(no subject)

I've been watching The Mentalist lately, so here, meta:

The Mentalist is one of those classic stories with no possible good ending, or at least not much of a possibility of one.  Of course, seeing how it's on TV, I'm sure the producers won't ever let it have the terrible ending that it should have, but the only logical endings are bad.

Possibilities:
Red John kills Jane (not likely at all, since he seems to like the games he plays with Jane)
Somebody other than Jane kills Red John.  Jane commits suicide.
Jane kills Red John, then either kills himself or continues with the CBI

• nobody finds out--again, not likely, judging by Jane's personality.
• Jane gets arrested & goes to prison
• Jane gets arrested, but gets off somehow (self-defense, technicality, people covering for him); possibly a happy ending, but probably not if they cover for him
• somebody in law enforcement shoots Jane because he's acting crazy, just killed a guy, and won't put down the knife; or because Jane forces it
• one of Red John's people kills Jane
• Red John kills him as he kills Red John

What really gets me about this show is that, even during the filler episodes, you can see Jane working towards his goal.  It seems like every episode he's testing and/or tempting the team, nudging them into a state of mind where they won't stop him from killing Red John.  And Lisbon and Cho, at least, know that it's all going to end badly (Rigsby and Van Pelt, maybe, maybe not), are expecting it to end badly (didn't Lisbon say, straight-out, that she thought that one day Jane would go too far and she'd be out of a job?), but they still go along with it.  (it amuses me horribly how Cho almost always says a very firm no to Jane's schemes and then the very next scene shows him carrying them out)