I've been enjoying following this forum for years, and this is the first time I've posted a comment.

I was holding out hope until the very end that we'd find out that Thomas McAllister as Red John was a really 'long con' and we'd finally have closure for all those unresolved clues. I told myself, '2 episodes are enough - it could be done in 2 episodes!' then, '1 episode is enough - it COULD be done in 1 episode!' When I finally had to accept there'd be no closure I was pretty disappointed.

It sounds to me from reading Bruno Heller's TVLine interview that Peter Roth at Warner Brothers forced him to prematurely end the Red John storyline at very short notice. Obviously Bruno Heller had to say that in a nice way in an interview, but I'd like to think he was as frustrated about it as many of us are.

I'd LOVE to have the opportunity to talk to Bruno Heller and ask him what his intentions were with many of the clues, for example, 'He is Mar'. I felt pretty certain that was going to turn out to be Marcus Pike, and maybe he'd REALLY be Michael Kirkland! I'd like to think Bruno Heller actually DID have intentions for all of those clues, and didn't just think, 'This will be an interesting clue and we'll worry about resolving it later!'

I've been reading the thementalist.wikia.com and there ARE actually some good answers there to clues I didn't think were ever resolved, for example, Bob Kirkland killing Jason Lennon has always bugged me, but I think there's a pretty good answer for that on the wiki.

I've heard that after a divorce it's healthy to 'grieve for what might have been' so I guess that's kind of what we're all doing by posting to this forum. It's certainly been therapeutic for me to write this post!