The Mentalist, season 2

The CBI's year is mostly murder-of-the-week - and the show's best version of it, with Jane running long cons on suspects, juries, and once an entire faked psychic rival. But the Red John thread pulls steadily tighter. A film student's snuff-adjacent project brings the killer's attention; an accomplice surfaces and dies before saying anything useful; and Jane begins to understand that Red John is not hiding from him. He is watching, and enjoying it.

Kristina Frye, a medium who may or may not believe her own act, gets close to Jane - the first person since his family who reaches him - and then makes the mistake of addressing Red John on television, in exactly the register Jane once used. She vanishes. When she is found, what has been done to her is worse than a body: she has been convinced, or broken, into being someone else.

The season's end is a bank of lights on a dark set - a trap built around Jane, sprung by the killer himself. Red John's face stays hidden, but his voice recites Blake - 'Tyger Tyger' - close enough to touch, and lets Jane live, because the game is better with him in it. Jane, for the first time, is not the one running the con.