TV is the New Reading

USA's comic mysteries come back stronger than ever

Mr. Monk has been having a surprisingly good summer so far.

This is a good sign. See, I started noticing a gradual decline in the quality of the writing on USA’s “Monk” from about the third season onward. Beautifully crafted and presented characters and storylines kept getting lost behind the “hilarious” pranks the gag writers wanted to pull on their lead character, a former homicide detective who is now an emotionally broken omniphobic fusspot with the worst obsessive-compulsive disorders imaginable trying to function as a police consultant and a private detective.

Sometimes the jokes work, but in the worst instances, the entire show is written around making Monk terrifically awkward for a couple of minutes. Mr. Monk is left alone with a chimpanzee, for instance, or he confronts a python or a dentist or finds himself hanging from the ceiling or some such thing and he freaks out. That’s great, except the other 40 minutes seem to end up as basically useless filler. Sadly, these also seem to be the writers with the worst sense of continuity, so they don’t even use the time to develop the side characters.

That’s not to say no development has happened. During the past couple of years, Monk has slowly been whittling away at his multitude of fears and phobias in his work with his psychiatrist, Dr. Kroger. He’s reacting better to unfamiliar situations and his associations are stronger. Last week, in fact, he stepped forward a bit more as a father figure for his assistant Natalie’s teen daughter, Julie, while solving a double-homicide, walking her through some thorny relationship questions she was dealing with.

If this keeps up, someday he’ll be a real boy.

Psych

Meanwhile, USA’s comic mystery “Psych” is enjoying a fantastic second season.

James Roday’s hilarious lead as Shawn Spencer, a fake psychic detective who solves all the crime in Santa Barbara, took a back seat this week to his best friend, Burton “Gus” Guster, played magnificently by Dule Hill, when Gus’s uncle stopped by for a visit.

Gus wanting to impress a father figure makes a lot of sense in a show already rife with daddy issues. Usually it’s Shawn who has to confront deep-seated insecurities with his father, played wonderfully by Corbin Berntsen.

Berntsen’s crotchety dad character generally turns up as an excellent foil to the ridiculous situations Shawn finds himself in.

For example, when Shawn was hired to keep an “American Idol”-style judge safe, he hid the judge – played by a zany and insouciant Tim Curry – in his father’s home and suffice it to say, hilarity ensued.

This season, however, he’s contributed his share of wackiness. In last weekend’s horse-racing episode, Berntsen showed up at the track wearing outlandish shirts. Or, as Shawn described it, “That shirt is a crime against color. Somewhere, a rainbow is weeping,” and, at one point, “Please tell me you’re wearing that shirt because someone needs to spot you from space.”

Shawn ended up going undercover in such a shirt, of course, which allowed him to incorporate one of the show’s little inside jokes. “Psych” is a show in which pineapples are mentioned and referenced more often, perhaps, than they are on other shows. And in this case, Shawn’s crazy green shirt had a pineapple motif.

Whether you tune in to spot the pineapples or track the comic insanity of a hyperaware fake psychic and his long-suffering best friend – the chemistry between Roday and Hill is simply wonderful – or to actually try to solve the crimes, “Psych” is just a light-hearted summer romp.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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