The episode opens with Jane performing one of the great mentalist feats of all time: wrist reading.  This is the act of finding a hidden object using only "hidden impulses" in the wrist of the hider.  He tries it on Van Pelt and finds her keys after making a show of feeling her wrists.

Next Jane, along with Rigsby and Cho, go down to the beach to question the friends of a girl who was found drowned in the ocean.  While the cops ask regular questions, Jane asks them what animal and color they saw their friend as.  Very strange at the time.

The cops leave Jane at the beach upon his request and as a form of comic relief, he builds a giant sand castle with a borrowed bucket.  Meanwhile Lisbon's team interview the father of Christine, the victim.  He doesn't give them a lot of information, but the name Darlene comes up and they decide to check her out.  Lisbon shows some apprehension when she learns that the mother of the family was killed by a drunk driver, just as her mother was.  (IMHO, I don't think this really worked as well as the writers wanted it to ... the concept is a bit trite and simply plays off the emotions of effected audience members.)

After a short interview with Darlene, which requires the promise of a good word to the DA, they get the name of a guy named "Flipper," who Christine might have "hooked up with."  When they arrive at Flipper's trailer out on the beach, they discover that Patrick Jane has already caught up with him and is whipping him in chess.

While grilling Flipper and accusing him of the murder, he tells them the last place he saw her, a party the night of their disappearance that her friends failed to mention before.  There is a short scene where Christine's father shouts angrily at Flipper, but it doesn't amount to anything (and fails to really have any relation to the plot at all).

When Jane and crew track down Christine's friends again, they eventually cop to having had a party that night.  They also seem to be completely unembarrassed by the casual sex they've been having with each other.  

The team goes down to the construction site where the party occurred and they talk to the construction chief.  After complaining about his night guard who walked off the job that Monday, Jane finds him lodged in a block of cement (by the tip of his nose alone).  The land owner is called in and it turns out to be the father of one of Christina's friends.  It turns out that he is not only well connected, but he was having sex with Christine (who was not yet 18).  Jane provokes him into a fight and they arrest him for a short while.

After they release the land owner, Jane travels down to the beach again and convinces Christine's friends to undergo group hypnosis.  Hope, the girl in the group, sees a vision of the land owner staring down at them after they were leaving the party.  The next day each kid comes into the station in turn to tell a different story to Jane and the team.  Only after he's heard all their versions does he determine that they were all responsible and that Hope, the mastermind, made them all take part in order to make them all equally responsible.

Teresa Lisbon, the agent in charge, asks Christine's father to clean up his alcohol problem and be a good father for his children.  The episode ends rather abruptly here.

All in all, this was a pretty mediocre episode.  The "subterfuge among several suspects" plot has been done before, for sure, but I feel like they could have made it more interesting.  Also, as I said earlier, the Lisbon side-note (which was all of 2 minutes in the show), seemed trite and superfluous.  This episode really didn't stand up to the quality of the first two.  

Another problem I had with the show was that we didn't see much of Jane's character.  We just saw a couple unimpressive little tricks that barely had an impact on the story.  It's only the 3rd episode and they have largely stopped developing his character.  What's going on?  

One thing I did like was that they aren't just making him into a simply "hyperobservant detective."  He noticed the nose in this episode, but that was it.  I think they could do a lot with Patrick Jane if they'd just put some more time into it.

Thoughts, questions, concerns?  Post them below!