Patrick Jane is a fictional character and the protagonist of the CBS crime drama The Mentalist, portrayed by Simon Baker.

Jane is an independent consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation, and helps by giving advice and insight from his many years as a fake psychic medium.

[1] Patrick Jane is a consulting member of the CBI (California Bureau of Investigation) crime fighting unit.

He is unconventional and commonly defies police procedure, often acting without apparent empathy for suspects or families suffering losses.

[2] Prior to working at the CBI, Jane suffered a nervous breakdown due to guilt over the death of his family.

He has stated that he plans to kill Red John rather than to commit him to legal incarceration, though his direct supervisor, Teresa Lisbon, appears to doubt his sincerity in this regard.

He was discouraged from doing so, but when assaulted by a then-agent of the CBI, Stephen Hannigan, he was allowed to look at the files out of an attempt to appease him and avoid a lawsuit.

He became involved in a then-current investigation of Lisbon and her team, managed to solve the case using his unique abilities, and as a result was employed as a consultant by then-CBI Head Virgil Minelli.

Two years after the events of "Red John", Jane resides in an unnamed Spanish-speaking island (most likely in Venezuela, as the telephone country code is 58), eventually agreeing to return to the U.S. as a consultant for the FBI in exchange for his charges being dropped, on the condition that Lisbon works with him.

Jane has suggested on a number of occasions that he considers Red John's death or capture to be a higher priority than his own life.

In turn, Red John appears to hold a similar obsession with Jane, to the point of risking capture for the purpose of observing him.

Red John has a CBI team murdered with help from a mole on the inside, just so he can have Jane back on his case.

During their conversation, "Red John" encourages Jane to forget about him, and says that seeking vengeance is a waste of his valuable life.

[2] Since the beginning of the show, Jane is shown to care deeply about Lisbon, who is not only his supervisor, but, in the final season, his eventual wife.

Bruno Heller has stated that some people interpret the relationship between the two characters as romantic while others view it merely as a brother-sister type of bond.

[3] In the sixth season, Lisbon gets engaged to FBI agent Marcus Pike, which causes Jane to realize his true feelings for her.

In a simple ceremony, Patrick and Teresa exchange vows in front of family and friends, on the land Jane has purchased for their future home.

Jane is also good at chess, card games (especially poker), backgammon, pool, and pinball although these skills almost never aid in solving crimes.

In his mentalist heyday, this brought him both a great deal of money (enough to buy a house in Malibu) and a certain amount of fame (his photo can be seen gracing the cover of framed magazines in his home at the time).

Jane is camera shy, and often expresses reluctance to be interviewed or otherwise filmed, presumably another change in personality since his heyday as a television mentalist.

He also consciously avoids situations where he will be thanked (e.g. by a murder victim's family when the culprit is apprehended) or made the center of attention.

Despite his obsession with finding Red John and his anguish and guilt over the loss of his family, Jane occasionally behaves in a spontaneous, even lighthearted fashion, expressing delight in simple pleasures such as open air, music, and natural beauty.

Jane shoots the first, police officer Dumar Hardy, with a shotgun in the episode "Red John's Footsteps", in order to save Lisbon's life.