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“The Mentalist’s” 100th episode has aired and the team that makes the popular Simon Baker drama has made it clear that this season, they’re going to get closer to solving the central mystery of Red John — the serial killer that took the lives of Baker’s character’s wife and child.  Does all that indicate that Baker and series creator Bruno Heller are envisioning an ending for the series?

Not according to leading lady Robin Tunney.

“I think it’s a creative conversation,” she says, speaking of the show in general and the Red John storyline in particular.  “I feel like they’ll go along as long as the audience wants to, as long as they keep it interesting and not too frustrating.  Historically, with television, people will get on the bandwagon with something and then it’s very clearwhen they’ve given up,” she continues.  “Everybody wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer in ‘Twin Peaks’ — but it went to a certain point and then everyone turned on (creator) David Lynch.  I think there’s a certain point where you resolve something when the audience needs it.”

According to Tunney, Heller and the other writer-producers “read everything that’s written about the show, I think. Bruno actually reads letters that people send in.  I think they are genuinely curious.  Both Bruno and Simon are really into what the fans think, and sort of servicing them.”

The fans’ devotion has helped “The Mentalist” remain a strong show despite the fact, “the move to Sunday nights has been rough, because we get pre-empted by football,” Tunney acknowledges.  “People can’t watch when the show starts at 11 o’clock — and they can’t even properly TiVo it, because they don’t know when it’s going to start.

The Chicago-born actress, who rose to fame as the suicidal teen who shaved her head in “Empire Records,” and as a girl with occult powers in “The Craft” — and counts the series “Prison Break” among her credits — says she is happy to continue playing Agent Teresa Lisbon of the fictional California Bureau of Investigation.

In fact, she says, “I love playing this character, and I think as far as female roles on tv, it’s one of the great ones.  I feel like she’s incredibly three-dimensional.  She’s strong, she’s powerful.  I think she’s effective, but at the same time I think she’s human.  I don’t get bored.  I think that’s largely due to Simon because I do most of my scenes with him and I enjoy acting with him.

“At the same time, this has created a perfect atmosphere for me.  It’s not soapy, where I have to jump into bed with men or wear negligees, or cry, or play something ridiculous, like I’m the twin,” she adds with good-natured distaste.  “Or comedy like you watch sometimes and think, ‘Oh my God, this is not working’.  I’ll watch a show  that’s meant to be humorous and think there’s something wrong with me because the laugh track is laughing, but I don’t think it’s funny.”

Tunney, who is divorced, has a family of sorts among her “Mentalist” cast and crew mates, particularly Baker.  They are close enough, as she disclosed in a CBS video, that their relationship even survived her throwing up on him one day when she was working despite a stomach virus.

“He has three children so he’s had his kids throw up on him,” she cheerily observes, when the incident is mentioned.  “I think if you’re going to throw up on somebody, you should try to throw up on somebody who has children.  It doesn’t freak them out quite as much.”

As far as the show’s marking of 100 episodes and what it means to her, Tunney says,   “I was just reading about the 300th episode of ‘SVU.’  That just dwarfs this achievement.  Television actors are sort of like athletes.  You don’t admire it as much until you do it yourself.  You spend your life going, ‘Oh my God, Meryl Streep is so amazing.’  And she is amazing.  But Mariska Hargitay is like Muhammad Ali.“

She feels that Simon is a champ as well.  “He has an abnormally strong work ethic.  The fact that our show has stood up so well is really a testament to him and Bruno.  They both work astonishingly hard and, you know, it all comes from the top.”

With “The Good Wife” back in production for its fourth season, Christine Baranski is enjoying the fact her Diane Lockhart character is carrying on relationships with two men. At least.

“I’ve got two guys so far, but I’m ready for three or four, why not?” asks the actress, dead pan. “I’m a busy woman. I actually got a Twitter question today: ‘You seem to have the most active sex life of anyone on the show.’ That’s pretty damn funny. I love it!”

But seriously, Baranski is understandably proud of the multi-dimensional Diane, whose skills outside the bedroom are at least as formidable as therein. “What I really love? She’s a powerful, well-educated woman, very well-spoken, and she can just go toe to toe with the guys.  Women love that, they love to see it. There are so many powerful women in the world now, running companies, running countries, running the international monetary fund. They know how to talk to guys. They don’t, you know, bend and try to be all cute to try to deal with the guys. It’s a new world, and I love that Diane is totally comfortable with men. She actually likes men. You get the feeling, this is a woman who can sit down and drink scotch with the guys, and talk sports.”

Baranski herself loves to talk sports — she can keep up with any guy on the crew, she says. And nowadays, with her showcase role as the head of Julianna Margulies’ firm on the CBS series, Baranski loves to talk law.

“Why do lawyers get such a bad rap? It’s really hard,” observes the two-time Tony-winning actress. “I have a daughter in law school. I admire people who get through law school. It is really difficult. I often get the script and I think, ‘This is like speaking Arabic. What is this?’ So I learn more and more about the law and about how things work, and I’m happy for that because that’s really fun — when you have a job that actually educates you.”

In fact, Baranski is so convincing, “I’ve had people, heads of law firms, tell me, will you come and talk to my female lawyers about how to do it, because people on juries, they watch television, and they think lawyers should be like Diane Lockhart.”

According to Baranski, when Season 4 kicks off, we’ll find her law firm, Lockhart Gardner, in crisis mode. “We’re in a bad way, so we’re going to have to work our way back up or be liquidated. There’s a lot of layoffs. You know the show is good about reflecting what’s going on in America. We’re still in a recession, and frankly Lockhart Gardner hasn’t been able to bounce back the way they thought it would.”  As they say, stay tuned.

Donnie Wahlberg, Amy Carlson CBS photo

What a grand time for the “Blue Bloods” troupe.  Ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month and being feted at CBS’s Upfront presentation for advertisers, Tom Selleck and the rest of the cast must be feeling duly appreciated by now.

Amy Carlson, who plays Donnie Wahlberg’s wife Linda on the show, tells us she and her family will be heading off to Fire Island for a vacation after the promotional fest.  And after that, “I would love to do a movie, but if it doesn’t work out, that’s fine.  I have two children who are still quite little — 2 1/2 and 5 1/2 — and I love having time to spend with them.”

In fact, her schedule is one of the reasons the actress considers “Blue Bloods” her “best job in the world…My scenes are pretty specific and they’re all in one place, so I end up not having too crazy a schedule which is great.  They tend to give me more to do every third episode.”

She could be moving around a lot more next season, if talk of having Linda return to work as a nurse comes to fruition.  Opening up a medical aspect of the cop show would certainly add possibilities, and Carlson is ready.  “On ‘Third Watch,’ I was a paramedic, so I have a TV medical background,” she says with a laugh.  Hey, but no kidding — the experience won’t hurt.  “It’s true,” she responds.  “You do end up with a lot of knowledge you can bring with you.”

Usually when we talk about a breakup movie, we mean a movie about a couple  breaking up.  But it’s different in the case of Will Estes’ forthcoming “Anchors” – a film that writer-director David Wexler predicts will actually make a lot of people break up.

That’s according to Estes, who adds, “It’s a real, honest look at the destruction of young first love.  I think, unfortunately for most of us, that’s the way the cookie crumbles:  we don’t end up staying with our first loves.  It’s a good film, an honest film.”

And the film, touted as a sexy, turbulent anti-love story, is also a big departure from Will’s noble cop character, Jamie Reagan – a.k.a. Tom Selleck’s youngest son — on “Blue Bloods.”  He rushed right into work on the indie feature, which also stars Devin Kelley of “The Chicago Code,” as soon as the series wrapped for the season.  In fact, it was almost too much of a rush.

“I am so relieved to be finished with the film.  It was really intense.  We shot about 13 pages of dialogue a day — really big monologues.  It was something that I would have felt pressed to do if I’d had two weeks of rehearsal, but  I had two or three days.  I heard about it Sunday, started shooting Wednesday.  Part of why I said yes is that I thought it would be a really big challenge, a really big exercise as an actor.”

According to Estes, “Blue Bloods” fans can expect to see brotherly friction between Donnie Wahlberg and himself on tomorrow night’s (5/11) big season finale of the show.  “There’s a lot of stuff between Donnie and me — the family relations.  We have a little bit of a blowup that ties into the story of the characters,” Estes tells us.  That’s in addition to the race-against-time thriller story that has Tom Selleck’s Police Commissioner Frank Reagan getting word of a bio-terror plot in NYC.

“It’s a great finale,” he enthuses.  “I’m so excited about ‘Blue Bloods.’  It’s just getting better and better.  Everyone’s really hitting their stride, the writers and producers as well as the actors.”

OPERA-ATION:  Oscar-winning actress Shirley Jones certainly surprised the surgical team that worked on her knee replacement at St. Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, CA the other day.  Orthopedic surgeon John Moreland had a recording of Shirley and Gordon MacRae singing “People Will Say We’re in Love” from the 1955 classic movie musical “Oklahoma!” and turned up the volume in the OR for the benefit of the team while they prepped.  Suddenly, the medicos told Shirley’s husband, Marty Ingels, there was an “extra voice” – Shirley herself joining in, despite being in twilight sleep due to anesthesia.  Now, there’s a show-must-go-on mentality!

Leelee Sobieski certainly goes against type in her first-ever regular series role — playing an Iraq War MP-turned-tough cookie rookie cop in CBS’s April 15-debuting “NYC 22″ police drama.  She’s convincing, especially in moments like when she gets a juvenile thug in an armlock to make sure he understands the importance of treating her with respect.  But as soon as the director called “Cut” in that scene, she was saying “I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!” the actress recalls.

“He was really so cute — like a little angel kid.  It’s very hard when you have to do some stuff like that.  I’m always going around giving everyone hugs,” admits Leelee.

She tells us she didn’t have to think twice about taking the role. Executive producers Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal were a lure, “of course.”  Also, “I’ve always loved Richard Price’s writing,” she says of the esteemed author, whose credits include Lush Life and The Wanderers, as well as scripts for “The Color of Money,” “Sea of Love” and HBO’s “The Wire.”  Price created “NYC 22″ in addition to being another executive producer.

Leelee has major personal considerations as well.  “It’s wonderful to be able to shoot in New York.  My husband and daughter and I live here.  My whole family is based here — my mother, mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, brother and sister-in-law are all here and a lot of friends, too.  And I liked that it was an ensemble piece,”  The schedule allows her to spend days at home with her little girl between shooting.

Raising a two-year-old “is much harder than doing the acting,” she lets us know with a laugh.

The “Joan of Arc” star gleaned “interesting little things to put into my character” from talking to real NYPD officers, both women and men.  “I went up to a lot of cops on the street.  The female officers have to be really strong.  I hadn’t realized that, for a police officer in first few days on the job, some of them almost felt like they were playing the part of a cop, too,” she notes.  She also learned that the gun belt, “is really hard on women who have hips.  It goes from side to side; it’s moving around a lot.  It digs into your headphones.”

With the first season’s episodes of “NYC 22″ in the can, Leelee is currently focusing on “just being a mom, and then also, I like to paint.  I think I might even eventually segue into doing that as my main thing,” she discloses.  The silence and solitude of painting seems worlds away from the art of acting, but Leelee observes candidly, “I think I’ve never been too flashy of an actress or whatever.  And it’s really not so different; it’s also a great outlet for emotions.  There are lots of actors who enjoy painting, a lot of directors that paint, too.”

Billy Gardell, Reno Wilson CBS photo

With just four more episodes to shoot  for this season, “Mike & Molly” is heading towards its highly-anticipated wedding episode.  In fact, there might be two weddings in the offing, if Joyce and Vince (Swoosie Kurtz and Louis Mustillo) also tie the knot.  Considering that the TV landscape is littered with the bones of series that jumped the shark after the main characters wed, is there concern about “M&M’s” handling of wedded life?

Not according to Reno Wilson.  “I just think it opens up so many more stories,” he says.  “They’ve got to get a place to live — or are they going to be married and stay in the house with her mom?  What about children?  You know, there are so many storylines with people on the show, honestly, in my opinion, it’s just going to add to it.”

Besides, adds the man known as Carl McMillan to “M&M” watchers, “As Billy (Gardell) and I always say: ‘Just say them words.’  We have the best writers in television, and we trust them fully.”

Wilson and Gardell, in case you didn’t know, have a friendship that dates back six years, to their former “Heist” series, before they were cast as best friends on the Mark Roberts-created “Mike & Molly.”  In fact, Wilson tipped Gardell to the sitcom when it was in the works.  After reading the first 10 pages of the script, he phoned Gardell and said, “This is our show.”  They also played pals on an episode of “Las Vegas” as big winners.  In real life, “Our kids are growing up together.  We shot a little movie with our kids.  We hang out at each other’s houses every so often and have barbeques.”

Meanwhile, there’s Carl’s own romance, with Holly Robinson Peete’s character.  “I’m really happy that Carl has love in his life.  It’s the first time he’s encountered an actual woman he doesn’t have to blow up, who doesn’t have a nozzle,” Wilson jokes.  “I really like that through this relationship, they’re showing other pieces of Carl, some sensitive sides, and where that bravado and machismo came from, that kind of insecurity.”  He’s also loving working with Peete.  “She’s a force of nature, all the things she does.”

AND:  Wilson doesn’t know when “Bolden!” — in which he plays the young Louis Armstrong — will be making its way to screen.  The film is about jazz legend Buddy Bolden (Anthony Mackie), and boasts a cast including Wilson, Omar Gooding and Jackie Earle Haley.  Wilson, who grew up in a household full of musicians, and reveres Satchmo, feels that “I did some of the best work of my career” in the film that was made three years ago, and has yet to see the light of distribution.  “I was doing a one-man show about him when I got this movie, this opportunity to play this icon,” says the actor, who performed seven songs for the film directed by Dan Pritzker.  “I try not to think about it too much.”

'Unforgettable' Role no drain for Jane Curtin CBS photo

Jane Curtin returns to the tube tonight (2/7) joining the cast of  “Unforgettable” as an acerbic and demanding forensic pathologist who teaches romantic poetry on the side.  It’s a part the “Saturday Night Live,” “Kate & Allie” and “3rd Rock from the Sun” television favorite tells us came “out of left field.  My agent called and said, ‘You have an offer to become a regular character on a procedural cop show that started in September.’  It was such a great idea.  Why not?  It’s something I’ve never done, and I do like a challenge, so I’m doing it.”

She hasn’t asked why creators of the Poppy Montgomery crime drama thought of her for the part, and doesn’t plan to do so.  She knows better than that, she explains.  “When I was first starting in the business, I got a commercial and I wondered, ‘God, why did they pick me?’”  Then she found herself sitting next to the product manager on a plane ride, so she asked him.  “And he said, ‘Your face was big enough to superimpose a drain on,’” she recalls.

Curtin surmises that the “Unforgettable” series team was probably looking for her to bring some humor and lightness to her character, the tough and brilliant inspector, Joanne Webster.

She’s been working with the same technical advisor who helped Leslie Hendrix learn about the medical examiner’s work for “Law & Order,” she lest us know.  And that’s big, because “She set the standard for playing a medical examiner.  No one’s done it better than she.”  There are certainly an abundance of medical examiners on television – Dana Delany, Robert David Hall and David McCallum, to name just three.  Curtin is well aware of that.  Or, as she puts it, “Anybody who is anybody is a medical examiner these days.”

Naturally, “You wonder how you’re going to differentiate this particular medical examiner.  It’s not as if people who work in that end of medicine are lacking a sense of humor.  There are times when you use it to relieve the stress.  These human beings deal with a lot of stuff every day, and sometimes the only thing you can do is quote Monty Python lines.”

Mark Harmon

“NCIS” marks its 200th episode Tuesday (2/7) with a storyline that will bring back past events (and stars) as Mark Harmon’s character sees his life flash before his eyes when he encounters a gunman in a diner.  The nice-guy actor-producer is always quick to credit his team when asked about the success of TV’s No. 1 series.  In fact, he lets it be known, he doesn’t think about himself and the rest of the cast and crew in terms of star and supporting players:  “I don’t see myself in life that way.  I know how to do the team thing,” explains the one-time UCLA quarterback.

“Everyone has a say, everyone gets to speak their minds.  Everything is out in the open.  If there is a problem, we talk about it and deal with it, so it’s a pretty rare way to work.”  Indeed.

On the other hand, it seems one person alone has a say when it comes to Mark’s wife, Pam Dawber, ever guesting on “NCIS.”  Here’s what he says about that:  “You know, she’s got her own career.  She’ll figure it out.  It’s not my decision.  It’s not my choice.  It’s her choice.  If she wants to come in on something, she’ll come in on something.”

ALSO:  Harmon is looking forward to reprising his role as Lucas Davenport, author John Sandford’s sleuthing Minneapolis Deputy Chief of Police — the part he played in the USA Network’s hit November movie, “Certain Prey.”  Chatting after the “NCIS” panel at the recent TV critics press tour, Harmon said, “There are plans to do another one, but whether that will be this hiatus, I don’t know at this point.  Part of my job here and commitment to the show is to come back somewhat rested.”  Fitting a TV movie during his seven-week seasonal hiatus doesn’t leave much time for R&R.

Jennifer Ehle, Patrick Wilson CBS photo by Heather Wines

Patrick Wilson’s “A Gifted Man” is gearing up to finish its first season with a bang.   They’re about to shoot the final episode, according to Executive Producer Neal Baer.  And, he lets us know, the last two episodes should be especially satisfying for those viewers who’ve embraced the ambitious series that’s attempted to meld medicine and spirituality.

Expect Broadway’s Tammy Blanchard to make an important appearance — and Eriq LaSalle’s role to be key.

Baer says the show — which changes time slots to 9 o’clock Fridays starting Feb. 17 — will revisit questions about the nature of surgeon Michael Holt’s (Wilson) late ex-wife, Anna (Jennifer Ehle).  Is she a ghost?  His conscience?  Why is she there?  “Then you’re going to see something pretty emotionally moving involving the character.  Patrick has a big scene, a wonderful scene,” Baer says.  “We’ve been very careful, up ’til now, that nobody ever sees him in conversation with Anna, other than a word or two, but Eriq La Salle catches him in a screaming match with her, and from his point of view, Patrick is just yelling in the air.”

That will lead to issues being addressed, explains the distinguished writer/pediatrician, whose credits include “ER” and “Law & Order: SVU.”

He adds, “I love doing this through Eriq La Salle.  It’s a wonderful deja vu.  He hasn’t aged in 18 years.  He looks the same as when I first saw him in 1994.  I said, ‘Eriq, have I been here before?’”  However, Baer stresses that La Salle’s current character, psychiatrist Edward “E-Mo’” Morris, is nothing like his former TV doctor.  When Baer talked to La Salle about “A Gifted Man,” the actor said, “‘Don’t make him anything like Peter Benton.’”  La Salle also directed the Feb. 17 episode that features Christina Milian.  “A Gifted Man” may not surmount its ratings struggles, but no one can say they’re not making a worthy effort.

Neal Baer

MEANWHILE:  Baer’s dividing his time right now between multiple writing chores.  His and Jonathan Greene’s just-released (ital.) Kill Switch (end ital.) page-turner is already earmarked for the big-screen with Katherine Heigl attached to play the heroine, forensic psychiatrist Claire Waters.  Baer says, “We’re working on it.  Kevin McCormick, who just finished a film (“Gangster Squad”) Sean Penn and Emma Stone is going to produce.  It’s going out to studios and companies.  The movie business takes time, you know.  That’s what I like about TV.  A script I wrote last week is going to be shot next week and it will be on in February.”

Ironically, Baer and Greene originally wrote “Kill Switch” as a movie, “about 10 years ago.  We wrote about a 35-page outline, and worked on it for a couple of months.”  Time passed.  “I was busy doing ‘SVU’ and life…a couple of kids were born…”  The outline literally sat in a bottom desk drawer until Baer’s literary agent let him know she was looking for a medical thriller.  Now he and Greene are into writing the second book of their three-book deal.

This is the second time Baer’s been involved in a project that lay dormant for a decade before coming to life.  The first was a drama Michael Chrichton had written based on his experiences while a med student at Harvard in 1969 that “was in a trunk in Steven Spielberg’s office for 10 years, as I heard the story,” relates Baer.  Baer, a later Harvard Med grad, wound up updating that script — “ER.”

Poppy Montgomery, Dylan Walsh CBS photo

Dylan Walsh reports that Marilu Henner will soon be in New York to play the aunt of Poppy Montgomery’s character on their “Unforgettable” CBS crime drama.  The red-haired one-time “Taxi” star, as you may know, serves as a consultant on the show in which Montgomery plays a detective who can recall all the moments of her life with perfect clarity — the extremely rare superior autobiographical memory that Marilu has in real life.

Walsh says he’s looking forward to seeing Henner again.  “With her role as consultant, there’ve been a lot of telephone calls between her and Poppy, but I haven’t talked to her since last summer,” notes the actor, who plays Montgomery’s colleague and former lover. 

Now if only “Unforgettable” can take hold.  It’s been a ratings toss-up, and right now, its fate remains up in the air.

“We’re waitng to hear what our future is on the schedule.  Nobody talks about it,” according to Walsh.  “I hope to get some good news about continuing soon.  We’ve put in a lot of hard work, and there’s a lot more hard work ahead.  It’s been bumpy, but the reason it’s been bumpy is something I’m as proud of as anything — it’s that people are trying to do more than just your dry procedural.”   

He goes on, “Everyone assumed that her superior memory would be a superficial way to get people into the show.  But the writers have really cleverly used it as an integral part of the stories — including the fact there’s this romance, albeit in the past.  She keeps remembering, and people get to see this couple without betraying what the show is in the present.  There are a lot of flashbacks to their relationship.” 

As far as what that means to him as an actor?  “The challenge is the fun,” says Walsh.  “I get to play a younger guy, a guy who is in love, more of a suburban guy than in the present, a guy rising up through the ranks.”

Walsh, who lived in L.A. while making “Nip/Tuck,” is extremely glad to be back in his former NYC stamping grounds for his current show.  “It’s the best part of all of this.  I’m so happy here.  I’m in Tribeca right now,” he tells us via phone.  “On the weekends, one of my hobbies is learning all the architecture, building by building.”

Whatever the future of “Unforgettable,” Walsh is already thinking ahead to the holidays.  “I’m having my kids come out for Thanksgiving,” he says, “and I suspect the same for Christmas.”