Random comparison of The Mentalist and Castle.

[sarren]

Same format: female lead homicide detective is forced to take on an eccentric arrogant handsome male 'advisor'. She has a team of two good looking 30-something male officers, who are partners (although The Mentalist also has a naive inexperienced young female officer). The overarching plot of each is the murder of one of the main character's loved ones.

However the feel of the shows are completely different. Castle is a fun, feel-good show. The lead female detective, Beckett, is extremely competent, and keeps Castle in his place. Castle is friendly, quirky, has a high opinion of himself, but is overall, a nice guy, and when not solving murders and bantering with the team, spends the rest of his time enjoying a loving relationship with his mother and daughter. He helps Beckett solve cases but he doesn't take over, and sometimes he's WRONG. Also, they have major UST. The two male detectives are adorable - very slashy, and the four of them make a great team. In fact, I would totally be up for a foursome fic. It's one of my favourite shows.

'The Mentalist' is NOT nice. The lead female, Lisbon, is hard to empathise with. She comes across as bossy and not especially competent - mainly because she has no control over Jane and because he is always right and solves ALL the cases. Jane is tormented by the death of his wife and child at the hands of a serial killer. He is very arrogant, very rude, flagrantly ignores rules - and anything Lisbon tells him to do if it suits him. He also has her team running around doing stuff for him behind Lisbon's back - even if she's explicitly said not to. I actually only watched about half a dozen episodes of first season and couldn't be bothered. However, the other day I happened to have season 2 in front of me and gave it another go. I like it a lot more - Lisbon seems to have at least a little bit of authority over Jane, and the team are much more cohesive, and like an actual effective team. Jane still gets to show off and solve all the cases but at least he does it with the team instead of in spite of them. They all seem to like each other now. Still not a happy show, though.




Unusual (for me) fic rec: Patrick Jane/Grace Ven Pelt. This a pwp, but it's about personal boundaries. You don't really need to have seen the show - the writer is good enough to convey everything you need to know about the characters. It's lovely.
Love and Affection and Respect for Personal Boundaries

Comments

[special-trille.livejournal.com]

Ha. I adore The Mentalist. I love Lisbon. I find Jane to be all those things you say, but also so fucking charming that I love him anyway. And I love the rest of the team. A hugely amount. Cho, in particular, has one of the highest awesome to screentime ratios of any characters on tv. (He's awesome. For reals.)

[sarren.livejournal.com]

I LOVE CHO. Cho's totally my favourite character. I'm torn though - on one hand I love his total disregard for um, laws, like when Jane broke into the house and Rigsby was like 'Ack! Breaking and entering!' and Cho was like 'the door was open', and then laconicly hung around there with Jane. OTOH - he's a cop who disregards the law and his superior officer. *sigh*.

I'm warming to Jane, at least he's started treating his own team a bit better. Of course, I've only seen the first 5 eps of each season, so clearly I need watch a lot more - maybe if I see more of him being charming in a way that isn't just coldly manipulating people?

[klia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the premises are similar, and I really love both shows, for different reasons.

With Castle, I love the Castle family relationships, especially his and Alexis's. I love that Castle's a wiseass, and love the snark between him and Beckett, as well as the grudging respect and friendship that's grown over time.

I never had the problems you did with Lisbon because I thought the show made it pretty clear that Lisbon had no choice but to work with Jane -- she just managed, IMO, to be extremely diplomatic about her annoyance and frustration (and, honestly, I don't think anyone could rein in Jane). And then there's Cho, who's totally awesome and, to me, is reminiscent of Kato from The Green Hornet (pretty much always the smallest guy in the room, but the toughest; ditto Eliot from Leverage), and there's clearly subtext and low-key intimacy between him and Jane (let's just say the last ep aired here pretty much blew my mind).

[sarren.livejournal.com]

OMG I LOVE CHO SO MUCH. AND NOW I CLEARLY HAVE TO CATCH UP ASAP!!!

I’ve was actually thinking last night before I fell asleep, as you do, that I would happily read Jane/Cho fic. I could just see Jane one day out of the blue when they’re alone - “Why haven’t you told them?” *blandly* “About your being gay?” and then Cho would be all like, it’s nothing to do with work etc, and Jane would make some comment about how, Cho’s really good, really discreet but he’s seen him watching…him…and Cho would be totally unfazed and like, “you’re handsome and charming, doesn’t mean I’m interested in sleeping with you.”

The first five eps of season one she wasn’t coming across as diplomatic to me, she was clearly frustrated and sometimes publicly embarrassed by him. I clearly need to go back and see what I’ve missed (but not til I’ve caught up!!!!) I think I finally fell for the show in the ep where she had the memory loss and Jane was supportive and she finally let him see her vulnerable and he didn’t abuse it.

[klia.livejournal.com]

CHO!!!1! <3 <3 <3 <3 I need a Cho icon! Damn LJ and their measly 6 icons. *shakes fist*

Great idea for a story, actually. Btw, have you seen X's stories? http://www.tenebris.org/x__art/ (drop down the menu under "Stories," then "Stories by X, " then "The Mentalist [Jane.Cho]."

I know what you mean about Lisbon -- she isn't exactly difficult to read when Jane's acting up. *g* I was thinking more that she's never gone as far as Beckett when asserting her authority -- like, she's never handcuffed Jane to the steering wheel to keep him out of trouble, or grabbed his nose hard enough to hurt until he stopped doing whatever was annoying her. Which, I have to admit, I love. Hee! <3

[sarren.livejournal.com]

I ran, not walked to the fic and clicked on the Red, Black one and it was episode based so a little confusing but still good. I’d clicked on a different fic first and it was established relationship so I backed off in case I needed to read the other first – are all the stories part of a series – I can’t really tell. (will read the rest this weekend) Do you have any other Mentalist writers you can rec?

Last night we watched episode 2.07 and were AGOG to watch the next one and then realised to our horror that we didn’t have any more!!!!! I was sent to Coventry. Luckily we could go back and watch all those season 1 eps we’d missed. I think we watched eps 1.06-1.11 – I loved the relationship development between Jane and Lisbon in the ep with Jane’s psychiatrist.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Like House, where I find the character of Cuddy unbearable as she has zero authority over House. Why did she not fire him years ago?

[sarren.livejournal.com]

Clearly because without him half their patients would die!!!!

IDK, I only watched the first season and a random episode here and there that Zebra shows me.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Good at diagnosis but constantly stealing drugs and doing completely unethical things like operating without the patient's consent? Not worth keeping IMHO.