, with one of the best entry "death" scenes I've seen on the show. Jane and Lisbon have to figure out just who would want a popular, influential member of the Country Club set dead; and very conspicuously, at that. One of the things that I really liked was Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman), being pursued by Jackie Shaper (Lisa Arturo); She is totally HOT in this episode. Spoiler - it's unfortunately the only episode she's in. This series loves the presentation of adult, mature women in very desirable roles; it is appreciated by many adult men, me included. Smart, sexy, cool, yes.

The way Patrick engineers the catching of the killer, and quite frankly, neither victims were deserving of much sympathy; was artistic, as well as devious, and you gotta see it for yourself. He follows the clues, but it takes an inventive turn of the screw to get the guilty party to admit the truth. Love's kinda strange that way. I still say, though, that the initial gravity influenced death scene was priceless.

A great episode by the series' low standards so far (only decent otherwise)

[yavermbizi · 5/10 · 11 October 2021]

My overall rating of "The mentalist"'s Season 1: 4/10.

I'd say the main draw of this episode is the character of Patience - I really enjoyed Jane's interactions with or reactions to her. Her irreverence, sarcasm, smarts and looks make for a very compelling and fun character, and a cool foil for the CBI. The murderer's confession in the end also made an impression on me: I don't even remember watching any "The mentalist" in Russian, other than the Season 3 finale, I believe, but somehow the Russian dubbing of this episode's confession had etched itself into my mind. A rare case, perhaps, when the dubbing is better than the original - not that the latter is bad, there is just a sort of profoundness in the former when Patience's murder is brought up. I also loved how this confession scene plays into the overall narrative: while some people express the opinion that "The mentalist" is the Red John storyline with a bunch of filler/fluff around it, in this season we've actually seen a lot of play on Jane's mental state and soul-searching in regards to Red John even in the "filler" episodes. Especially interesting is his search for the answer on whether, as "Dishonored"'s tagline puts it, "revenge solves everything". Patrick certainly leans to the answer "yes" - in the awful episode "Flame Red" (that I didn't even finish) he gets some assurances from a successful avenger that indeed it does, but here he's forced to grapple with the opposite message. Although, I suppose, a case can be made - and Patrick is likely to mentally make it for himself - that even if the murderer is right, simply the fact that the feelings never go away doesn't mean revenge is not to be taken, because "the lesson" still has to be "learnt".

Unfortunately the potency of this topic is but a fleeting, subtle moment, and a lot of the episode feels too lighthearted and non-serious: Rigsby and Van Pelt not even pulling out their guns as they go to confront a murder suspect, the women's bickering... A lot of the usual flaws are there as well. I'll also note that I recognised the actor playing Scarlett's husband as the Mayor of LA from "Bosch" (I sure am finding more and more overlap between these two series), but I don't have much else to note about him, other than he has a moment of poor writing as he for no reason conceals the supposed scale of Scarlett's jewellery-making the first time around.