Why Was ‘The Mentalist’ Cancelled?
The 2000s saw many highly popular cop procedurals come to life, from the narcotic-oriented The Wire to the ongoing NCIS. While The Mentalist wasn’t necessarily a juggernaut in the subgenre, it was certainly still a gem of a show that earned dedicated fans over its seven-season run. It quickly garnered a following through its faux-psychic meets cop procedural premise, with Simon Baker enthralling everyone as the enigmatic and haunted Patrick Jane. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to sustain The Mentalist in the long run. After Season 7, the show was canceled due to low viewership, but this wasn’t a new problem for the series. It tried to resolve this issue after Season 6 by completely reinventing the show, introducing new characters, stakes, and overarching stories. However, these changes couldn’t save The Mentalist and all its beloved characters.
‘The Mentalist’ Had a Forced Makeover After Season 6
When The Mentalist first aired on CBS, it was after NCIS’s Tuesday night slot, with the peak of Season 1’s popularity earning 19.7 million viewers. The series followed former fake psychic Jane as he joined the Californian Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as a consultant to help Teresa Lisbon’s (Robin Tunney) team solve cases. The reason for this career switch was due to a serial killer called Red John who viciously murdered Jane’s wife and daughter after he made fun of the criminal on national television. With his mind set on vengeance and hunting down this elusive villain, Jane helps the team out with cases but takes special interest in anything related to Red John, searching for his signature bloody smiley face tag. As such, the show had the usual crime-of-the-week format, but with a stronger overarching arc about Red John’s case.
The Mentalist’s viewership started to decline around Season 4, eventually only raking in 11.2 million by the time Season 6 aired. In an interview with Deadline, executive producer Tom Szentgyorgyi explained that Peter Roth at Warner Brothers TV “didn’t think the Red John story was sustaining” after all these seasons, reflected by the dwindling viewership. “He felt that if we wanted to continue past season six, we were going to have to close out the Red John arc and reinvent the show,” recalled Szentgyorgyi. “After gulping, Bruno [Heller] and I realized Peter was absolutely right, and we started plotting out a conclusion to the Red John story about a third of the way through season six.”
As such, if the Red John storyline becoming stale was the reason for the show’s low viewership, this would explain why the villain’s secret identity reveal was so underwhelming. From Szentgyorgyi’s description, we can theorize that the urgency of plotting out the final narrative beats to this story is why they tossed the responsibility of Red John to a minor character instead of someone who could seriously hurt Jane. If the show alienated viewers by dragging out the Red John storyline, then wrapping it up so quickly without any sense of pay-off didn’t do them any favors either.
‘The Mentalist’ Was Canceled Due To Low Viewership
Although the writers believed that “the show would end with Jane catching Red John,” The Mentalist was green-lit for another season (which would be its final one) as they completely reinvented it. After murdering Red John, Jane fled the country and was eventually recruited by the FBI — with a few of his conditions, of course. As such, instead of the CBI, the crew, including Jane, Lisbon, and fan-favorite Cho (Tim Kang), joined an FBI team with four new characters. It also meant we lost the original characters of Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) and Rigsby (Owain Yeoman), who were demoted from series regulars to recurring guest stars. The feel of the show also changed, with nothing dark necessarily driving Jane anymore and the atmosphere being far more restrictive about his unorthodox ways (until one day, they just suddenly weren’t).
Unfortunately, this makeover could not save The Mentalist, as the viewership refused to rise, ultimately causing the show to be canceled. In hindsight, it seems the show was simply a victim of balance. The Mentalist initially thrived off the darkness of the Red John storyline. But in the sparse character development that occurred during these scenes, with Jane stubbornly set on revenge and Lisbon constantly being walked all over whenever Red John cases came out, it felt like they were repeating the same narrative and emotional beats over and over again. In contrast, the arc wrapped up far too abruptly, giving us whiplash as it pivoted into the drastic escalation of FBI territory, unable to sustain the interest of the first couple of seasons.
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Simon Baker Has No Intention of Returning To ‘The Mentalist’
In the era of reboots and adaptations, we can only hope that The Mentalist will be a part of this trend, but it doesn’t seem likely. In no uncertain terms, Baker expressed on KTLA morning news that he has no plans to revisit the series. “I want to see what’s around the corner ahead of me,” he says. “I don’t want to necessarily go back and revisit. I have the memories… But I like to go forward.” With Baker’s mesmerizing performance as Jane being the heart of the show, it is unlikely that there would be a reboot without him. As such, we will have to be content with walking down memory lane through the seven seasons we were given. Or, of course, you could watch it as Heller originally intended up until the jarring Season 6 finale, leaving the demise of Red John as your lasting memory of this underrated 2000s show.
The Mentalist is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
