After 'Red John,' then what? Simon Baker, creator Bruno Heller tease Jane's future

The final shot of Sunday's (Nov. 24) episode of "The Mentalist" featured Patrick Jane running. But is he running away or toward something?

Maybe both, say series creator Bruno Heller and star Simon Baker, who plays Jane. After years of searching for Red John, the serial killer who murdered his family, Jane finally discovered his identity -- Napa Sheriff Thomas McAllister (Xander Berkeley) -- and made good on his promise to kill Red John.

So what comes next? Read on as Baker and Heller discuss the fallout for Jane and the CBI.

How will killing Red John affect Jane psychologically?Heller: Jane is this tragic figure who has gotten his heart's desire, has found the sort of evil grail he's been chasing all these years. Now it's very much a question of what does that do to him as a person, can he begin a new life and what kind of life does he want for himself? How will he define himself now that part of his life is over?

Baker: The character made the decision to kill Red John from the first time we ever saw him. In his head, that was going to happen. What we didn't know is how he would react and whether he would go through with it, and in what fashion. To me that was just jumping off a cliff. ... [The death scene] is interesting because he's got Red John within his grasp, literally -- he doesn't take a moment to hesitate. ... When he's on top of him, the idea of just shutting him up in that time is less about network television always wanting to explain everything, and Jane just wanting to get on with the job. ...

Going forward from there [it's about] when you achieve your objective, then what happens? ... My favorite part of that is the transition out of it. That's done, now what do I have to live for, and where do I go from here? Was it that gratifying for Jane? There's all of those questions -- we sort of deal with that in a lot of ways in the next episode.

Will there be any legal consequences for Jane?Heller: You can't go around killing people willy-nilly without some kind of ramification. Very much so.

Will Jane continue to work in law enforcement?Baker: I don't think, not immediately.

Heller: I can tell you he's going to be placed in a position where his personal desires on that level are not to the point. He's done something highly illegal -- what he does in the future isn't necessarily going to be entirely up to himself.

Even though Red John is dead, his disciples and the Blake Association are still out there. Will we hear from them again?Heller: I never say never, but I would say I think the audience and the story demands that we step away from that trope for a while. The trouble with these sorts of stories where you're playing tricks on the audience, with who-is-it mysteries, is you can get way too mysterious. There are people who said all the way along that Patrick Jane is Red John. When you've got that kind of elaborate thinking out there, it's dangerous to come back to that story unless you're coming back full force, because then maybe will start thinking, "Oh, maybe Red John's not dead." Red John is dead. 

SRC: blog.zap2it.com/

Patrick Jane became Dexter: ‘The Mentalist’ ends its run with a vigilante-style killing

Simon Baker’s Jane catches up with Red John and strangles him with his hands in a scene fit for broadcast television, shot without the gruesome details.

In 'The Mentalist' on Sunday, Patrick Jane (right) finally comes face to face with Red John, the serial killer he’s tracked since the madman murdered his wife and daughter.

At the end, Patrick Jane became Dexter.

One of the longest-running story arcs on prime-time series television, the Red John drama on CBS's "The Mentalist," ended Sunday night with the finality of a 1970s-style vigilante vengeance movie.

Simon Baker's Jane at last caught up with Red John, the psychotic serial killer who 10 years earlier had murdered Jane's wife and daughter.

After Jane made the positive ID, a wounded Red John made one futile run for it, crashing through a house and ending up in a park – sort of a long ambulatory version of the police car chases memorialized in films like "The French Connection."

At the end, Red John had lost too much blood to go any further, and Jane caught him.

Jane then sat on top of him. After a few moments of conversation during which Red John still seemed to admire his own cleverness all these years, Jane strangled Red John with his hands.

None of this wishy-washy mercy stuff. No navel-gazing ruminations on how the guy wasn't worth it.

Jane had the chance, since naturally Red John had fallen where no one else in this fairly active park could see them, and he took it.

"That was the only way it could end," Baker said in a conference call late last week. "Jane has been wanting to kill him for almost six years. So when he caught him, that's what he had to do.

"And I thought doing it with his bare hands felt right."

Since it was on broadcast TV, not cable, the scene was not filmed in a particularly gruesome way. Viewers mostly saw Jane, not Red John.

Through its first five and a half seasons, "The Mentalist" interspersed Jane's quest for Red John with weekly cases investigated by the police CBI unit, for which Jane worked as a consultant.

After taking several wrong turns and even shooting a man who was not Red John, Jane caught up with him the last three weeks.

Even then there was misdirection. The week before, viewers and perhaps Jane were left with the impression Red John was CBI boss Gale Bertram (Michael Gaston).

Sunday night, however, when Jane outfoxed Bertram during a standoff in a church, Bertram said he was not Red John, but merely one of Red John's operatives in a ring of high-level corrupt police and politicians.

That sent Jane to the real Red John.

"The Mentalist" still has another dozen episodes left this season, and director Bruno Heller said it will be a very different show.

The next episode, on Dec. 1, will jump ahead two years, and Heller said the relationships among the characters, including Jane and CBI unit leader Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney), will be "different."

CRS: nydailynews.com