Continuing what has become an annual tradition for the popular cab/sat channel, the USA Network premiered its latest Monk and Psych Christmas special episodes last Friday. The shows will continue to be seen throughout the month; viewers should check their listings for dates and times.
Both episodes were very good, with the Monk special edging out the Psych one in terms of overall quality, though each was quite entertaining and enjoyable. In both cases the episode followed each show’s usual formula while incorporating familiar trappings of Christmas holiday celebrations.
The Psych episode involved a strong emphasis on family relationships, concentrating on minor transgressions by the various members of Gus’s family while Shawn and Gus track down a dangerous character who has turned a confidence game into murder. In addition, the con artists include a father-daughter team whose redemption Shawn pursues by attempting to turn them to better pursuits. That ties into directly theological Christmas themes, of course.
The Monk episode dealt even more explicitly with such themes, to impressive effect. The story revolves around the murder of a homeless man, which Monk very reluctantly agrees to solve for the victim’s likewise homeless buddies for the not at all princely sum of $14, which the men raised by selling all the soda bottles they could find. The analogy between this and the Gospel account in which Jesus praises the poor woman who gives all she can to the church is made very clear.
It’s a very solid mystery (in fact one of the best on the show in recent years) that also revolves around a fountain in a San Francisco monastery, where people are being miraculously healed after drinking the fountain’s water.
Captain Stottlemeyer, who has endured some personal problems since we last saw him, including a bad back that pains him greatly, drinks some of the water, and sure enough, he is healed. Monk is rightly skeptical, however, and investigates further while Stottlemeyer decides to leave the police force and dedicate himself to God by joining the holy order in the monastery.
That all leads to much amusing activity, as we’ve come to expect from Monk, including one of the show’s typically brilliant comical mystery-solution-explanation scenes, in fact one of the best ever.
The resolution involves a couple of entertaining though easily anticipated twists that tie the central theme together nicely. The miracle of the title may well be taken as referring also to the episode’s final moments, in which Monk stands at the fountain contemplating whether to drink the water.
Altogether, it’s a very strong episode and even better than last year’s Christmas special.
USA Network is going from strength to strength in its original programming, and is reaping the benefits in solid ratings.
On a sadder note, USA has announced that the forthcoming eighth season of Monk will be the last.
Of course, it makes sense to end its run while the show is still good, and we may well be justified in hoping that there will be more Monk specials and occasional TV movies after the series is finished. Undoubtedly Monk‘s myriad of fans will be sad to see it go away, but perhaps the producers will make it worthwhile by solving the central mystery of who killed Monk’s wife, Trudy, and why.
Thanks for your comment, Saucey. That’s a good observation about the pop cult references in Psych, which had not occurred to me before. It does make a bit of sense, however, for them to be ’80s-mad. Sean and Gus are about thirty years old, as the show has established in earlier episodes (and is confirmed by their 1985 graduation, which would make them 31, actually), meaning they were born in the late ’70s and grew up during the ’80s. Of course, they would not have been watching ’80s movies during their infancy, but ’80s pop culture would surely have formed their earliest cultural memories and thus their very ideas of what culture is and should be, their ideals about it, as it were. In addition, during their adolescence they would have seen a huge amount of ’80s tv in syndication on local channels and cable, and would of course have seen countless ’80s movies on tv as well, all of which tends to figure in the allusions them make. Finally, people often tend to gravitate toward popular music styles of their earliest years (which is why the cycles tend to repeat every twenty years or so), which for them would have been the ’80s. So, in all I think it’s justifiable for them to be stuck in the ’80s, even though it doesn’t initially seem to make sense, as you rightly observe.
I think it’s interesting how such a seemingly minor matter can bring up such a serious issue as that of how we form our cultural reference points. It’s another instance of the power of pop culture to create meaning where there seemingly is little or none to be found. Thanks again for bringing this up.
Thanks for turning me onto Psych. I started watching it a year ago when you had another article about it.
It has become one of my favorite shows. I’m still baffled a bit by the disconnect between the pop culture references they make and the age Sean and Gus.
In one episode they went to their class reunion (i think it was class of 95). I would think they should have graduated in 87-ish to be old enough to make the 80’s references that are a constant part of the show. Just my two cents.