The thing is, that first episode of The Mentalist this season was like a really great date after a couple months of mediocre endeavors -- not love at first sight exactly, but a nice change from shows that we were originally excited about watching and then turned out to be painfully dull, borderline offensive, or just not for us. That said, we feel like the last couple episodes have been a little lackluster, and we've found ourselves checking our watches and half-wishing we were with Bones instead.
The plots have been kind of predictable and stock, and we're still only surface deep with any of these characters. We'd hate to see this show squander the things it's got going for it: interesting premise, charismatic lead, likable secondary characters. Actually, a good suggestion might be to develop those secondary characters a bit more and let them share a little of the weight (we LOVE Tim Kang!) so Simon Baker doesn't have to do it all himself. We recognize we may be alone in this -- the ratings seem to be going strong -- but we can only take so many weeks of frivolous dates before we're inevitably going to want something a little deeper, or maybe have to move on to something new. (Ha.)