Review - The Mentalist Season 2 Episode 10 Throwing Fire

When I first saw the casting call for this episode, I was very excited. We'd finally see the origins of Jane, and surely something beyond interesting was there. Instead we were handed a series of short flashbacks that tied-in the case, but had little significance on Jane or were particularly illuminating. We learn that Jane worked at a circus with his father using his observational abilities to scam people. Teenage Jane has a problem scamming a dying girl and her grandmother and that's the extent of it.

What do the writers want the viewers to take away from this? Jane has daddy issues and has/had morals?

Furthermore, the episode was framed as a light-hearted episode with Jane getting conked on the head and falling down in various intervals. This was a chance to expand Jane as a character and use the flashbacks better to incorporate the lessons into Jane's current life. In the end, he is still arrogant and an asshole.

The crime was average stuff. Baseball players, especially from Latin America, lie about their ages all the time, so an American doing it wasn't surprising nor was it compelling. The baseball player's dad is going to prison, but hey, he's going to be earning at least a couple hundred thousand.

Score: 8.7/10