Ruby Slippers

Best one of this entire series. Very deep and well-written. The supposed ending was already satisfying enough given the storyline, and then the plot-twist makes it even better. Masterpiece, way above average for a show that's already pretty good.

The standard for The Mentalist is always high in every season - well-written story and characters, clever, surprising, and consistently so. This episode had heart in a way that police procedurals don't typically have. The crime story is excellent, but that's not the entire story. It brings you into the lives of people - and people not everyone might know or take entirely seriously and provokes emotions one doesn't expect to have in the police genre. This one was truly exceptional.

When a car is found completely burnt in an alley with a man handcuffed to the steering wheel, the CBI agents assume the case and Patrick Jane finds a woman's shoe heel at the crime scene. Soon he discovers the owner, the drag queen Glenda Snow, in a nearby cabaret. The agents believe the victim is the gay Archie Bloom and his father Archie Bloom Sr. That expelled him from home becomes a suspect. His homophobic colleague Rick Hughes that bullied him at work also becomes a suspect. His landlord Gabriel Lamb that forced Archie to use drugs and abused him also becomes a suspect. However, Glenda does not identify neither of them as the murderer. They are charged for their abuses while Patrick follows another lead and uncover a secret.

"Ruby Slippers" is one of the best episodes of "The Mentalist". The plot has many suspects and twists, but the final plot point with Patrick Jane revealing a secret is magnificent. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Ruby Slippers"

This is one of my top 3 Mentalist episodes in the whole show, and anyone who watched it at least once knows that it's tough competition. This one is original, perfectly written, deep, with an engaging plot and three-dimensional characters. A great episode in an already great series. It is beyond me how some people may undervalue its quality simply on account of the theme they consider "woke" or "leftist" (whatever these words mean to them).

And let me say, Simon Baker was born to play Patrick Jane. Can't imagine anyone else in this role. I hope there will never be a remake of "Mentalist". Not needed.

Okay so I won't go into too much detail about this episode because I really don't want to spoil it, but when I started the episode and saw it was about drag queens I was a bit worried. I know this was written in like 2011 so I wasn't sure how the mentalist writers were going to be able to handle this kind of subject, especially looking at it from a current day perspective but I was extremely surprised.

Yes it's sort of the bare minimum not to be offensive but this episode managed to be really sweet and wholesome. The way the entire drag world was handled was so well done and (from what I remember) the queens weren't made fun of throughout the episode. Yes there were characters who made uncomfortable jokes but it was clearly recognized as not what Jane and Lisbon deemed as okay. Also SHANGELA IS IN IT!! She is such an icon and I had no idea she was ever in this show until she popped up which was one of my other favorite parts of this ep.