Of Swords and Parasols

So, I kind of have this strange love-hate thing going with Psych.  On the one hand, I love the gimmick of the genius detective who's a slacker who can't keep a job because he can't get motivated, but then realizes he loves solving crimes and gets really motivated with that, and drags his high strung best friend along.  I don't love the "fake psychic" bit they added to it.  Shawn as Shawn provides enough hijinks and off-beat behavior to keep the show running.  Shawn  with his fake psychic act going tends to move him from "annoying but endearing" to "someone just hit him already" territory for me most of the time, and I tend to really hate his "visions" and just want them to be over with.

That said, S2 seemed to have that aspect under control better than S1 did, but it also seemed more slapstick at times than S1.  I kind of want to forget that the counterfeit episode ever happened.

Juliet and Lassiter also got some of their own storylines here.  I'm glad they aren't pushing "Lassiter is a jerk" as hard as they did in S1, as how they did it then just made me more inclined to like him and be irritated with Shawn.  (I do like Shawn, just not as much as I do other characters.)  They didn't portray Juliet as being as willing to buy into Shawn's  act as they did in S1.  As much as Juliet/Shawn is pretty much an odd, mass collision of cute and snark, I kind of hope the show never actually hooks them up.  Even though she "knows" he's lying to her about being a psychic, she still gives him trust and the benefit of the doubt, and at some point, it will have to be stated "yes, I've been lying to you from the moment we met," and she isn't the sort of person who will take that well, especially given how much she defends him.  It should stay with Shawn having a massive crush but being allergic to adult relationships, and Juliet having an "adults only" policy.  I'm continually impressed, though, that they can constantly make her so cute and perky and honest and trusting (and, sometimes, a complete, stereotypical blonde) but also clearly smarter and more competent than almost anyone else on the show at any point in time.  Not to mention she's the resident badass.  Now for Vick to get some more independent development in S3.

I did end up watching all of season 1 of Psych.  While I like it, I can't help but think it would have been much, much better without the fake psychic angle.  Even without it, Shaun is still an obnoxious guy who can't keep a steady job and likes to solve crimes with a photgraphic memory and, thanks to his father, keen analytical skills, which alone sets him apart from all the other TV detectives currently running around, and is something of a nod to the TV detectives ofthe 70s and 80s.  The fake psychic angle turns Shaun from "obnoxious but endearing" to "obnoxious pain" everytime he gets into that mode.  It says a lot that my two favorites are Lassiter and the captain: the two who don't buy into the act and don't cover for him.

And I watched Season 5 of Monk.  There were some really good episodes here-particularly "Mr. Monk and the Actor," "Mr. Monk and the Leper"(though I'm biased as Paul Blackthorne, aka, Harry Dresden, gueststars, and it was made to be similar to noir) and "Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy"(though, again, biased, as I dislike the bulk of the tech/forensics crime investigations shows and this was a bit of a parody of them) but I can't help but think that the series is starting to mock Monk's OCD a bit.  In the past, it's always been funny  because you can't help laughing despite being kind of sad because of what the OCD does to him, and people's reactions were always more of an "I don't understand this guy so he's absurd to me" thing but we weren't made to share the opinion, where as it approached it more as "isn't this absurd?" a few times this season.  One scene that really bothered me was in "Mr. Monk Can't See A Thing" when Monk was on the steal beam...now, I've seen people not stop to help a lost blind person before, but I find it hard to believe that that many people would see a blind man on a steal beam, clearly thinking he was over open air(he wasn't, but didn't know that) and not stop to help him...lost is one thing...scared out of your wits for obvious reasons is another.  Still, not nearly enough to get it dropped from my list.

We've been watching Psych this week at work.  It gets compared to Monk a lot so I've been curious about it and was glad one of the boys got it.  While it entertains me and I like it, and the characters, I'm not feeling and serious attachments yet, and while I like Shawn and his investigations and antics, I get annoyed at the scenes where he's faking having a vision, as they tend to be overdone and annoy me.  Still, I'll hopefully be borrowing the two discs we've watched already, so I can watch the eps properly.

Also, I loved the cover to season 2 of Bones when I first saw it the other day...thought it was really cute. But then I was looking at it again earlier, and HIS FEET!!!  Somehow that just makes the whole think look absurdly cute to me.

Though, for his sake, he better put his shoes back on if they go walking together after...I mean, just LOOK at those heals...