Posts by Gino Sassani

“Mentalist: Someone who uses mental acuity, hypnosis, and/or suggestion. A master manipulator of thoughts and behavior.”

This time around Baker stars as Patrick Jane, a psychic who was riding high bilking folks out of their hard-earned money by playing on their desires to contact their deceased loved ones. He would justify his con as providing closure for his marks and never looked back. That is, until one day he makes a fatal mistake. He never fooled himself into believing any of it was real. He wasn’t psychic. He just paid close attention. While working with the police to solve a serial killer case, he arrogantly demeans the murderer, known as Red John, on a television show. It was all chuckles until he gets home and finds that he made Red John so angry that he killed his wife and young daughter. Now he’s driven by guilt and a desire to avenge his family’s death. He abandons his con game and decides to use the observational skills that allowed him to play a psychic to assist the California Bureau Of Investigation, a sort of state-based FBI, to solve murders. He’s not a cop, but consults with a tough-crimes division that answers directly to the state’s Attorney General. As he puts it, “No gun. No badge. They don’t even give me dental.” While he’s shed his psychic persona, Jane is still incredibly full of himself. Jane is also deeply disturbed, although he hides it well. He still sleeps in the bedroom where his wife and daughter were killed. He never covered the red smiley face Red John drew at his crime scenes to taunt him in the victims’ own blood. A little Helter Skelter meets Barney.

Three-time widower Ben Cartwright  (Greene) runs his famous Ponderosa Ranch with the aid of his three grown sons from three different mothers. There’s Little Joe (Landon), Adam (Roberts) and Hoss (Blocker). Set some time in the mid 1800’s, this long-running series followed the family’s many exploits. In the late 1950’s westerns accounted for six of the top ten programs on TV. Only Gunsmoke had a longer run than Bonanza. From 1959 to 1973, Ben Cartwright and his boys rode across the small screen. Years later in syndication the series re-emerged as Ponderosa, and a handful of TV movies continued the tale into the 90’s.We never have grown tired of the genre that gave us such heroes as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

Unlike many of the 1960's Western television shows, Bonanza was all about the characters. You rarely saw a gunfight. There was often a bit of fisticuffs, but usually it ended with a lesson that violence never pays. The show prided itself on using the Western genre to deliver a family kind of show, and it's no surprise that series star Michael Landon would use many of the same kinds of stories and lessons on his own Little House On The Prairie. The Cartwrights are always helping widows, the wrongly accused, and the local Indian population. That help often lands them in hot water.