‘The Mentalist’ season 6, episode 17 video: Simon Baker’s Jane and jealousy

On Sunday night’s “Silver Wings of Time” episode of “The Mentalist,” Jane and Lisbon are going to spend a ton of time together. In turn, this means that Jane is going to have a ton of time to start to get jealous over the fact that there is a new man in his partner’s life.

So is Jane finally going to start to play the jealous card? Maybe … but right now, he’s more into the “I don’t want to admit that I’m jealous” phase. Just look at his expression below when he listens to a conversation between Lisbon and Marcus Pike over some sort of plan they have coming up in the next few days. Pike’s not even there, and Jane is already acting like someone has come and taken away his birthday present five minutes after he received it.

This is one of the strongest signs yet from Simon Baker’s character that maybe the show is finally heading in that direction, which is good in that “The Mentalist” has never been a show without a goal. For six years, that goal was taking out Red John once and for all; lately, the only long-form story we’ve had is the one that led to Van Pelt and Rigsby getting back to their new life after former members of the CBI were being targeted. A romance is always an effective long-term storyline, especially when you’ve waited for it as long as we have here.

While the show’s future remains in doubt, let’s say this: If the show does wrap things up on CBS this year, they need to at least give some sort of inkling that Jane’s life is heading in a hopeful direction (hopefully with Lisbon). Otherwise, there was no reason to continue the story after Red John had been killed.

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Photo: CBS