'The Mentalist' of February 24, 2011 is a Continued Episode Entitled "Red Queen"

CBS, Thursday, February 24, 2011, 10 PM (ET) I'm still having trouble getting "in" to the plots that are showcased on "The Mentalist." I like Simon Baker very much, but after about 10 minutes of this show, my eyes begin to glaze and a certain malaise takes over.

On tonight's episode, "Red Queen," written by Daniel Ceron and directed by Dennis Long, there was a pendant missing from the Northern California Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology that was worth $200,000, and a dead body (as usual). [There's always a dead body within at least the first 2 minutes of this show. And then another and another and another, usually. Tonight's episode had fewer corpses than usual.]

Tonight, with a scarcity of dead bodies...beyond the first one, we had our star, Simon, taken hostage by Agent Madeline Hightower, the African-American CBI agent that Simon partnered with in last week's "gold mining" episode, which I laughingly refer to as "There's Gold In Them Thar Hills." (I don't know whose Big Bright idea it was to suggest a plot where modern-day scam artists are selling gold mine "claims" to gullible individuals and then stealing back the expensive equipment being foisted on them, but let's just say that I don't look for that episode to surface as a nominee during Emmy week).

This episode, Manuel Montero was killed within the museum and his body found lying next to the case where the pendant was missing, It appeared that the black agent, Madeline Hightower, had set fire to a fellow agent with whom she had a romantic relationship. It also appeared that Simon was a hostage, when, in reality, he did not believe that Ms. Hightower was guilty, and had her hidden in the trunk of his car to sneak her off the premises. The plot revolved around whether Madeline Hightower was "seeking revenge on men who hurt someone you love" and Madeline, as she walked out the door with Simon apparently being held at gunpoint said, "I got myself into it; I'm getting myself out."

There's a fat character who is obviously behind the attempt to frame Ms. Hightower, and we are all going to have to wait and endure another hour of this rubbish, because it was a "to be continued" plot.

I will buy some sort of NoDoz product prior to watching next week's probably-equally-boring episode. (Yawn)