Poly Movie Review: The Mentalist

http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Mentalist/70155590 - Netflix
http://www.amazon.com/Mentalist-Complete-Second-Season/dp/B002N5N4NA - Amazon
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1196946/ - IMDB

Here's a new one! I find poly movies to review by one of 3 ways: 1) It's on a poly list somewhere on the internet; 2) Someone learns that I review poly movies & suggests a movie to me; 3) Netflix suggests a "similar title" based on me adding known poly movies to my queue. What has never happened, to the best of my recollection, is me stumbling upon a poly show completely by accident.

The closest I've come is watching movies or TV shows that are strong poly analogues - shows that are not explicitly poly, but, other than the sex, they might as well be. For example, Sex And The City (the TV show, not the movies), a story about 4 female, non-sexual (with each other) best friends who are actually each others' soulmates and form an intentional family of sorts between them. Think of cunningminx's recent Poly Weekly podcast episode about "What Would Monogamists Do?" where her basic premise is that, what we do isn't all that different, and if you're stumped for how to deal with a situation, just ask how you would handle it if you were monogamous, and the answer will probably be very similar. I say all the time, "that's not a poly problem, that's a people problem."

But I'm getting off topic. Stumbling across actual polyamory in popular media with no notice, right.

As regular readers undoubtedly know, I am also a skeptic. In addition to my collection of poly media, I am also building a collection (mostly an online list, but I will slowly collect the physical media too) of skeptic media - movies, music, podcasts, books, etc. I like lists and categories, and just like the poly community, the skeptic community suffers from a lack of specific-to-us art & entertainment. Much like the poly community, the skeptic community not only suffers from a lack of art, but is drowning under a deluge of "art" that promotes the antithesis and even outright reviles everything we stand for.

What both the poly and the skeptic communities have in common, is that they are both subcultures struggling to find a toe-hold in a society that has built into its very institutions, its foundations, a support structure for mindsets & philosophies that are both opposite and intolerant of the subcultures themselves.

But again, I'm getting off topic.

All this is to say that I've been watching The Mentalist from Netflix. It's a TV cop drama about a guy who was a con artist using the label "psychic" to bilk people out of money by making shit up about their dead relatives, and other related cons, until he offered his "psychic services" to the police on a serial murder case. In his arrogance, he did what media-hungry con artists (*cough* Sylvia Brown *cough*) do, and that was to spout off on television about his "work" on the case, insulting the serial killer and pissing him off.

So the serial killer, Red John, targeted Jayne's (the "psychic") wife & daughter, and made damn sure that Jayne knew who had done it and why. Now we come to the actual start of the series, where Patrick Jayne works as a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation, not as a phony psychic, but using his skill and expertise in deception to help catch criminals. Although he closes cases left and right and has been a tremendous asset to the CBI, his sole motivation for working with them is to get close enough to the Red John case that he can find Red John and kill him, and the other closed cases are merely incidental. He knows that he will go to jail, and possibly get the death penalty, but revenge is what drives him and helping people are a side effect.

Patrick Jayne is an atheist and a skeptic, and every episode highlights, not only the kinds of things that people do to trick other people, but also how we can fool ourselves. The character states outright, unashamedly and in no uncertain terms, that there is no god (episode 2), and there are no psychics, faith healers, people who can talk to the dead, none of that (almost every episode). He is James Randi, Jamey Ian Swiss, Penn & Teller, and Joe Nickell, all wrapped up in a slick, charismatic, borderline sociopathic, TV protagonist package*. With expensive suits that include suit vests. You can see why I might like him, yes?

( So what does this have to do with polyamory? Read on for some plot spoilers, but not the final conclusion of the episode. )

( And I do recommend watching the show. Here's a bit more about the series itself. )

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*I've heard that this show is merely a knock-off of Psych, and, supposedly, a pale shadow compared to the ever-observant Sherlock Holmes. I don't care. I've never seen Psych, but I have read all the original Sherlock serials. There are some similarities, in that people who are skeptical & hyper-observant do come across as arrogant and cynical to others, and since the writers of both are not skeptical & hyper-observant, it's to be expected that the characters are written as arrogant, cynical, & loners. Because who would be friends with an arrogant cynic who sees everything & is always right? Skeptics & pedants never have friends, do they? But, aside from both being arrogant and both being detectives, they're not the same story at all. Psych, I'm told, is more buddy-cop comedy than cop drama, and whose main character actually does try to pass himself off as a psychic. One reviewer said that, to say The Mentalist is a rip-off of Psych is to say that Grey's Anatomy is a rip-off of Scrubs because they both follow medical interns into their residency. But, of the one trailer I've seen for the show, the audience knows he is not a real psychic, so I may watch it some day to see if it has any good skeptical value.

Love, The Universe, And Everything

Carl Sagan said that we are made of star stuff.  We are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.  In the movie The Ledge, the atheist protagonist talks with a Christian woman about the nature of the universe.  She wants to believe in a god because she wants to believe in something bigger than herself.

So he lays down next to her on the apartment rooftop and shows her the night sky, and says something to the effect of "you want something bigger than yourself to connect to?  There, the whole universe, how much bigger can you get than that?"

So she says, basically, that it's a pretty concept, but she wants more than just to be connected to a cold and uncaring universe.  She wants to be loved.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have a good answer to that.

I turn back to Carl Sagan, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, and all the other science popularizers out there, and that's comforting to me.  I am made of star stuff.  I am part of the universe and therefore I am connected to the whole of the universe.  I am the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.

But there's one more part to that.

If we humans are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself, we are also the part of the universe capable of loving itself.

If I want to be connected to something larger than myself, what's larger than the universe?  If I want to be loved by something greater than myself, what's greater than the universe?  Except that the universe doesn't love.

But people do.  And people are part of the universe.  We are star stuff.  We are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself.  We are the part of the universe capable of loving itself.  We are the universe, and we love.

There is one thing greater than the will to live, and that's the will to love.  We are star stuff.  I am connected to something greater than myself.  What's greater than the universe?  I am loved by something greater than myself, and that is because I am loved by people, and people are star stuff.