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Certain shows try to present complicated scenarios at their onsets in an attempt to snap-catch an audience with mysteries and cliffhangers - you don't know who to trust on Lost for its first few episodes (Hell, you still don't!) - but there are occasional series that showcase their television rhetoric so cleanly and interestingly from the get-go that one gets too immersed in the commercial-to-commercial drama of it to recognize (or care) that from a certain vantage point, it's just more of same in terms of TV syntax. 

Ladies and germs, I give you The Mentalist.

Elegant, old-fashioned television drama at its most finessed, The Mentalist is exactly the kind of show they don't make any more - a series as unpretentious as it is compulsively likable. Unlike Fox's distressingly similar Lie to Me, a show with noble parts (and great performances) that tries way too hard to be 'new' or 'fresh', The Mentalist is happy as a clam in its own narrative skin, which is a trait that lends the show an air of confident, sleek swagger.

The show starts with a bang: Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) is presented at first as one of those Hollywood idiots you can't stand - a 'psychic' who doesn't really look into the ether for answers but instead milks a faux ESP in order to make a name for himself on talk shows and in elite social circles. This backfires, though, when he comes home to find his wife and daughter murdered by a serial killer ("Red John") who heard Jane badmouth the murderer on a TV talk show. This sobers Jane up quick, and as The Mentalist kicks into high gear, we find the 'psychic' putting away any supernatural airs, instead using his knack for being a 'mentalist' (someone with a kick-ass ability to both read and manipulate people) to help a crackerjack team of investigators at the California Attorney General's office to solve complex crimes.

There's a fantastic supporting bloc here, to be sure - Kimball (Tim Kang) is a wonderful straight-man for the group, and Teresa (Robin Tunney) makes for a great control freak leader of the team - but the epicenter of The Mentalist is Baker. His face is recognizable from a handful of flicks (The Devil Wears Prada, The Affair of the Necklace), but with The Mentalist, he has found his star vehicle. His good looks, honest presence and way with words not only illuminate a distinct character, but Baker oozes the kind of TV-star cool that is quite rare on modern network TV. 

Again, it's not rocket science - at the end of the day, it's just another crime drama - but even so, it's one of the best things on television right now.

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