You may have noticed that my postings have slowed down. You might not have cared, but you’ve probably at least noticed, if only because you haven’t gotten four or five Diggs from me every day. Well, there are two reasons for that: the first is that we’re dealing with days with one broadcast network as opposed to five or six different cable networks, and the second is that my wife joined me on Friday, and given that I hadn’t seen her since July 7th, I wanted to focus more on her than my work for a change.
C’mon, I earned a break! And it’s not like I wasn’t still attending all of these panels for you…well, except for the majority of The CW’s panels. I must admit that, after the “90210” presentation, we hit the road and went to Universal Studios…and, yet, even then I was working, so be sure to stay tuned for my coverage of the new ‘Simpsons’ ride, which was awesome.
But, okay, enough of my apologies. Let’s continue with CBS’s presentations, shall we?
The Mentalist: I’d like to take this moment to give a shout-out to my mother-in-law, who was interested in this series before it was even on my radar. When I told her I had started to get my usual flurry of advance screeners in preparation for the TCA tour, the first question she asked was, “Hey, have you gotten one for that show ‘The Mentalist’ yet?” In fact, I had just gotten one that day…and when I told her, she all but flipped out. “We need to watch that when I come over for dinner on Friday!” she informed me. She kept trying to tell us about the shows that the series’ star had been in, except that she was blanking on both his name and his other shows, but a quick trip to IMDb.com solved both problems, at which point she gave a look of disdain when I admitted that I’d never actually seen an episode of Simon Baker’s previous series, “The Guardian.”
Finally, as we began to screen the pilot, the truth came out: she thinks he’s hot.
I can’t speak to the man’s inherent hotness because I don’t want “The Mentalist” to fall victim to what is henceforth to be referred to as “The ‘Moonlight’ Effect.” I really, really dug what I saw, possibly because it reminds me of what “Psych” could be if James Roday didn’t grate on my nerves. It’s a drama about a guy named Patrick Jane (Baker) who has honed his observational skills to a degree where he was able to make a living as a TV psychic, but he’s since given that up and become a detective. He’s got a major ego, but it’s warranted, given how good he is at what he does. Still, it’s been known to backfire on occasion; he has a dark history which is hinted at during the course of the pilot and will be explored during the course of the series.
Baker admitted that he got particular enjoyment out of playing the flashback scenes to his character’s early days. “That was a lot of fun,” he said, “because you’re playing an actor and you get to actually comment on the shallowness of acting. You’re commenting on yourself, so it’s sort of self-deprecating in a sense. I love that the character is a fraud and is aware of his fraudulent nature.”
Baker did not, however, have an opportunity to do much research for on playing a TV psychic, given the speed at which things happened with his casting and the pilot’s subsequent filming. “I was flown in from Australia, met with Bruno (Heller, producer) the day I arrived,” said Baker, “and a day and a half later, we were shooting, basically. So Bruno said, ‘Have a look at a few different people on YouTube,’ and I had a look at stuff. Next thing, I had my whole family around me, we’re all going, ‘Oh, my God, how did he do that? How did he do that?’ And then on YouTube, there’s also people posting other clips where they debunk, explaining how these tricks are working through NLP, neurolinguistic programming.It’s just tip-of-the-surface of the knowledge that these people have, so I didn’t ask anything. We had a consultant from the Magic Castle, who was more of a sleight-of-hand guy, but he had a few different hypnotizing tricks and stuff like that. And Bruno furnished me with a bunch of literature, holiday reading. It’s very heady stuff. What these guys get into and the skills that they have and then the capacity to remember things and move forward is…it’s too much for me. I’m pretending totally 100 percent to be a mentalist.”
To bring things full circle, let us note that Heller is aware of the similarities to “Psych,” but he’s not worried about critics making snarky comments. “Patrick Jane isn’t pretending to be a psychic,” explained Heller. “He was someone who worked as a psychic but now is very honest and direct about not having those powers, so there’s no pretense. They’re two quite different shows. You can always draw parallels with other shows, but this is much more like Sherlock Holmes than (‘Psych’).”
I second that emotion.
