TV is the New Reading

Friday night fun returns to USA

First off, I was going to talk about the BBC America production “Being Human” in next week’s column, but a) I’m on vacation and 2) My colleague Andrea Johnson, education writer for The Minot Daily News, already wrote a television column for next week so I figured that while I’m enjoying a week off, my column could have a week off as well.

So by the time I come back I’ll have seen four installments and might even have been able to figure out what’s going on in that show.

There’s a ghost and a werewolf and a vampire and they’re all sharing a house and it’s the most normal thing in the world except I do not know why there is a ghost. Or a werewolf. Or a vampire. But there are, and I’ll get into that down the road.

‘Monk’

Friday night fun has returned to USA with new seasons of “Monk” and Psych” and I for one couldn’t be more pleased.

It’s one thing for Adrian Monk to have been a child at one point – a child who identified too much with a Brady Bunch-like family on a television program.

But when Tony Shalhoub, in a dream sequence, bursts upon the scene wearing tight plaid bellbottoms and a big poofy Afro, reveling in the acceptance and stability he felt from the super duper Coopers and giving the “Here’s what happened” on the set of a ’70s sitcom, it can only mean one thing.

He’s back, baby.

Starting this weekend, Adrian Monk is taking on his final season, and for those of us who have been fans since the pilot episode it’s as exciting as can be. Sharona’s coming back, the original theme music has been heard here and there, and more to the point, if they’re approaching this as the final season, there’s a good chance they’ll bring a series-length question to a close: namely, who killed Trudy Monk?

Whoever detonated the car bomb in a parking ramp lo these 14 years hence, that person is Monk’s Moby Dick, the mystery that has eluded him, eaten up nearly all of his offscreen pursuits and some onscreen as well. The mysterious coded riddles from Dale the Whale. The mysterious Kelly Street. Was a case pursued by Det. Monk partially responsible for her death? Was Trudy simply in the wrong car at the wrong time? Was Trudy on the trail of a earth-shattering corruption scandal? Could she have faked her own death? And as devoted to her memory as he has been, will closure allow Monk to move on? More to the point, who is the Six-Fingered Man? (Christopher Guest, I’m looking in your direction).

Adrian Monk, bane and blessing of the San Francisco Police Department, has burned through assistants and psychiatrists and an endless supply of shopkeepers, but his main focus is bringing murderers to justice. Quite a few ne’er-do-wells are behind bars thanks to his obsession for details and gifts for observation. I’m looking forward to this season as a look back and exciting days ahead.

‘Psych’

Sean Spencer is … let me rephrase this. James Roday is a freeqin’ genius – he and Burton “Magic Head” Guster Dulé Hill both are. I’ve said elsewhere I feel they have some of the best chemistry of any team on television, and now I need also to share my deep affection for the writers as well.

Certainly the cast is phenomenal. They’ve got a zany sense of humor that will manifest as a blooper take or an impromptu ’80s song they’ll sometimes show at the end of the Friday night airing. The writers, however, are responsible for the fantastic give-and-take patter between Shawn and Gus that is such comedic genius in its construction I will say it is unparallelled in television.

Nothing I’ve seen anywhere else approaches it. There’s some masterfully dry funny in “Rescue Me” and some superior funny to be found elsewhere: A scene in “Samantha Who?” shot a fight Sam and Todd were having in the highrise where Sam started throwing Todd’s clothes out the window, and Tim Russ as the deadpan doorman Frank looks down at it and says – completely unfazed and in his best Eeyore – “It’s never anything I can use.”

Hilarious as that is, it’s got nothing on James Roday as Shawn Spencer going into a psychic trance and solving crimes, or riffing with Gus about ’80s pop culture. It’s quite true: “Pysch” is a show that makes me so happy I could suspect it was written specifically for me as a gift from a loving God.

“Being Human” airs at 10/9c Saturdays on BBC America. “Monk” and “Psych” both air new episodes Fridays at 9/8c and 10/9c on USA, with encore presentations of all three shows at various times throughout the week.

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