Since season 1, the character’s development of
Van Pelt seemed suspicious to me. I’m not sure she is Red John because I
believe he’s likely a man and older than Grace. But RJ could be someone related
to her or she's his assistant.
Reasons in Season 1:
Just in the first episode of the series there are a lot of hints about Van Pelt
but attention was directed only to creeps Brett Partridge and Dr Wagner.
- Van Pelt is the only one in the team who for
sure arrives after Patrick. They shook hands, and her expression was as if she
would recognize PJ.
- Those manipulative gestures she makes when
she wants to look like a good and sweet girl. At the beginning they seemed
genuine but now she uses them when she wants to influence someone.
- How her face expression changes when she
gets angry with Jane. Her comments telling him: Poor sad man, etc. Jane told RJ
“sad, sad man”.
- Her dogmatic beliefs in psychics (cousin
Yolanda), Red John wrote to Jane: “If you were a real psychic…”, he also
believes in them.
-The comment Jane made to Wagner: Why
magicians have beautiful assistants? To distract attention! Van Pelt is red
haired and beautiful. She’s distracting everyone. Could she be RJ assistant?
-How could Jane know her father was football
coach just from her demeanor? Suspicious… maybe he knows her, recognizes her.
Also, Jane told her she believes in Yolanda because she let her talk with
someone who died and VPelt loves. (Her sister who committed suicide…, maybe
because of Jane?) She’s from Iowa where PJ carnival with his father was.
Season 1
episodes 2- 12. In these episodes
Van Pelt shows her intelligence and complexity as a character; It’s the only
one of the characters who reveals a little of herself in each episode.
In the second episode, “Red hair and silver tape” Van Pelt finds key hints to solve the murder and
Lisbon starts to trust her and take her to the field.
In the third episode “Red Tide”, Van Pelt knows Lisbon family history very well (Lisbon’s drunken father and
dead mother like the case of Red Tide’s victim) and tries to talk about it. She
has read Lisbon’s files even when later she lies to Rigsby about it… Lisbon gets
angry and wouldn’t allow it. Van Pelt keeps watching her anyway. Jane does
Mentalist’s exercises with VP, is he studying her?
In the fourth episode “Ladies in red”, Van Pelt tries to interrogate the
Armenian girlfriend of a murder victim who says to her: “From you, I buy
cookies, I don’t talk about this situation”, Van Pelt gets very angry and violent. Lisbon asks her to leave.
In the fifth episode “Redwood”, Van Pelt is disgusted by truck driver who wanted sex with Kara. The rest of the team is not so hard with
Rulon as she is.
In the sixth episode, “Red handed” VP
keeps being self righteous about jokes the team makes like betting about
the hand they found or the steak filets with names, etc. She’s very interested
in finding out about Jane’s memory
palace.
In the seventh episode, “Seeing red”, after Kristina Frye “reads” Jane,
VP says that she’s very good and looks very amused about Jane discomfort with the psychic. Later, she defends Kristina when Jane suspects her.
She even overhears Lisbon and Jane’s conversation about Kristina and defends
her psychic powers again. VP gets
furious about the fake séance because Jane mocks the occult. When Rigsby
and Jane mock her, she gets extremely angry and says that it’s important for
Jane that Kristina is a fraud because if not everything he represents would be
turn around. She even mentions Jane family and what would happen if they’d want
to contact him but they can’t because of his lack of faith. When Jane gets sad,
she apologizes. After Kristina tells Jane about what his wife supposedly told
her and he cries, VP once more is around
watching Jane cry.
In the eight episode, “The thin red line”, while they’re talking about
Cho’s disgust for ananas in pizzas, Jane asks VP why doesn’t she complaint about cilantro, she says “Sometimes you have to go along to get along.” Jane
says: “It’s nice to be nice. But if you
want to get ahead in life sometimes you have to be a bitch. I know you know how… It’s
all about the balance Grace. Ying and Yang. Nice and B…. A little bit of b…
inside the nice and a little bit of nice inside the bitch… Keep them guessing.”
It could be Jane’s way to tell her: I’m watching you and you’re being obvious.
In the ninth episode “Flame Red”, we learn VP knows a lot about old cars and mechanics.
When Jane talks to Tommy and says being a fool gives him power, you’re there
but you’re not there. It’s like a magic cloak of invisibility”, he could also
be talking about Red John spy in the
CBI. Not a fool, but a sweet, good girl like VP pretends to be.
In
the tenth episode “Red Brick and Ivy” VP
interrupts an intimate moment between Jane and Lisbon, (Jane talks about
his stay at the mental hospital) and she realizes it. She’s sharper than she
seems.
In
the eleventh episode, “Red John’s Friends” is VP who after Jane quits immediately finds a connection between RJ and
Jared Renfrew. Renfrew was in prison
with Oval Tanner who said he was just an accomplice of a man called RJ in the
murder he was sentenced for in 1998. VP is the one who after saying Eureka finds the autopsy reports which
confirms Tanner’s statements. And it’s VP
who gets a message in the internal web of CBI with DR JOE NH or RJ who
sends her the address of the
victim’s mother. VP says she can’t trace
him but she knows very well what he did to be untraceable. She could do the
whole thing for him.
In
the twelfth episode, Red Rum, VP gives
football advices to victim’s trainer which indicates a close relationship
with her father who taught her. In the same episode, Lisbon tries to access CBI’s web through VP’s computer but she can’t.
She tries to call VP and asks her but VP
changes the subject and hangs up.
Season 1
episodes 13-23 . In these episodes, we see the contentious
relationship between Jane and Van Pelt, how he studies her and plays with her,
we meet her mean boyfriend who wants revenge on Jane and also about her
particular dad. We also see how she is able to lie to Rigsby.
On episode 13, “Paint it Red”, Jane asks to go with Van
Pelt to the small town’s painter gallery where after she begs him not to
embarrass her, he does. He tells people there they are lovers, and that he’s a
professor who seduced her. Why did Jane ask to go with her and then, tell this
story to annoy her? Is he studying her?
On episode 14 “Crimson Casanova”,
Van Pelt watches Jane while he watches a victim’s video, and she asks him
what he sees in her. Jane answers: “nice shoes, loneliness”. She looks at him
in a angry way. Later, she calls him “Mr. Entertainment”.
On episode 15, “Scarlet Fever”
Van Pelt asks Lisbon to interrogate the witness after 6 months in the unit, and
shows her ambition and an aggressive side asking questions. she gets surprised
when Rigsby dates a mature lady.
On episode 16,
“Bloodshot”, Jane seems very interested when he’s watching Van Pelt with new
boyfriend. Later, Jane turned blind but he asks her why she is ashamed of his
calls. Van Pelt talks with anger to Jane about the woman he deceived when he
was a “Psychic”; she says: “She paid you and you hurt her so much she must hold
a grudge”, Rigsby even asks Van Pelt not to be so hard on Jane. She gets upset
when Jane says Rigsby wants to know about her boyfriend, she calls Jane
“Cruel”. On the same episode, Jane and
Van Pelt talk about how she doesn’t get involved with Rigsby because she is
repressed and emotionally shut down due to a trauma in her past. Jane says she
doesn’t talk about that trauma not even with herself. She’s very upset after
that. On the same scene, Van Pelt talks
about Carol Gentry, a woman Jane mistreated
as a Psychic who had an abusive mother and later committed suicide. Jane feels
sad when he remember Carol and Van Pelt is watching him. Could Carol be Van Pelt’s sister or a reminder of what happened to her
sister? Later on the same episode: Van
Pelt’s boyfriend Dan brutally hits Rigsby and threatens Jane and her, is she
really that innocent? At the end of this
episode, she decides to care about Rigsby and almost kiss him.
On episode 17, “Carnelian Inc”,
Jane is happy to receive a case and Van Pelt once again criticizes him because
“someone died”. Jane offers to make a
picnic on the dessert and when VPelt gets excited, Lisbon orders her to stay in
the office. Does Jane do this on purpose to play with her? Later, VPelt gets
insecure due to a bad joke she says but later discovers a hint and Jane
congratulates her.
On episode 18, “Russet Potatoes”,
hypnotherapist R Daniels tells VP she’s more ambitious that what she allows
everyone to see, she’s worried to keep being a small town girl who doesn’t have
what it takes to succeed. And that’s why she so closed to everything but her
job. Van Pelt tells him he has to do better comparing him to Jane.
On episode 19, “A dozen roses”,
VP is very authoritarian with Rigsby who jokes telling her “Yes boss”.
On episode 20 “Red Sauce”,
Jane once again mocks her about her Yoga practice, she gets upset once again.
On episode 21 “Miss Red”, Van
Pelt talks about her father and the trick places he calls “Chewing gum places” :
“Sometimes you fool the other guy and sometimes you just get gum in your hair”.
Van Pelt’s father is a character
mentioned many times and with a distinctive personality even when he hasn’t
appeared yet. Could he be related to RJ
or Jane’s father?
On episode 22, “Blood Brothers”, Rigsby
asks Van Pelt if she has ever read the file of another colleague in the CBI,
she answers “no”, but we know from episode 3 “Red Tide” that she has read at
least Lisbon file and that she knows Lisbon’s family story very well, so she
lied to Rigsby, the guy she supposedly likes.
On episode 23, “Red John’s
footsteps”, VPelt only finds Cut Iron property because Minelli asks her to
look for it.
Later, I'll continue with the rest of the seasons.
