To watch or not to watch, that is the question.

Some shows tempt me with an entire cast. *The Mentalist* tempts me with exactly one man.

That man is Patrick Jane.

First of all, let’s address the obvious.

He’s ridiculously handsome.

There, I’ve said it.

But looks alone don’t explain the appeal. What draws me in is the strange combination of charm and damage. Patrick Jane walks around with the smile of someone who can talk his way out of anything and the sadness of someone who has already lost everything.

That combination is catnip for television audiences. And then there’s his relationship with Lisbon.

I know just enough about their story to be interested and not enough to be spoiled. Every clip I come across seems to contain either meaningful eye contact, emotional restraint, or the kind of chemistry that makes people spend years waiting for two fictional characters to get their act together.

So far, so good.

Then Patrick starts solving crimes. And that’s where my questions begin.

His observations are fascinating. Genuinely fascinating. I love watching him notice tiny details that everyone else misses. A wrinkle in a shirt. A nervous glance. A misplaced object. It’s like watching Sherlock Holmes after he discovered charm and lost sarcasm. But after a while, a troubling question emerges.

What exactly are the detectives doing?

• These are trained investigators.
• They are smart people.
• Many of them have years of experience.

Yet somehow every episode seems to unfold like this:

Detective: “We have no leads.”

Detective: “The evidence is inconclusive.”

Detective: “This case may never be solved.”

Patrick Jane: *stares at a teacup for three seconds*

Patrick Jane: “The murderer is the florist.”

Everyone else: “My God.”

At some point I started wondering whether the California Bureau of Investigation should just save money and replace half the department with a cardboard cutout of Patrick Jane. The pattern becomes difficult to ignore. The detectives gather evidence. Patrick gathers the plot. Without him, nobody appears capable of noticing that the suspect is sweating, lying, blinking suspiciously, or carrying the murder weapon.

I know that’s probably unfair. Television has a habit of making the genius look smarter by making everyone else look slightly less competent. But from the outside looking in, that’s often how it feels.

Then there’s my second question: The Red John situation.

Now, I haven’t watched the series, so perhaps there are details I’m missing. But from what I’ve gathered, Patrick spends years pursuing the man responsible for destroying his family. Eventually he finds him. Eventually he kills him. No, wait. Patrick Jane doesn’t just kill Red John. He calls Lisbon and says: it’s done. And my immediate reaction was not triumph, it was confusion.

How exactly did he avoid prison?

I understand why he wanted revenge. I understand why viewers cheered. I cheered, too. What I don’t understand is how the legal system apparently looked at the situation and collectively decided to shrug. Maybe the show has explanations. Maybe they’re convincing. Maybe they’re not. But as someone observing from the outside, the whole thing feels like one of those moments where television asks the audience not to ask too many follow-up questions.

So here I remain.

Tempted by Patrick Jane.

Tempted by Lisbon.

Tempted by the mystery.

But also distracted by the uncomfortable feeling that an entire law-enforcement agency seems unable to function whenever Patrick isn’t in the room.

Which leaves *The Mentalist* in the same category as several other shows: The series I enjoy thinking about more than I would probably enjoy watching.

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Shabana Mukhtar