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A week before the season finale of the insanely popular CBS freshman series The Mentalist, the show delivers one of the best episodes of the season.

Troubled teen Justin Prentiss is found dead at Bright Arch, a wilderness program that puts them on the right track. CBI is called in to investigate alongside police Chief Elaine Brody (Ashley Crow, or HRG’s wife from Heroes). Brody hates the camp’s director, the slimy McLain.

Jane examines the body and figures out the boy was buried alive. He leads the officers up a trail to find the hole where his body was placed. Prentiss had dug himself out, but was too broken to survive. The boy’s father blames the camp director, who’d promised to straighten him out. (The boy’s issue? He was too quiet and sometimes yelled at his parents. Gee, what a terrible teen!)

McLain gathers all the camp kids together and gives this creepy, New Age-y speech about growing from the experience. McLain isn’t like a guru; he doesn’t appear to care much for the kids and has some eyebrow-raising rules. As the CBI begins to question the kids gathered round. The kids deny knowing anything about the Z Crew carving in a tree, but Jane later finds out about the legend of Zachariah, a lumberjack left for dead who returned to camp to kill those who left him behind.

The Z Crew, it turns out, is a small band of thugs who terrorize a local, who lives in a remote cabin in the woods not far from the camp. The kids break windows and throw paint balls at his house and keep him up all night. Turns out, Justin was a member of Z Crew, as were a few other kids. While learning more about the crew, Jane discovers that McLain was having an affair with a young girl at the camp (saw that one coming). She says she was warned by Zachariah to sleep with McLain or else.

Zachariah is actually Elliot, the kid who has been at the camp the longest - and never wants to leave. He would put a mask over his face and give orders to the kids, threatening them with the urban legend character if they didn’t do his bidding.

Justin had a crush on the girl and got angry when he found out she was sleeping with the camp director on Elliot’s orders. The boy threatened to tell, so Elliot the Sociopath beat him up, hit him over the head and buried his body.

“Blood Brothers” was swift, fun and not quite as predictable as other episodes. I had a good idea that Elliot was in on something, but not exactly what until later on. I pegged the camp director, McLain, for a perv because that is a mainstay in camp stories on crime shows.

The movement of this episode was incredible. The team goes from one suspect to another, searching for information, which kept viewers on their toes. It was not exactly an original plot, but something about the episode was just GOOD. Maybe the cast chemistry. Maybe the writing. Or maybe it was the smart-ass fun Jane’s character injected into the episode. Some of the best scenes include Jane making someone look stupid. (And usually they deserve it!)

Simon Baker is so incredibly smooth and savvy as this character. I cannot think of another character he has played that I like this well. Patrick Jane isn’t always serious or always troubled. The character has a helluva lot of fun - usually at other people’s expense, but again, they usually deserve it.

What I find interesting is how the writers inject a small dose of Jane’s reality every now and then into an episode. This time, at the end, Jane runs into the dead boy’s parents, who are grieving in a way Jane understands all too well. He wants to avoid them, but isn’t able to. (I figure he cannot stand to see grief - especially for a child - after his own experience with untimely death.) He is so serious and so genuine as he tells them their son died to help a troubled girl.

This little reality check hits home the basis of the story: Jane works for the CBI because of Red John and the deaths of his wife and daughter at the serial killer’s hands. It was the perfect segue to next week, when Red John comes to play in The Mentalist season finale.

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