What now for the Mentalist?

[Warning, if you haven't yet seen the Season 3 finale, this contains spoilers]

Sometimes, season finales can be truly gamechanging: think Dean going to hell in Supernatural (thereby opening up the whole angels story arc); the appearance of Buffy's never before seen little sister (which is, admittedly, seen by many as a mistep, bur certainly changed the playing field); the Cylons stomping down the dirt main street of New Caprica. Sometimes, though, for all their hype, they're just a cliffhanger keeping you guessing until the next season, where within 45 minutes of the first episode it's back to business as usual.

Having just seen the finale of the Mentalist, I'm wondering - which is this? Because for all intents and purposes, it should be a major gamechanger for a show that has lost its way. Like many shows built around the antics of a maverick anti-hero, after a strong beginning the show has lost its way: Hollywood seems repeatedly to fall into the trap of introducing a character who is charmingly off-beat, anti-authoritarian and rebellious only, as the show progresses and the producers try to maximise what they see as their strongest asset, turning them into a bully or a dick (yes, Lie to Me, I am looking at you…). Partrick Jane has gone from being wounded anti-hero whose plight you care about, to a smug prick whose antics regularly endanger anyone unlucky enough to get in his way, and by the time it got to the end of season 3, frankly I was rooting for Red John.

There's also the danger in putting all of your eggs into one Big Bad basket: create an army of enemies (the Cylons, vampires, zombies, Government conspiracy theorists) and you at least have plenty to play with. Build your whole show around a conflict between one hero and one villain and it will inevitably run out of steam. So the confrontation between Jane and Red John has felt overdue after a convoluted season where too often you have lost track of everyone's motivations, sidelined by a load of pointless red herrings and a raft of unlikeable or unconvincing characters.

And did it live up to the hype? I sort of think it did. I liked the idea of Red John being 'just a guy' (the casting of Bradley Whitford - Josh from the West Wing - was a masterstroke) - the anticlimax of meeting the devil that has haunted you and it being just another man on the street. "You expected me to have horns", Red John says, and after 3 seasons, yes, you rather do. I liked the resolutely downbeat nature of Jane's revenge. But what else is there to do? Go down the Bones/Spooks route and have a trusted insider turn - in which case you risk alienating half your audience who simply don't believe the character transformation - or make the villain so super-evil he seems like a caricature. We're so inured to portrayals of evil in film and TV it really would have to be dramatic to shock, so why not go for the low key reminder that all killers are, after all, just people in the end?

The question is: what next? Will the producers decide that Jane needs a nemesis, and will this turn out to just be another sleight of hand, another of Red John's minions tricked into playing a role? I rather hope not. I like the idea of seeing Patrick Jane after the fall: how he deals with the consequences of his actions, and what he does when he no longer is sustained by a mission. I'm just not sure that's the Mentalist, so it remains to see how brave the showrunners are. But for my money, a back to business Mentalist has no interest to me: I'm bored of Jane's grandstanding and the knots the stories was tying itself into to try and keep Red John bubbling away in the background. A rebooted show with an aimless Jane having to be a grown up now his excuse not to be has gone? That I might be willing to watch.