At least one aspect of Castle has been resolved.
I like the Red John episodes of The Mentalist, but Snooooopy is right in that he seems to be too unreachably super-powered.
Matt LeBlanc is starring in a very funny Showtime series, “Episodes”. If you haven’t seen it, catch it as they are starting season two sometime soon.
The show is about bringing a British TV hit to the US and trying to duplicate the success here. One of the writers gives Matt grief for wanting to turn the lesbian librarian into a heterosexual librarian, as it is a major point of the show. To paraphrase Matt: “That works in the UK as your shows might be 6 episodes, but here we might have 26 the first season and then, if the show is picked up for a second or third season, the day is going to come where you wish you could use her as a love interest for me. Don’t write yourself into a corner.”
This is the problem with Castle and Mentalist (and now Revenge) - when they started off with the pilot, they had their first season arc and now what? Oops - you mean we might have to keep this going for seasons 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on?!?!?! Holy crap. What do we do now?
I think sometimes the biggest disadvantage a show can have is to be a success - especially if they didn’t really think things through all that well way back on the drawing board.
With Castle, there is only so long you can flirt before it gets silly (or one of them admits they are Gay).
With Mentalist, searching for the serial killer can be stretched out for a long time but it is hard to keep that going without yanking out lots of red herrings for Red John.
And with Revenge - at some point people are going to notice 3/4 of the population of the Hamptons are dead.
I think the biggest problem with the Mentalist is that they need to call in the BAU already - they could have solved Red John in an hour.
There’s an easier way. Go to the bottom of the page and there’s a link to all the BB codes.
As to the OP, I’m hoping the writers wrap up the Beckett’s mother mystery arc in the upcoming season. I agree it’s run its course.
If the show feels it needs a mystery to keep the series going, they can open up the mystery of Castle’s father.
I also want the witty dialogue and the crime-solving. Plus, I like the interaction of the ensemble.
I watch The Mentalist even though I think Teresa Lisbon is THE most unattractive woman on TV. She has the slack-mouth thing that is just repulsive. Bad hair, bad skin, bad clothes. Also, after all these seasons, how can she still be so skeptical of Jane?? He has proved himself to be of some minimal use over and over again. It’s not season *one *anymore!
And Jane gets tiresome with that smug, sneaky, clever, surprise-reveal thing that he pulls. Lisbon oughta just shoot him. And the flashbacks of his doomed family are reminiscent of similar flashbacks of Gibbs’ (NCIS) similarly doomed family. I don’t care for the Red John thing, just like I didn’t like Monk spending all those years looking for Trudy’s killer, only to find that the clue/answer to her killer’s identity was in a package she gave him for Christmas right before she died that he-- out of misguided sentimentality– never opened until the last show. Gimme a break.
The redhead on The Mentalist is cute. But the one I LOVE is Cho. He is like Joe Friday, only not so light-hearted and jovial (that’s a joke). He’s principled, rigid, single-minded… and those arms bursting out of their sleeves… 
He’s the only interesting character, and that includes Jane. But anyhow, I watch it.
The show would be dead without Cho, and the odd thing is that his rigid stance allows him to be the comic relief on the show. He’s the real reason that I watch the show. Patrick Jane acts like such a pompous ass most of the time that I would have punched him in the nose long ago. I’d like to see the show drop down to just Cho, Grace and Jane.
I was just telling my wife last night (having caught up with the season finale) that the only way I will be satisfied with the Mentalist is if Jane ends up actually being Red John - that this whole time, he’s had a fractured personality, with the “Red John” one being perfectly aware of the fact. It’s the ultimate con - he’s conned himself into believing he’s not a psycho killer.
I’m at this point as well.
Actually, that would be really cool.
Agreed - by the time the mystery was solved, it was anticlimactic. It didn’t come near to being clever or exciting enough to have justified all those years of buildup.
I didn’t watch the show full time. Was the killer only introduced in the last episode. The should have made it a minor character we saw a few times every season.
actually, they introduced the “character” (the judge) early on, but very, very little was known other than the name - the actual ‘person’ was only introduced in the last 2-3 eps.
Yes, but in Supernatural, they closed the arcs; even the 5-season arc got closed when it was supposed to be closed.
Amor en tiempos revueltos is a Spanish TV series which is lasting a lot longer than they’d originally expected due to its success, but the original arcs got closed. Many of the people who lived in the neighborhood during the first season moved away; some have returned for different reasons, but these are different arcs - they’re related to the original only inasmuch as it’s the same characters and they carry whatever happened “way back when” as part of their baggage. What happened then influences what happens now, but it happenED and finished happening. The guy who was dying went and died; the little deaf girl found a school. They have several arcs going at the same time, and they move in one direction or another depending on which ones seem to have people hooked.
Many of the dragging-the-arc-series have a mixture of one arc and MotW, and the one arc may be something which crops up “for real” twice in one season, even if it gets mentioned in every single episode.
I have to say, I really like the idea, but I just don’t think that a relatively fluffy show like this one is the type to saddle its main character with such a substantial body count. But I can easily see such a possibility being explored in a season finale (to be explained away in the first moments of the next season, of course).
Enough of the multiple personality/repressed memory bullshit. It’s woo-woo, it doesn’t exist. It’s a psychiatrist scam and the concept needs to be put to bed.
Woo-woo may be bullshit, but it can make for fun fiction…hell, if you want to take shows to task for bad science, most modern procedurals would be canceled! 
My wife, for the record, hates my idea. But then she likes the character of Jane too much to see him as a baddy.
Personally, I’m just tired of the uber-genius unseen super charming unstoppable killer arc. The show works fine when its a fluffy light quirky version of Criminal Minds. The longer they stretch out the Red John stuff, the harder it becomes to believe that they would have any chance of catching him. Unless of course Jane is conning the shit out of all of them.
I propose a *Mentalist *Drinking Game.
A shot every time Teresa Lisbon says, “Where’s Jane?”
Another every time Van Pelt is left behind alone in the office.
Another any time someone says when calling someone who isn’t answering his/her cell phone, “Pick up the damn phone!”
*Mentalist *reruns have replaced L&O reruns in the afternoon. That’s okay, as I need time to forget some of the latter. I never watched *Mentalist *when it first came out, so’s I’m taping them, which has made it possible for me to notice that every *Mentalist *episode title makes reference to the color red. Blech. 
Anyhoo, yesterday was a very good episode featuring Cho going briefly “undercover” (in a dynamite black suit) picking up women in a bar. Jane was going to coach him, but had to admit, “He’s a natural–look at him go! There’s no business like Cho business!”
Another great Cho moment:
Arrogant Bad Guy says to Cho: “One phone call, and you’re toast!”
Cho (deadpan, of course): “That’s impressive.* [pause] *The best I can do with one phone call is pizza.”