The Mentalist (TV Series) A Dozen Red Roses (2009) User Reviews

Who killed a film's financier?

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 13 December 2017]

When politician Felix Hanson is found murdered it is initially suspected that his killing is linked to his high profile campaigning against illegal drugs. It then emerges that there are drugs in his car so perhaps he wasn't as clean as it appeared or is there another reason for their presence. Away from the world of politics he was a major financier for a film that his wife is to star in. Gabriel Fanning, the film's director hadn't worked for a while and had a reputation for being difficult to work with; he had also had a recent disagreement with the victim. Another suspect is Brandon Fulton, the 'bad-boy' boyfriend of Felix's daughter Sydney and this would appear to be confirmed when he is shot in the Hanson house and found with the murder weapon next to him... Jane isn't convinced that everybody, or possibly anybody, is telling the truth.

While I wouldn't say this was the best episode to date it was still a lot of fun. The story includes plenty of twists not all of which are obvious. There are a good number of suspects and varied motives so the viewer has plenty of things to try to solve for themselves. As expected there is plenty of humour in the story; to my mind the best moment being Cho's conversation with a woman who makes a living as a Marilyn Monroe look-alike... a concept he appears to find confusing. As usual the cast does a fine job as well as the regular cast Sarah Tareen impresses as Sydney and Rebecca Rigg, Simon Baker's real life wife, does a fine job as Sydney's step-mother Felecia. Overall I think fans of the series should enjoy this instalment.

Seduction, Deception and Murder

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 2 December 2021]

When the powerful and wealthy Felix Hanson is shot twice on his chest in the parking area of a restaurant, the CBI is assigned to investigate the case. Soon they visit his wife, the former actress Felicia Scott, and learn that Felix was producing a movie for her with the director Gabriel Fanning. Her stepdaughter Sydney Hanson uses drugs and is participating in a small part of the film and her boyfriend Brandon Fulton is the responsible for her addiction. They are all considered suspects and Patrick and his colleagues set a trap in motion to find the killer.

"A Dozen Red Roses" is a reasonable episode of "the Mentalist". The storyline and the plot do not work well and there is the lack of the usual sense of humor. The guest characters are unpleasant, and the viewer does not connect to any of them. The conclusion is weak. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Dozen Red Roses "

I didn't care to finish it - rightly counted among the worst episodes

[yavermbizi · 1/10 · 10 October 2021]

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

This episode has an IMDb aggregate score of 7,3, making it the lowest-rated of the entire series. I don't always agree with the public's scores, but in this case the public's not at all off the mark - although I do wonder if it's quite fair to count this episode as _the worst_ - even in just Season 1 there have already been some really bad ones, there's stiff competition.

In addition to some of the series' usual bouquet of flaws, this episode is essentially "The mentalist goes Hollywood" which is fairly lame for a theme, and it isn't really developed in-depth anyway. It reminded me of "Bosch" with its Hollywood precinct (or whatever it was), and it isn't so often I recall "Bosch" fondly. The senseless overload of melodrama, the contrivances, CBI just refusing to charge any people with any non-murder crimes at this point, questionable acting...

Interestingly, the agent isn't played by the guy who played Mike in "Veep", even though they look fairly similarly. As for the episode's strong sides, I guess the mother/actress character is pretty, but that's about it.

Ruined by the acting of the daughter character's actress

[Voquev · 27 May 2020]

The actress who played the daughter was incredibly wooden. She was incapable of pretending to shed a tear, or even look remotely angry or sad. She scrunched up her face but there was no emotion there. There was a semi-comedic scene where she was reading her lines intentionally badly on set; ironically, that was her best acting yet. She just looks like she's fumbling while reading her lines in all her scenes anyway. Even in the climax of the final confrontation scene, she just looked fake. She was supposed to act like her stepmother was tearing her life apart, so her face should have shown betrayal, pain, SOMETHING. Instead she looked like she needed to sneeze. Jane had to go on set and tell the stepmother her acting was unbelievable, while her daughter's acting was great. I would have laughed if I wasn't cringing. Her "stepmother" acts like an Oscar winner next to her. The Mentalist is a pretty hammy show and even the main cast isn't believable a lot of the time, but this side character had the worst actress of this entire show thus far.