20. Restraints by Hardly Loquacious
Section: The Mentalist
Genre: Romance, Humor
Rating: TV 14- Some Violence, Mild Sexual Situations, Sensuality, and some language
Type: Full Story
Status: Finished, Seven Chapters, 37,000 Words
Finished: June 8, 2011
Starring Characters: Patrick Jane, Teresa Lisbon
Description: After the fall of Red John, legendarily cognative detective Patrick Jane works to reconstruct his life and sort through his emotions and eventual feelings for his partner as he works his way back into a normal life without a revenge focus.
Review: Let's face it- even in adult shows, there's still pairings and characters that you ship for. One of the most noteworthy is CBS' The Mentalist and its most implied pairing, breezy wiseguy detective with talented people reading skills Patrick Jane and loyal if not tense partner Teresa Lisbon. This is pretty tricky territory to be taken in seriously in- you have to do a damn good job to nail a more sophisticated pairing without looking like just a passionate fan, especially in a media where their characters are extremely, extremely defined. And you have to hand it to Hardly Loquacious, who did a good job at keeping it fresh, but most importantly, keeping it true to the show's elements.
Watching Jane put the pieces of his life together after the one thing he had spent many years of his life trying to do- kill Red John, who killed his family- was done by Lisbon- is an interesting twist considering that without Red John to hunt, Jane has set up no purpose for himself, and since he was not the one to perform the deed, it's almost a twisted insult to injury. This is a clever setup that was a brilliant brainblast from a very cognative author.
But let the premise not fool you- the story is incredibly fluffy. And when you can take a story that seems a setup for angst, make it fluffy, but make it believable, hats off to you.
"Patrick Jane wasn't most people.
He knew that Mr. Overly Safe wasn't what she really needed. He knew it.
But he wasn't quite sure she did. Not anymore.
And now, as a result, he had a fuming Teresa Lisbon sitting in the passenger seat of his car.
Oh yeah, and she was handcuffed.
He may have panicked, just a little."
Rarely is it that you will find characterization so spot on, especially since in this case there's such a high risk and so little excuse to get it wrong. Everything Jane does, everything Lisbon does, every reaction, every interaction is one hundred percent in character. The dialogue, the internal thoughts, the narration (which often comes from a technical third person but sounds very first person- you'd have to see it for yourself, but it certainly works)every word typed is worth reading, funny, intelligent, exactly what needs to have been said in that situation, romantic- it's exactly what it needs and tries to be. And that's a feat. I guess if you're loquacious as an author, you have to make every word count, and there is hardly a flaw in it.
Overall, in a story that could technically be seen as a series conclusion, Hardly Loquacious makes a story that hits all the right notes.
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