u/renard_chenapan

(Je viens de poster une autre question qui n'a rien à voir, désolé il se trouve que j'ai 2 questions le même jour… J'espère que c'est OK)

Un entrepreneur a fait des travaux de rénovation chez moi il y a 3 ans. Il a notamment refait toute la plomberie. Il était très correct, et a très bien réagi quand il y a eu des petits soucis nécessitant de refaire un passage un peu plus tard.

Plus de 2 ans après, je fais venir un chauffagiste pour un problème de température de l'eau. Il finit par déterminer qu'il y a un piquage d'eau froide sur le circuit d'eau chaude, probablement lié à une erreur pendant les travaux. Difficile d'en savoir plus sans casser un coffrage qui protège ledit circuit.

J'écris à l'entrepreneur plusieurs fois pour savoir s'il a une idée et s'il peut passer voir, pas de réponse. Après quelques semaines de relances je finis par faire un courrier de mise en demeure pour qu'il fasse jouer son assurance décennale, toujours pas de réponse. Je cherche dans les archives son attestation d'assurance et je réalise alors que je ne l'ai pas, et que je n'ai pas dû penser à la demander à l'époque des travaux. OK, ça m'apprendra.

A la rentrée, je réussis à le joindre au téléphone : il me dit qu'il a transféré tous mes messages et ma lettre de mise en demeure à son assureur. Je lui demande le nom de cet assureur, il me dit qu'il ne l'a pas en tête et va me l'envoyer par message.

Depuis, aucune nouvelle. Je lui écris par message et par mail, j'essaie de l'appeler : rien. J'imagine qu'il a peut-être bloqué mon numéro.

Mes questions :

• Y a-t-il un registre des assurances décennales qui me permettrait de savoir s'il est assuré, et par qui ?
• Son silence laisse-t-il supposer qu'il n'a PAS d'assurance décennale ? Est-ce possible ?
• S'il continue à faire le mort, quels sont mes recours ?

Quand on voit Lucky Luke tirer et que son ombre reste immobile, on voit aussi la balle arriver et le chapeau du méchant s'envoler, et ces choses AUSSI bougent plus vite que l'ombre de Lucky Luke. Donc Lucky Luke tire plus vite que son ombre, mais il n'a aucun mérite. En réalité tout le monde peut tirer ou faire n'importe quoi plus vite que l'ombre de Lucky Luke.

I know fan subreddits sometimes don't like this kind of stuff (EDIT: wow, they sure don't!), but I wanted to put these thoughts in written form so here they are if you'd like to read them…

I watched The Mentalist because I love a good detective show, and I was hooked. The main idea for the show is good and the characters were well-written, as well as the murder mysteries.

To me, the biggest achievement of the show was how they always nailed the casting. Not only the recurring roles (they're all excellent), even small characters who just have a few lines are always very well cast and it's a pleasure to watch them all work. This is what made me stay until the end of season 7. (I think this is the reason season 7 works: every member of the new team was a perfect choice and they work wonderfully together.)

However, with time, and while still enjoying these positive traits, I grew somehow disappointed.

It's not about the Red John story, I thought that was okay, including the reveal – even if the figure of the "batshit-crazy-and-at-the-same-time-super-smart serial killer" is a little trite (and also weird when the serial killer is also the head of a vast conspiration).

My first problem was with Jane not having enough flaws. Or I should say not having flaws at all. Jane has all possible heroic qualities except knowing how to fight, which is arguably a quality too. He's arrogant and sometimes insensitive, but that's really okay because "he closes cases". His overall awesomeness is not balanced by a real flaw or impairment. Maybe this is a problem for me because I come from worshipping Monk.

So while I genuinely liked the character and the actor, I ended up not fearing for him much. After a few episodes, you know the guy is just never wrong, not even a little, not even once in a while (ok, counter-examples must exist but are extremely rare and probably not very decisive in their context). He's like a James Bond of the mind, he can't ever lose. I find that a little tiresome and irritating.

Chance is always on his side. Sometimes he'll admit a statement was "just a guess", but even when he takes risks, he's right 100% of the time. That just doesn't make sense. The overall outcome of his risk-taking should reflect the actual probabilities. We should see him sometimes lose because of bad luck, and then make the best of the new situation. But since that almost never happens, I lose interest because whenever he guesses something I know I can just assume it's true.

But my biggest problem is with the way police brutality is never really addressed. I mean not nearly enough in a show where they trick suspects, forge evidence, and do all sorts of shitty things police should never do. I get that it's not the point for this kind of show, not every cop show has to be written like The Wire. But this is just too much of a dead angle in The Mentalist. I cringe when they whine about having to go through a judge before searching someone's house, or at the lawyer jokes, or scenes where suspects complain about brutality and it's always in bad faith. In a way it's related to my first problem: same as Jane's guesses can't be wrong, the police in general can't be wrong either (I know there are counter-examples, like when Jane re-opens an old case because an innocent person was put in jail, but in my opinion it's still a huge dead angle.)

Of course it is sometimes shown that the police can be corrupt, but it's not systemic corruption, only some bad apples that need to be removed. On the contrary, the justice system does suffer from systemic corruption (the police arrest the bad guys, and the bad guys get away with it because of money and lawyers).

For sure public awareness on these topics was not then what it is today. But that's made it sometimes hard to watch for me. In a few occasions I stopped, and then came back to it a few weeks later because I missed the characters. But I had to watch maybe all the second half of the series in a state of cognitive dissonance regarding these themes.

Overall it's still a good show that I watched until the end, and I don't think you endorse police brutality for liking it, or the creators for writing it!