'The Mentalist' Recap
Cho gets a call about a murder in Oakland. The only thing is, the police don’t want the CBI’s help; they only want his help. Cho takes Jane along when he goes to identify the body. The victim is Cho’s former best friend David, the member of a gang that Cho himself used to belong to. He had called Cho within the last week asking for help after just getting out of jail, but Cho didn’t return his calls because he didn’t want to get involved with a gang again.
The victim’s grandmother is his only family. She comes to see Cho at the CBI office. She tells him that her grandson left the gang and pleads with Cho to help solve the case even though it isn’t his responsibility.
Jane, Van Pelt, and Rigsby convince Cho to take a closer look into the case just to figure out whether or not David really did quit the gang.
Some former friends of Cho tell him and Jane that David did indeed quit the gang, but they suspect that he still had some involvement.
They go to visit the janitorial service where David worked when he got out of jail, but the owner of the service is not much help.
When Jane and Cho get back to Sacramento, Lisbon is not happy that her whole team decided to work on a case without telling her. She tells them that the case belongs to the Oakland P.D., but obviously this piece of advice is going to be ignored.
When Cho is at his house with his girlfriend, two men break in and hold them up at gunpoint. His girlfriend is sent to the hospital after being slapped around by one of the men. Instead of teaming up with the rest of the CBI crew, Cho takes matters into his own hands and goes after the gang, taking only Jane with him for company.
It turns out that Cho has an enemy within the gang. During a disagreement, he ended up shooting a man named K.S., and that’s how he decided to ultimately quit the gang. Cho suspects that he has something to do with the break in, so he and Jane go looking for him.
By this time, Cho has basically gone rogue. He almost breaks some guy’s arm while trying to figure out where K.S. is. Then he goes to K.S.’s house and breaks in and holds up its inhabitants at gunpoint.
Cho interrogates K.S. about whether he was involved with the break in or with David’s murder. K.S. tells him that he didn’t kill him, but he did sell him cocaine shortly after David was released from jail. Cho plans to take K.S. into custody, but when he tries to leave, one of K.S.’s friends has found Jane who was waiting outside and is pointing a gun at him.
Jane attempts to reason his way out of the situation, telling everyone to “think what they want.” Jane and Cho leave without a fight.
Jane and Cho meet up with Rigsby to try to figure out where the drugs play into the situation. Jane hits them with the Occam’s Razor principle, “the simplest solution to the problem is usually the right one.” This is the way that Jane tricked Rigsby into believing that he could get heads twenty times in a row when flipping a coin, and he also believes that it is how they’ll solve David’s murder.
The drugs that David got ended up with Crystal, a receptionist at the office that David worked in. She tells the police that David had been blackmailed to get the drugs. She also solves the riddle of a list of mysterious numbers that Jane has been carrying around.
Rigsby, Jane, and Cho go back to the office to find Adam Rose, the man who bought the drugs from David and who is also abusing Crystal. Cho has seriously lost it by this time. In order to obtain a confession, he locks Rigsby and Jane in an office and takes Adam Rose outside.
Jane and Rigsby are released by Frank, the man in charge of the janitorial service that David worked for. The three of them chase Cho outside where Adam Rose is lying “dead” on the ground. By this time, all viewers watching have figured out that Cho, Jane, and Rigsby know that it was actually Frank who committed the murder, but they need to trick him into confessing.
Cho tries to get Frank to take off the gloves that he is wearing because he’s pretty sure that his hands will reveal marks from having hit someone recently. Finally, they get Frank to comply because he’s so scared at what Cho will do because of his loaded gun and all of the angry vibes that he is giving off.
Frank confesses that he shot David because David tried to get him to stop blackmailing him and he wanted to quit his job. The mysterious numbers are the passwords to accounts of the clients at the office. Frank’s next move was going to be to break into the accounts and steal their money, but David wanted nothing to do with this plan, however, Frank had power over him because he could claim that David’s parole was violated.
The CBI wraps up loose ends with the case. They convince Mr. Rose not to press assault charges in exchange for them not pressing charges for the drugs that he had.
In the end, Cho goes to see David’s grandmother to tell her that he’s solved the case. Cho lets down his guard, and we get a glimpse of his soft side when he admits that he thinks that he maybe could have prevented David’s murder.
