So, I’m sitting here, waiting for something encode and wondering why it is that I end up past midnight when staying up past midnight kills me every single time when it occurs to me that – instead of running yet another thing that’ll just slow down my computer more – I have a blog and I had some stuff I wanted to write here at some point. I just don’t have any idea for a title, or of how I want to say it, and so forth. But it’s enough to keep me conscious for a while longer.
The season finale of Psych seriously is going to be one of the most underrated episodes of the year. Just a total inverse from the the usual fun formula (remember when I strongly disliked this show? it got better or I got better, one of the two), playing it serious for once and doing it perfect. Gus and Shawn flipping roles (or trying to) worked, the whole some-what over the top serial killer worked, the rapid fire flashback realizations at the end hauntingly worked. They gave out nice bits of foreshadowing/mood setting (Shawn proving to Gus he could be serious by asking out Abigail, just before a whole day of being serious) and subtle misdirection (Abigail’s not answering her phone…) You know, if this whole Star Of Cable Television Show thing doesn’t work out for James Roday, he might be able to move into writing full time okay.
(Here’s where I embed the show from Hulu…except Hulu doesn’t have it up. I think Hulu might have peaked with the Super Bowl commercial, because it feels like networks might have just been alerted it exists and started pulling things back, putting fewer things up or putting them up slower…)
As good as the first 50 some minutes of the show were, the last five made it. See, I’ve seen TV shows before, and I’ve seen TV shows with unspoken feelings between main characters that take X many seasons to finally get around to (which is usually X/2 too many.) Please don’t mistake me for the type of person who smashes together two names to nickname fictional relationships, but Juliet and Shawn together would be nice. Juliet’s pretty much great*, but so is Abigail and that’s the person Shawn was actually on the date with and a normal human being would finish a date with one unrequited love at least before moving onto #2.
But again, I’ve seen TV, so the bit is here is the boy irrationally dumps the second girl for the first girl because that’s the relationship we’ve been trained to root for since day 1. (or day 2, whatever.) Which leaves me yelling “NO, NO, DON’T DO IT” at the TV like it’s the previous week horror movie spoof.
As it turned out, yelling was pretty pointless. They can’t hear me on the other side of the TV, the TV show was taped months ago anyway, plus – strangely enough! – Shawn acted like an adult and explained the situation and his regrets, Juliet responded in kind and wished Shawn luck, and Shawn and Abigail had their date. Everyone acted like a real person with a post-high school level maturity would act (minus Gus in the car), and you kinda felt like you were being treated the same way watching it.
Maybe next season will be all love triangles and catty looks and whatever, though I really hope not. Still doesn’t change how excellent this all was.
On the other hand, others shows that I’m watching which make me feel dumber for watching include Monk – which annoyed me last week by teasing actual progress in the main storyline (except they long forgot it was a main storyline) with the teaser, and then doing an uninteresting episode. Between that one, and the Reoccurring Annoying Character Dies Because Magician Can’t Spend Five Seconds Thinking Of A Lie one, I’d be okay with the show ending right now.
House is also in the dumb pile. Again, don’t normally care about relationships but when they’re the most spark free on television, they’re pretty hard to ignore. I really wish the character of 13 was as interesting to me on the television set as she apparently is to the writers of the show, because they’re quite in mad love with her and I have no idea why. She was dying, she was really self destructive about dying, then she was okay about dying, but she hasn’t had time to pick up an interesting personality in the meantime. It isn’t for a lack of a screen time, since she’s given a B or A plot in pretty much every episode. All the 2nd gen characters haven’t been as interesting as the first group – well, except for the one that they killed off. I mean, that’s why I still watch, because the Amber two parter was as great as TV is usually going to get and they can still crank out those random great episodes from time to time, but there’s a lot of not so interesting in.
The supporting characters make all the difference in these mostly-one off shows. Like, I can’t imagine how Psych would’ve worked if they stuck with the original female detective instead of Juliet. She was such a non-factor in my mind, I was looking around imdb after the previous episode, where Lassitter met his wife to unexpectedly receive divorce papers, trying to remember if the other detective was supposed to be his wife or his secret affair. It was the later, but more amazingly – the female detectice in the pilot was Amber. Small world.
* – note to self: BUY A THESAURUS. I used to be literate, I swear.