The Mentalist (TV Series) Seeing Red (2008) User Reviews

Jane isn't impressed by the victim's 'psychic' friend

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 6 October 2017]

When a wealthy widow is run over and killed there is no shortage of suspects; the lover who seems more interested in her money and her son who reportedly has a drug problem and has gone missing are the most obvious but Jane is immediately suspicious of her 'psychic' friend… she was being paid a substantial amount for consultations and had recently been added to her will, not to mention the fact that Jane 'knows' she is a fake.

This was an impressive episode; the central mystery was intriguing with a good number of suspects. The main interest though was the nature of the 'psychic'; Jane was adamant that that she is a fraud while Van Pelt was more inclined to believe that she was the real deal; an intriguing hint that Grace might have a reason to want her to be real. The episodes ending can be seen in two ways; Jane's reaction to what she tells him about the death of his wife and child at the hands of Red John might be because he is taking comfort in what she is saying and believes her or, as I choose to believe, because he desperately wants what she says to be true but he knows she is just saying what anybody would want to hear. Simon Baker was on top form showing the emotion of this scene. Overall this was an enjoyable and subtly ambiguous episode.

Not bad at all!

[kabosse · 8/10 · 29 April 2009]

Contrary to another commentator on this episode I thought it was rather good and even ingenious. The professional rivalry between the 'real' psychic Kristina Frye and the confessed con artist Patrick Jane was explored with enough depth and detail to let the viewer be in no mistake about what this woman actually was: a very, very, VERY good con artist! And in that even, perhaps, superior to Patrick Jane himself.

Having PJ mentioning 'cold reading' was all it needed to establish that without any doubt. And especially the last scene catered to that extremely well, - and with a twist! Because no matter how fabricated and illusionary the so-called truths of those 'psychics' may be, if they do strike a nerve with their educated guesses, it can be a cathartic experience for the subject nonetheless. Any good cult leader knows and practices these techniques, and with astonishing results, too.

So back to the episode: I found the acting, the plot, and the over-all feel of it, as always, quite entertaining and of excellent quality.

The Psychic Woman

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 28 November 2021]

When the wealthy widow Rosemary Tennant is killed in a hit-and-run on the sidewalk, Patrick, Lisbon and her team investigate the case. Soon the psychic Kristina Frye comes and identifies the woman, and Patrick believes she is a con-artist based on his own experience. They go to Rosemary's house to interview the photographer Jeremy Hale and her two children Clara and Travis. They learn that Travis is a troubles teenager that is missing and he becomes the prime suspect. Further, Rosemary had visited her lawyer to change her will and all her acquaintances and family becomes suspects and Patrick plots a scheme to find the killer.

"Seeing Red' is the seventh episode of "The Mentalist" with a duel between the psychic Kristina Frye and Patrick Jane. The plot is only reasonable with a good conclusion. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Seeing Red"

She's not a real psychic!!

[rmn139 · 10/10 · 18 April 2009]

I need to comment on this since 15/30 people agreed with the other comment, that she is a real psychic and upstages our hero. I'm sorry to say that you need to pay more attention because she's totally fake. When Jane asks the "psychic" if she had talked to the mom yet, she said yes. When he asked her if she had mentioned who killed her, she responded, "No, she didn't know..." Now I ask you, how is it possible that she didn't know who killed her then, and at the seance, she knew? Obviously, when they took the recordings right before the seance, they staged the whole thing. I loved the ending. Jane knew she was a fraud, but she said exactly what he wanted to hear. His reaction is priceless. Not the best episode of the series, but definitely wasn't bad. 8/10

This is a bad episode

[Jerry_Sprinkle · 21 November 2008]

I was happy to see a Psychic detective show debut where they explicitly state that psychics are frauds each episode. This episode features a "real" psychic who not only upstages the main character, makes him cry by "channeling" the spirit of his murdered wife with a message about their murdered daughter. I was waiting for an episode like this where skeptics have their face shoved in the pile of crap that is the status quo. It wasn't enough to have a central character constantly challenge rational and critical thought at every turn, but to make our hero lose the battle of wits? I didn't want to see her humiliated or exposed as a fraud, but at least end their angle with a snappy one-liner. At least "Psych" doesn't pander to the true-believer majority.

The best episode of all!

[raja_dhaval · 10/10 · 22 January 2017]

***************Spoiler Alert!****************

This episode was really fun, a battle of wits with real psychic powers. To skeptics, here's a few proof! 1. The psychic does mention to the victim mom that she is going to die. No smartness can allow you to figure that one out. 2. She did said earlier that the victim mom didn't knew the murder, but the victim mom literally said it loud in the end and all could hear it? Why is it so difficult to understand that maybe she came to her omniscience or just this information later? Most skeptics think they know about after life when they don't even believe in it? 3. A guess isn't that easy when you haven't talk to the persons of interest in the case regarding the ability to find the car. It could have been hidden in forest or lying in some abandoned garage. A reservoir wouldn't be the first guess considering its not a safe place to dump a car. 4. When PJ was trying to analyze her work environment, he thought the glass was there to analyze body language of clients, which also turned out to be wrong. 5. PJ did had the ignorance regarding psychics and hence he assumed everything too fast. A reviewer said that the director was pushing his personal beliefs, but is it really only his? And what about the skeptics pushing their beliefs on others? It was a bold move by the director.

And now lets get to the fun part. The problem isn't those skeptics who didn't believe in psychics and left the review, its their emotional intensity they had to discredit the psychic, or manipulating situation, committing situations to prove the psychic point. You can actually see the emotional resistance to the idea of psychic. It looked as similar as religious fundamentalists, one can call them a skeptic fundamentalist, there isn't much difference between these two types of close minded people having a tunnel vision.

And for any skeptic, who is honest to self can do "mindfulness" meditation and analyze themselves regarding the validity of psychic powers. This meditation will alone prove the point to you. The question is do you discredit a theory without experimentation, than you just prove my point. Try it and see if you're really a seeker of truth.

Mindfulness has also been used in thousands of real life problems and its research is widely available for all.

http://www.mindfulnet.org/page4.htm

I am in no way saying there aren't fake con psychics, there are. Probably way more than the real ones.

Think, analyze and experiment before you speak, test your beliefs and throw them out when you find them wrong. Having a belief which is misguided and untested for complete truth is no different than those idiots who follow something because some guy wrote in thousands of years back.

Disclaimer: Not discrediting any religions here too. There is some level of truth in them once you can find through all the crap and propaganda in it.

Have a nice day! :)

Psychics are not real

[keysam-02610 · 8/10 · 30 August 2023]

The reason Frye was able to "warn" the victim that she was in danger - she did NOT say "going to die" - is not because Frye "saw" anything. Like all such con artists - like Jane - she's an excellent cold reader, she studies her clients minutely *and* the clients are telling her things they probably wouldn't tell anyone else.

The dead woman had been seeing Frye THREE TIMES A WEEK since hubby died (at least) and will have told her all about her new lover and her wayward children. Add in her wealth and her penchant for changing her will, it's a reasonable bet that she's annoying someone. Plus "you're in danger" is suitably vague and can be twisted to fit whatever happens, or, if nothing does, passed off as "oh, the danger has passed now".

This is also what Frye does at the end to Jane. She has researched him and the crime his family was victim to and she knows MOST people in such a situation would have one big thing nagging at their every moment: did they suffer, especially the child? In order to try to shore up her pretence of psychic powers, she uses this knowledge in the most callous manner. That's why Jane weeps - he's appalled by her and he KNOWS this is exactly the sort of thing that, once upon a time he would have done. Which is also what got his wife and child killed of course.

The extremely irritating & credulous Van Pelt is the low point of this show anyway, but also of this episode. It's no coincidence to me that she's also overtly religious.

I don't think the writers slipped up with this episode. I think the whole point was to show how slippery and convincing so-called psychics can be, particularly if you allow for one second that anything they say is believable. Listen more closely - it's all vague or general and the people they're speaking to are all too often providing feedback the psychic will pounce on.

Don't be taken in. Patrick Jane is right: there's no such thing as a psychic.

Jane wasn't sad because he found out Kristina was a real psychic but because she said some dupery.

[paperboy515 · 7/10 · 5 August 2023]

Jane was sad because he was reminded of his daughter, not because he thought Kristina Frye was a real psychic. He burst into tears because of the devastating memories of his family and cried for that reason. He still thinks psychics don't exist.

I guess Bruno Heller just wanted to create a dramatic scene or make us think about whether Kristina was a real psychic. Either way, it wasn't a very good episode because of the confusing ending.

I appreciate Simon Baker's heartfelt performance but I find myself compelled to deduct some points from the overall experience due to the somewhat disappointing and unclear aspect of the writer's scenario with the psychic issue.

Bad

[exess6 · 2/10 · 30 June 2013]

Very disappointing episode. I was waiting with baited breath for the moment the "real Psychic" would be exposed as a fraud.

"Knowing" about the imminent danger of the victim could simply be explained away as a random guess that happened to come true and "knowing" the whereabouts of the stolen car could also have been a lucky guess at a likely hiding place as pointed out by the character Teresa Lisbon. Jane himself holds celebrity status and is therefore very googleable. His kid was knifed in her sleep so would the obvious question be "Did she wake up"? So all explainable but the episode panders to the believers rather than the thinkers in the audience.

I think what annoyed me most was the way the "psychic" was made out to be a kindly woman attempting to help poor souls in need instead of simply a cold con artist who preys on recently bereaved and vulnerable people. Under any other circumstances a con artist (if caught) would most probably find himself/herself liable for prosecution but the same is not true for these ruthless individuals.

I wish I had missed it and I hope there are no more like it.

real or fake?

[Elysseus · 9 November 2010]

As far as I can tell, most of the creators of this show think that real psychics don't exist, they're either conmen or deluding themselves, or both. So Jane regards any conmen or manipulators as a kind of colleagues. Not as good as him, but basically in the same racket. Loads of fun.

But THIS episode treats it as if its real. In this episode Jane is a real psychic who just pretends it's all hookum. Probably writer/co-producer Gary Glasberg believes in this stuff in his personal life and twisted the vision of the show to promote his personal beliefs. Or maybe his producer vision kicked in and he figured that since a large segment of the audience actually believes in psychics, it would be good economy to throw them a bone.

Either way, this episode is a betrayal of the rest of the creators, and of intelligent viewers.

What a weak Episode!

[one_blood_sea · 1/10 · 21 December 2015]

Spoilers!

As all you guys know. Up until this point PJ and the idea of this series are being a psychic is a lie. It was all about using ones intelligence and deductive skills masterfully to come up with solutions that a normal person couldn't. I find this episode weak. Not because PJ got defeated by a psychic women. But this episode claimed that she was true psychic. It would have been okay if the woman out smarted PJ with her intelligence. But coming at the end of the episode and proving in a way that is not even that dramatic to be a real psychic. And making PJ cry was totally weak. The information she gave wasn't really relevant and didn't carry that much importance. Just to prove that real psychic is a thing. Was it worth it, to betray this series just to have this episode and this weak twist?

Worst episode

[abhijeetjeetubest · 1/10 · 25 April 2021]

This is the worst episode of the series trying to misguide our animal brain. What's next? Releasing ghosts in mortal plane? This is the last episode I watched in this series. 6 episode was their maximum capacity, now they are all out of ideas for this weak concept of a show.

This rather weak episode carries one of the most poignant scenes of the season

[yavermbizi · 5/10 · 11 October 2021]

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

Ok, so what makes this episode worthwhile and, in fact, is among the very best scenes so far is the dialogue between Jane and Van Pelt at their office kitchenette. It starts with a funny bit with Rigsby and then transforms into a brief yet very emotionally-charged and deep discussion from the category "you can't help but wonder". The acting in this scene was very strong from all 3 participants, and I loved this yet another demonstration of Jane's tendency to appraise any statement as true or false, and further to analyse its likelihood of being true. This is a character trait I share with him, and in my biased opinion it is a really useful one to have for sober yet sufficiently open-minded analysis of the world.

I immediately recognised Ashley Johnson when she appeared in this episode - I knew her from her appearance at "TableTop" (in a really awesome episode that I wish we'd gotten to see in full, without editing) and a few other things. I generally dislike recognising actors in things, and this appearance unfortunately plays into my bias: I felt as if Ashley did not give a particularly convincing performance, but I don't know to what extent it's from my inability to see her as a character in the work. I reckon that it's mostly on her, but then again, the non-main characters all aren't exactly brilliantly-played this time... Could it be the writing is to blame?

Maybe. There are a lot of very strange dialogues and turns of events, and the brother-sister forgiveness in the end was especially unbelievable. Jane's guesses (and their successfulness) seemed particularly unfounded in this episode. The murder went as luckily as it could've conceivably gone for the murderer's chances of getting away scot-free: her victim died, not just got injured - she didn't even run her over afterwards, she was so sure of that (!), and she wasn't even wounded in the collision! And the series' flashback-explainers get old.

too much crazy for one episode

[alreadyseenbeentaken · 3/10 · 3 May 2024]

Not sure why the writers would make. Van Pelt a nutjob in this episode. Trying to convince others that there are ghosts. Someone with such a mental disorder wouldn't even be allowed to be an agent. I think they have psychological evaluations and being crazy disqualifies you from that I would assume. Then there is the other nutjob. Kristina Frey. A mentalist actually believing she has a power - or playing it so well, you believe her that she believes it. Plus the killer, who has a screw lose, well, because he/she killed someone. Sorry, but a rational person will be annoyed by so many delusional nonsense.