Why CBS canceled ‘The Mentalist’

Remember that Saturday Night Live sketch about Burn Notice? The joke was that everyone had heard of Burn Notice, but no one knew what Burn Notice was. Well, I think that’s pretty much how a lot of people feel about The Mentalist. Who is this Mentalist? What is the Mentalist? And if you’re British like me, why does it sound like a show about a total weirdo?

As it turns out, The Mentalist was actually a pretty popular series. Not popular enough to be covered by our humble website prior to writing this article, but popular enough to run for 151 episodes over seven seasons. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never seen The Mentalist, but apparently a lot of people have, or CBS would never have renewed the crime drama for six seasons.

So, back to the question. What is “The Mentalist”? It is a show about a man named Patrick Jane who used to be a “psychic” and now works with the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI, a real person). Simon Baker (famous for “The Devil Wears Prada” and, coincidentally, Marie ClaireThe man in question is played by Jane, who appeared in 2019’s “March Dadness Tournament” on TV show NBC. However, Jane isn’t a “real” psychic, so she has to rely on her powers of observation in her role as a consultant to the CBI. It sounds like a decent premise, but it was good enough to endure a seven-year run, which makes you wonder why the series ultimately ended.

Simon Baker began his career in soap operas Heartbreak High and Home and Away, but The Mentalist was its precursor. While the show cannot be considered representative of the so-called “Golden Age of Television,” ushered in by premium dramas like Breaking Bad (which premiered the same year as The Mentalist), it is at least a The Washington Postas a “solid”.

So what happened to the CBS hit? As it turns out, the show continued on for a few seasons after “Breaking Bad” ended. According to The Washington Post, a lot of that was due to the show’s reworking that took place in season six. That’s right, after Walter White ended his legendary fifth and final season, Patrick Jane was assigned to the FBI tracking down “Red John,” the man responsible for his wife’s murder. Unfortunately, according to The Washington Post, the show’s reworking “was not enough to fully save the series, as ratings dipped.”

In fact, the ratings had been declining even before season 6. Season 4 had a peak of 14.22 million viewers, and season 5 had 11.06 million viewers. But even before the ratings decline in season 5, The Mentalist had attracted 19.7 million viewers at the height of its popularity in season 1, and 14.22 million viewers in season 4. The average ratings for season 3 were 15.24 million, and season 4 was 14.57 million. In other words, there were signs of a downward trend even before season 5’s average rating of 11.82 million viewers. In that sense, the major changes in season 6 cannot be said to be the cause of The Mentalist’s final demise. In fact, the reboot was designed to revitalize the series.

Though its ratings ultimately dipped sharply, “The Mentalist” initially benefited from airing right after “NCIS” in CBS’s Tuesday afternoon slot. It then aired on Thursdays at 10 PM, where it stayed for four seasons, before eventually moving to Sundays at 10 PM. Meanwhile, production company Warner Bros. TV was able to secure an off-network syndication deal for the show, and it was also popular overseas (France is particularly popular with “The Mentalist”). In other words, things were going well for Patrick Jane.

But while “The Mentalist” continued to enjoy popularity in France, as the average viewership figures clearly show, it was not able to sustain its popularity in the U.S. During this time, creator Bruno Heller, who was also the showrunner for HBO’s “Rome,” and writer/executive producer Tom St. Georges were summoned to Peter Roth’s office at Warner Bros. TV to discuss reimagining the series. As St. Georges explained: deadline In 2015, the head of Warner Bros. Television told the duo, “We don’t think the Red John storyline is sustainable. If we wanted to continue beyond season six, we felt we needed to end the Red John story and reinvent the show.”

This led to the aforementioned changes in Season 6, where Patrick Jane was recruited by the FBI and the show moved from California to Texas. However, these changes were not the reason why “The Mentalist” lost viewers, but rather an attempt to revitalize the show. However, it wasn’t enough.

The big changes in season 6 of The Mentalist didn’t hurt the show, but they didn’t translate into a significant increase in the ratings. Season 5 averaged 11.82 million viewers, while season 6 averaged 11.21 million. This was likely one of the reasons why CBS was hesitant to renew the series for a seventh season. In May 2014, The Mentalist was finally greenlit. deadline It was called a “last-minute renewal,” but CBS ordered the shortened season with only 13 new episodes produced. This particularly critical situation was a harbinger of things to come.

In November of the same year, deadline Season 7 of The Mentalist was reported to be its final season. The show ended with a two-hour finale on February 18, 2015, but there was talk at the time that Warner Bros. might sell the still-relatively popular series to another network. However, none of these plans came to fruition, and The Mentalist ended with season 7.

While Bruno Heller, who previously ran “Rome” on TV after two seasons and was canceled in 2007, moved on to “Gotham” after the show ended, and Simon Baker took a break from acting for a bit, “The Mentalist” was destined to become a show people have heard of but never seen (except, apparently, the French).