I have been a fan of the mentalist from day 1. And I have always loved this show deeply. What I never understood was why they would go through when the "red line" of the show has ended. To me the strong episodes were mostly the Red John episodes the ones where you could really see Patrick Jane as a normal human being. I was very disappointed when they revealed Red John always felt like it was supposed to be some else entirely. (Still think it should've been Bret Styles!) I would have been ok with this ending right after the revealing of the Red John episode. But no they had to put 1,5 season more into it. Which I don't understand. Season 7, although the ending is the ending this show truly deserves!, has no added value to the whole series. I was hoping that they would reveal that they didn't catch Red John but it was never about that anymore, that storyline was over. And to have us like Vega and Wylie and then kill Vega off just doesn't do this show justice as we have seen many amazing episodes in the past. If you watch the 1st episode of the Mentalist you know you don't have to be a psychic to see that Lisbon and Jane are meant for each other. The nice things about a well planned finale is having old faces come back again. I really didn't like the departure of van Pelt and Rigsby and was really happy to see that they returned for the final 2 episodes of this show. Also the final 3 episodes were finally up to the high mentalist standard that we've grown to love over the years.
What an unsatisfying conclusion. As far as season finales go, this one felt very low stakes. The larger conspiracy wasn't really in the scope, it was more just Mulder and Scully trying to complete one task - find William (to protect him from some vague threat?). I thought they would at least bring out the plague again to properly conclude that whole storyline, but I guess not. And even if season 12 were to happen, they really can't repeat this whole "find William" bit all over again just to wrap-up a dumb one-off plotline. If they'd done that from the start, maybe this episode would have been better.
There was so little substance to this episode, instead it was just characters making faces while thinking or reacting. The writing quite poor, and in typical Chris Carter fashion we got some "shocking" character deaths (how many times as the Smoking Man "died" again?).
I hope that this is the end of The X-Files with Chris Carter in charge. This and season 10 were not up to par with the original series, even in its later days - and that's saying something. I'd be more open to the show continuing under Glen and Darin Morgan. They seem to have a better grasp on the show, at least for the monster of the week aspects.
