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Robin Tunney shines in an episode centered on her character, Teresa Lisbon.

This episode focuses more on Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) than Patrick Jane (Simon Baker). It opens with Lisbon talking to her counselor, Dr. Roy Carmen (Christian Clemenson). It is revealed that her father was an alcoholic. After five weeks of mandated therapy, Dr. Carmen still refuses to sign off on Lisbon, telling her “there’s something you want to tell me first.”
The next scene shows Lisbon with her team in an alleyway. There was a report of a body, but there is none visible. Jane notices a trail of ants leading toward a closed door. Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) opens the door, revealing a dead man covered in ants, with a triangle of three bullet wounds to the chest. Lisbon rattles off the statistics of the victim, revealing that he, William McTier, was a child molester that she helped convict, sending him to Pelican Bay.
When Lisbon returns to the station, she finds people searching her name on the internet in regards to the victim. It turns out some named her “Saint Teresa” for arresting McTier. It is also discovered that at that time, her boss was the very same Sam Bosco (Terry Kinney) now working on the “Red John” case. The good feelings are short-lived, however, as Lisbon is told by her boss, Virgil Minelli (Gregory Itzin), that her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. The case is then taken from her and her team and assigned to Bosco.
Bosco then questions Lisbon. He asks her where she was during the murder, and she says she was at home, watching T.V. When Bosco asks her what, she gives a vague generality of what is always on “Hell’s Kitchen.” After she leaves, Jane tells Lisbon he knows that she was lying. He asks to hypnotize her, but she refuses. She later agrees to take a polygraph test, after initially refusing it.
In the next scene, Lisbon is waiting to testify at court. Her boss, Minelli, then confronts her. Angrily, he tells her that she failed the polygraph test. He then tells her to go to the station and turn in her badge and gun. She complies.

Lisbon then goes back to Dr. Carmen. She can’t remember the night of the murder. She also tells him, “my father used to have black-outs when he drank, one time he beat my brother half to death, didn’t remember it.” Dr. Carmen is unable to get Lisbon to remember what happened the day of the murder, so she turns to Jane. She asks him to hypnotize her. She still can’t remember what happens after she leaves work.
The next day Lisbon shows up at the station. She seems emaciated. Bosco asks her if she is medicated. She yells in an uproar at everyone in the station, punctuating her anger by throwing a chair through an office window.
The next scene is at Lisbon’s apartment. She’s listening to music, pouring a pint of whiskey into a cup. There’s an open bottle on its side, with pills scattered all over the table. There’s a gun in her hand. Dr. Carmen shows up at her door. He confronts Lisbon, though visibly terrified once she points her gun near him. He tells her that McTier deserved to die. He tries to walk her through the murder scene, but he makes a mistake. He mentions a cross that was in the room where the victim was found.
Jane makes his appearance, and the drunken acting Lisbon shows sobriety on her face. Dr. Carmen was being set up. Jane knew that Lisbon must have been drugged, as she couldn’t remember the night of the murder even through hypnosis. Dr. Carmen drugged her coffee with Lorazepam. He also took her fingerprints from the mug. Lisbon’s breakdown at CBI headquarters was a fake. She punches Carmen with a hard right and then cuffs him. Later we learn that he was paid $1 million dollars to kill McTier. It was an effort to discredit Lisbon’s testimony against Milton Howard (Ernie Grunwald).
This episode had its usual red herrings. There was a parent of one of the girls molested by McTier. There was the brother of McTier’s fiancée. However, of all the episodes I have ever seen of The Mentalist, this one was the most difficult to predict. In that, it was somewhat unsatisfying. The episode belonged to the acting of Robin Tunney. A very good film actress in her own right (especially in the film Niagara, Niagara and Julian Po) she was finally able to show a full range of emotions. Also of note in this episode is the love shown for Lisbon by everyone in her unit. All of them except Rigsby state that if they find evidence linking her to McTier, they’ll ignore it. Although the case was given to Bosco, Lisbon’s team continued to investigate it. In the future, it is going to be interesting to see if Jane manipulates Bosco’s affection for Lisbon to gain information about the “Red John” case. 
 
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