Patrick Jane certainly enjoys being the smartest man in the room. He proved it again and again during the solving of this week's case on "The Mentalist." But even that wasn't his ultimate play. Jane was still angling to get all of his napkin demands met before he agreed to work with the FBI. And so, he orchestrated his escape to set up his most ingenious plan yet.


He gave Abbott a list of names. About half of them were visible, and represented Blake Association people the FBI had taken down. The other half represented people Jane knew about -- he said he'd gotten the list from Bertram's thumb drive -- and was keeping as leverage.


“But we never broke the encryption," Lisbon said when Jane explained his ploy to her.


“Yeah, the FBI doesn’t know that," Jane told her. And so, his demands were met, and Lisbon even got a job offer. And she apparently has no problem keeping the secret that Jane's leverage is so much hot air.


As Zap2It's Rick Porter pointed out, the episode played very much like a pilot. "It makes for a much, much breezier hour of TV than the past few episodes have, and it ends with Lisbon being offered and taking a job with the FBI, which should warm the hearts of many a Jane-Lisbon 'shipper.” TV Guide's Liz Raftery said the new Jane is the "same as the old Jane."


But that's just the way we like him. "The Mentalist" returns Sunday, January 6 at 10 p.m. EST on CBS.


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