There was something about the Mentalist fandom (those who make an effort to watch the show regularly) that had me really confused. Why did so many not like the Red John storyline and were eager for it to end? Afterall, there were only a handful of RJ-centered  episodes in a season(not counting s6). The great majority of the episodes were Jane and CBI doing their thing solving the cases of the week. So why in the world were people so eager for it to end?
     And then I realized something. The majority (or at least the vocal majority)of the fandom are Jane/Lisbon shippers, and Red John was the greatest impediment to them getting together. So it did not matter if RJ was never mentioned in the episodes, as long as he was out there, Jane and Lisbon would not get together---whether it was because Jane was scared of RJ hurting Lisbon or whether Jane was so focused on catching RJ that entering in a romantic relationship was the furthest thing from his mind. Either way, the Jisbon shippers had a problem with it.
    So we can say that the fandom is/was primarily divided into two groups: those who watch for the relationships (especially Jisbon)  and those who watched for the Red John storyline.  
   I wonder if those fandoms can be divided among gender...with the majority of Jisbon fans being female and the majority of the RJ story fans being male. I don't mean to be sexist, since I'm female and was/am a huge fan of the RJ storyline (at least until 603 but that's a whole different topic).
  Anyway, I would like to conduct an informal survey. Obviously, everyone on this forum is/was fan of the RJ storyline, even if you don't like the way it ended. Would you please press the green button if you are male and the red button if you are female?
Thank you!