John Doe: Mind Games

John answers his door to a woman with a son that she claims is his, but on investigating John realizes that the boy is part of a genetic experiment in which he might have featured. But while he tries to find the boy's father, the other possible dads are being killed one by one.

There were probably several better ways to deal with this kind of story, and I'm not convinced this was the best one, as it turns into the same kind of thing that we've had before in this series: the second John looks into something, people start getting bumped off. It's reached the point where we're pretty sure John isn't the father of Wesley, and this turns out to be the case, so we're no closer to finding out who our mystery man is. There are only a finite number of times this trick can be pulled before people start getting annoyed; luckily it seems those behind the programme have reached the same conclusion judging by the end of this episode.

As an episode in its own right, this isn't too bad, it just gets a little bit boring and the serial killer apparently after the geniuses who donated genes to Wesley doesn't seem to have much of a motivation or much of a presence in the story. He doesn't turn up until very late in the game, and when he does he's put down quite easily. Even the brains in jars in his hideaway don't really communicate exactly what he's trying to accomplish; presumably he's just mad.

It's fun to see John interacting with other people on his level, but it does seem a little like overkill to have all of them in the story, as even one of them could probably solve the whole case if given all the information, and without the killer being a palpable threat everyone feels annoyingly safe most of the way through, as if the others on the list of donors are the ones in danger and once the murderer's passed one name and failed to kill them, he's not interested in them.

**

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