k-golpayegani Reviews

The Mentalist (2008–2015)

Tyger, Tyger...

[8/10 · 27 April 2017]

"Tyger Tyger, Burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

By William Blake and narrated by "Red John" as identifying his ferocity and power as a tiger

The Mentalist is a high-rated TV-series that received positive reviews not only because of its original concept but also for its connectivity to the audience. The creator, Bruno Heller, composed a unique and combining genres which filled the series with drama, mystery, thriller and crime resulting in an exciting and popular TV-series. The timeline is spread over 7 seasons starring selected actors as Simon Baker and Robin Tunney as the main characters.

The series follows Patrick Jane, played by Simon Baker, who is a consultant at the CBI (Californian Bureau of Investigation) based in Sacramento, California. Although not being an officer of the law, he uses his conceptual skills from his former career as a successful, yet undeniably deceitful psychic methods to help a team of CBI agents to solve murder cases. He grew up within the environment of showbiz people, including his father who thought him how to sell hope to people and telling them what they want to hear. Being a family man and a TV-star as a con man pretending to be a psychic brought him a huge and devastating consequence, coming home one day to see his wife, Angela Ruskin Jane, and his daughter, Charlotte Anne Jane found murdered by seeing the smiley face drawn on the wall by the blood of the victims – known by the actions of the serial killer "Red John".

This personal vengeance happened when Patrick Jane was running his psychic program on TV and called him out on live broadcast. Here we get to know the real reason for Patrick Jane's involvement with the law enforcement, which is to track down the serial killer "Red John" and to revenge personally as he told Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney). As she is the officer of the law, there was a huge disagreement between Jane and Lisbon. Thus Patrick Jane tries to strengthen the trust bond by always being on the team's side and showing Lisbon the trust from him in order to get trust from her. Also mentioning that "Revenge is a poison. Revenge is a tool for fools and mad men".

During his time with the team at CBI, he investigated the "Red John" cases in his own mind leaving everybody out of it. Patrick Jane learns that he has met "Red John" and shaken his hand at some point and after analyzing all the evidence, he narrows down the list to seven people, most of them working within the investigation authorities including the CBI director, Gale Bertram.

Chasing all the evidence to its end, Patrick Jane finally got to know the true identity behind "Red John". Patrick Jane personally avenged him and left the country as of the reasonable crime he committed.

When the "Red John" Case was solved, the TV-series continued with a small turn involving the FBI where they bring back Patrick Jane for his conceptual skills in solving murder cases with a deal. The Mentalist was extended with one more season alongside new members.

The last season was considered monotonous, though following a usual investigation work with some trace of The "Original" Mentalist. Although the finale ends up defining Patrick Jane's character by not making him a murderer.

The creation of "Red John" and the curiosity of who he is, was the success behind the brilliant plot. Showing the suspects and their suspicious actions leading towards identifying The "Red John" who killed Jane's family, episode by episode, made the viewers have their own theory and reason until the identity was revealed. However though, "Red John" having operatives was lately introduced and the entire show had the feeling of one-man show where Patrick Jane does it all.

The Mentalist dropped down many jaws with excellent acting, exciting topic and waterproof plot. All said, the ending was very surprising and unpredictable as smoothly fading out.

Consistency is how the show was structured, following each episode very creatively and dependably. As the old saying; "Curiosity kills the cat", the show was keeping the viewer curious and wanting to see what happens next as the story was getting better. The end clearly defined that there will be no more episodes to it.

True Detective (2014– )

"Once there was only dark, if you ask me the light is winning"

[6/10 · 26 April 2017]

True Detective was directed by Nic Pizzolatto who based the entire story line on the concept of anthology. The concept of anthology series was especially popular during the Golden Age of Television in the 1950's and represents different story and a different set of characters in each season or episode for that matter. The series contained 2 seasons of 8 episodes each.

The series was about, two homicide detectives, Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rusty Cohle (Matthew McConaugghey) who investigate mysterious cases of women and children then discover personal secrets of those involved. The unique and highlighting point of the series is the clash and action between two personalities; Marty Hart being a usual detective with the lack of time to spend with family and Rusty Cohle being the brains behind the investigation and work. However, Rusty had no families to be around and was pretty much dedicated to work, and his special way of "Seeing Things" literally made the viewer see things from a different perspective when it came to the two fantastic leads.

Rusty considered himself a realist but in philosophical terms he is a pessimist and Marty was the optimist. They could work with each other but that stayed only at work as Rusty's meta-philosophical way of seeing the world was the core element of the clash between the two personalities.

The conflict between the two personalities, could be seen as the cartoonic Tom & Jerry where none of them and both of them wanted each other.

What actually turned this detective work into an interesting series, was that it was unclear where the show was going and where it will take you. The trick of leaving a door open for the next episode and real time hallucinations though reflecting on "Curiosity kills the cat" made the show more attractive.

The show contained of 2 seasons, reflecting over the anthology series, having different story and different set of characters. The second season starred Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch as the main roles and followed a police work in the urban areas. The turn in the second season was, statistically, not appreciated by many viewers. The turn was especially in the destructive police work and less living up to its title. Taking into consideration the play being more or less muddled and confusing which brought down the attractiveness. However, there has been a plan to produce the third season with unmentioned actors.

Person of Interest (2011–2016)

"Did we win, did we lose?"

[10/10 · 26 April 2017]

"You are being watched. The government has a secret system, the machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything, violent crime involving ordinary people. The government considered these people irrelevant. We don't. Haunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You can never find us, but victim or perpetrator if your number is up we'll find you!"

Person of Interest is a crime-thriller TV-show about a billionaire computer programmer, Harold Finch played by Michael Emerson, who invents a computer system for the U.S government with the capacity of collecting and examining every possible source of information with the purpose of identifying and predicting planned subversive attacks. However though, this positive action lasted until a competitor entered the game that kick starts a surveillance program and manipulates people in opening their lives to the public – to be controlled with ease. Harold Finch selects John Reese played by Jim Caviezel to investigate and operate on the information that The Machine delivers. They both get some deep contacts in the NYPD where Detective Carter and Detective Fusco are a helping hand to their investigation.

The TV-series was made based on a well-written scenario created by Jonathan Nolan with the suitable choice of actors who were Jim Caviezel, Michael Emerson, Kevin Chapman and Taraji P. Henson.

Selecting Michael Emerson for the main role in the series based on his unique and remarkable past made his appearance distinctive and extraordinarily attractive. Jim Caviezel who plays John Reese, the presumed dead Special Forces type who lives on the streets when we first see him, contributes to how compelling Jonathan Nolan together with J. J. Abrams created the crime-thriller.

The show contained of 5 seasons and it was obvious that the 5th season was going to be the last of the remarkable TV-show. There were a lot of reviews of this TV-show and surprisingly many viewers based on the fact that Person of Interest re-worked the essential mystery genre in an unusual way. Amazingly, Person of Interest is more of a stalking and not considered detective work: There are no clues in Person of Interest, nor are there any mysteries to tease out.

Person of Interest kicked off its fourth season with an action packed episode that gave us hope for the future of Team Machine fighting with Samaritan, but revealed some of the challenges it will face. Season 4 was a decent demonstration of the show's charms: some action, some humor, some high-tech intrigue and an assemble of actors who seem to be having fun and whose characters actually seem to care for one another.

The ending of the 5th season was really catchy to a high degree and many described the ending of the last season as "where men cried" and compared to the last scene of the seventh sequence of the Fast & Furious movie.

"If you can hear this, you're alone. The only thing left of me is the sound of my voice. I was built to predict people. But to predict them, you have to truly understand them. So I began by breaking their lives down into moments, trying to find the connections, the things that explained why they did what they did. And what I found was, the moment that often mattered the most, the moment you truly found out who they were, was often their last one."