TV Reviews: Premieres of "Monk" Season 8 and "Psych" Season 4

Two of USA's Favorite Shows Return on August 7, 2009
Monk Begins to Solve His Last Cases in the Final Season and Shawn & Gus Take Witty Aim at The Mentalist

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Monk

Premiere Episode Review:
"Mr. Monk's Favorite Show"

Although he was very gracious and humble, in a recent interview, Tony Shalhoub revealed that the flip-side to starring in a series about a man with OCD is that at times, it can bring out the obsessive side in Monk's most ardent fans.

Perhaps channeling some of these experiences and of course putting his own Tony Shalhoub/Adrian Monk spin on things, in the surprisingly lighthearted opener of the eighth and final season of USA Network's award-winning series, we meet Adrian Monk as a super fan.

Not unlike the Tobey Maguire character in the film Pleasantville who can describe in excessive detail the dialogue, plotlines and inner-workings of his favorite show-- in Monk's case, he's fixated on the escapist Brady Bunch-like fare he preferred to his dysfunctional family growing up.

So similar to Brady Bunch that-- I could be mistaken-- but I believe the same music was used and more than a few faux "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" jokes were made with a new cast of characters and the catchphrase "shucky-darn," Monk finds himself living out his wildest fan fantasies after he becomes the bodyguard of one of the series' child stars.

Having just published a salacious tell-all book that Monk hasn't had time to read but Natalie has only to discover that it's so filthy that the book is filled with possible suspects, the woman that Monk still envisions as the character on his beloved series at first humors the detective by watching a few classic episodes with him but his groupie act wears thin fast.

Asking more questions about the show than who could possibly be trying to murder the actress, Monk's usual knack for detection is threatened by his blind worship of the woman. To this end he makes a few mistakes as a result including not only ignoring the motive that's just been printed hot off the presses by avoiding cracking the book open but also by letting the actress check into a hotel after her life is threatened one more time.

When a bullet rips into the fantasy and the book offers Monk a reality check, he realizes that he can't always believe what he sees on TV and intriguingly by celebrating Monk's surprising love of television comfort food, the show's producers are celebrating the idea of the series as comfort food as well.

Although it makes sense to kick off the closing set of episodes with some more of the show's instantly recognizable standalone formulaic work with a fun and innocuous beginning, despite this it's nonetheless a hardly memorable premiere in comparison to some of the previous openers of seasons past.

Yet, there's still a method to the brilliant writers' decision to open this way when you know they could've really thrown us for a loop if they'd wanted-- since by presenting Adrian in a state that seems to be pretty peaceful and contented and by giving him the chance to make us laugh, subconsciously it guarantees that the series will move into darker terrain later.

Likewise, even the title of "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show" seems to be a way to salute the fans. Thus, fittingly it applauds those who relish in the show's familiarity and non-challenging paradigm that's made this dysfunctional faux family feel like an extension of their real family. Of course, additionally it has significance since, while on the one hand it subtly thanks viewers for making it their favorite show... on the other of course, it reminds us via Shalhoub's Monk to remember not to get obsessed and realize that it's only a TV series after all.

Psych

Premiere Episode Review:
"Extradition: British Columbia"

PSYCH on USA Network - The Mentalist Spoof - The funniest home videos are here

I've never seen The Mentalist but it's been a fascinating week and a half since I was fortunate enough to view Psych's Season 4 premiere episode for review as I watched the media camps divide as though it was the newest and hottest battle since Seth Rogen took on the creator of Entourage.

Of course, when you begin taking into consideration which magazines, newspapers and other outlets are owned by which corporations and tie it all into a ribbon as they get tighter and tighter into a noose which leads to the CBS network that is home to The Mentalist, you understand where some of the (ahem) objective anti-Psych criticisms are coming from in this day, age and fear of downsizing.

Yet the bottom line is that Psych went the fake psychic route first and just saying the plotline aloud of a "fake psychic solves crimes" demands that you take a comedic approach which creator Steve Franks has done to masterful effect since the series began in 2006.

Likewise, the series has only gotten stronger with each passing year as it began incorporating rapid fire screwball dialogue we haven't seen since the days of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Amy Sherman-Palladino's Gilmore Girls. Furthermore, they've seasoned the ingenious scripts with a cast filled with entirely likable characters which in itself is amazingly rare as typically shows always seem to feel the need to utilize at least one jerk to be the generic "sarcastic guy" to generate laughter. And obviously the Psych trademark has become to do all this while filling it to chock full with pop-culture references that make it something truly special and downright joyous indeed.

A show that's so infectious and multi-layered with its reference heavy humor that even cast mates including this year's recurring guest performer Rachael Leigh Cook shared in a recent interview that she was a fan before even she appeared on the series-- season four's premiere makes the most of its British Columbia filming location by setting the typically Santa Barbara based series there.

With Gus tagging along on what he soon realizes was intended as Shawn's elaborately planned romantic vacation with his girlfriend (Cook) when her schedule changes at the last minute-- soon the two are brought on the trail of an art heist in this play not only on The Mentalist but also Entrapment, The Pink Panther and The Thomas Crown Affair as the guys cite everything from Miller's Crossing to Dr. Zhivago while pursuing the illusive thief played by Cary Elwes.

Forever disappearing off balconies or using a Baked Alaska as a diversion, Elwes' notoriously smooth criminal has long been an obsession of Detective Lassiter. Becoming an uncharacteristic man of action, Lassiter decides to use some of the 325 days of unused vacation time he has stored up to see the man in the flesh, bringing his partner Jules along in order to take advantage of her frequent flier miles.

Overall, while the elaborate heist set-up and cinematic look of the show feels a bit out-of-place as one of the traditional standalone episodes, it's also wonderfully welcome to shake things up as the cast acknowledges this directly joke-wise when for example Gus has to slither through security sensors a la Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment or Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels.

Similar to the unexpected and unpredictable re-introduction to Adrian Monk-- seeing Shawn and Gus on a romantic Canadian adventure pursuing an art thief was quite a surprise for a longtime fan. Yet likewise it was one that seemed to move beyond the "gimmick" of taking on another show whether it was via Monk's twisted Brady Bunch or Psych's play on Mentalist rather well. Moreover, it did so in a way that made the premiere feel much more polished and far more entertaining than Monk's this time around. And in the same token, it marked a great return for those viewers who are Psyched to play another round of catch that in-joke with Shawn and Gus once again.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

Q&A: Tony Shalhoub Discusses the Final Season of USA Network's Award-Winning "Monk"

The Eighth and Final Season of
USA Network's Monk
Kicks off on Friday August 7

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Before he bids farewell to his most famous role which has garnered him countless awards as one of America's favorite contemporary detectives, actor Tony Shalhoub was kind enough to take part in an informative and in-depth Q&A session by phone.

Although he's most likely been asked these questions several times before and after eight seasons, he may have preferred to wait for the final episodes to get well underway, Mr. Shalhoub was so generous with his time that we even discovered he was volunteering to speak with us while at a family reunion set in Door County, Wisconsin.

And his ability to put a unique and thoughtful spin on answers that derived from some similarly phrased inquiries to ensure that readers would be able to fully understand just how proud he is of the hit series Monk was incredibly inspiring. Trying to weave back and forth to piece together those threads Shalhoub was able to drop and pick up effortlessly (and leaving off all of the readily available information you can find on Google)--when I began reading the mini book-length transcript, ultimately I felt that it was best to just piece together his responses to the topics that as a fellow viewer I had the most interest in myself.

So without further ado, I'm honored to share with you:

Tony Shalhoub's Thoughts
On Life As, On, & After Monk

Lessons from Monk

Tony Shalhoub: I would want people to take away this idea that sometimes people’s problems or neuroses are really the things that are kind of a blessing in disguise, and even though there’s, you know, sometimes there’s pain associated with these things that sometimes in the face of adversity with obstacles to overcome, people can really kind of soar and find their higher selves and I think that’s what we’ve tried to do on the show is we’ve portrayed this character as someone who turns his liability, his liabilities into assets per his life. And that there’s – and I hope that when we get to the end – I don’t know this for sure, but I hope when we get to the end of season eight that we’ll have seen some real healing from Monk, and I believe in that. I believe that there is healing and that there is change, and that all of those things are – they are just really, really key to all of our lives.

The Legacy of the Series

Tony Shalhoub: Well, I think one of the things that will be remembered about this show-- I hope will be remembered--is that at a time when there was, in a lot of television, especially with the onslaught of cable and in a period where television is kind of redefining itself, that there were precious few shows on the air that were suitable for a wider audience, like a younger audience, you know, people in their 30s and then people like elderly people in the 70s and 80s. That there was a show that all those different demographics could tune into and appreciate, and would appreciate on their own level.

And I think there aren’t a lot of shows like that. There haven’t been a lot of shows like that in the last decade. And I hope that that’s something that people will focus on and remember for a long time, you know, that it’s still possible to do interesting stories and good comedy without having it have to be all exclusively adult themed kinds of things or super violent or with language that some people might feel is inappropriate for younger audiences, and that this show was kind of able to stand out and do that.

Q: Why is This the Final Season?

Tony Shalhoub: Well, I think there were a lot of things at play there... long conversations that I had with Andy Breckman, you know-- one of the co-creators and the main writer. We’ve been talking all along about how many seasons to do, how many episodes that he had in him, you know, as the writer. He, at one point, said that he didn’t think really he had more than six seasons, and then he kind of got a gigantic second wind, and we did the seventh, and we weren’t sure when we were doing the seventh if the network was going to go with us on the eighth. But to make a long story short, we all kind of agreed that the eighth season would be it for all of us.

I think it will have 124 episodes by the end of the eighth season, and I think we’re all ready to resolve the storyline and move on to other things. We certainly don’t want to go too long and have the quality start to wane and just limp to the finish line. We want to go out while we’re still really, we feel really that we’re doing great work and delivering really strong episodes. We want to go out on a high.

USA Network – Characters Salute Monk

by USANetwork

Qs: How Will it Be Structured?
Thoughts on Solving Trudy's Murder?

Tony Shalhoub: What the writers have in mind is to do our normal standalone episodes for the first, I would say, 11, because we’re doing 16, as usual. So the first 11, I would say, are going to be standalone, and then the last 5 is when we’ll be kind of connected. They’ll have a connected tissue, and we’ll start to get into the wrap up, not just of Monk, but of some of the other characters as well. Then what they want to do is the final two episodes, number 15 and 16, it’ll just be one story, a two-part, you know, aired in two segments. Just to follow – that episode, I mean that two-part will involve the wrap up of Trudy’s murder, you know, the solving of Trudy’s murder.

I really think it should be solved. I know there are people who say that maybe it shouldn’t because that would mean that there would be life for this character beyond the series and that possibly the solving of Trudy’s murder would cure him in some way or take down his OCD symptoms, and then the character wouldn’t really be the character that we’ve come to recognize. But I really feel that we’ve worked this storyline so delicately and for so long that I think we owe it to not just the audience and to ourselves, but to the character of Monk and to the character of Trudy that we’ve created. I think we should solve it.

I think it will give him some – I think it will actually help him, and it will give him some kind of peace and some kind of – and in that peace, his OCD symptoms will begin to, you know, significantly drop away. And when that happens, I think he’ll be able to move forward in his life. You know, he won’t feel so paralyzed. He won’t feel so – he won’t have such an aversion to being with other people. He might even, who knows – I don’t know because the writers haven’t revealed this to me, but he might even be able to find love and romance in his life again. All those things, I think, remain, you know, all those things are on the table and are good possibilities.

Q: Are There Any Surprises in Store?

Tony Shalhoub: Sharona [is] coming back. Bitty Schram is going to come back for episode – I believe it’s episode number 12, which will start shooting in September. And they want to bring that character back and kind of wrap it up and kind of give that a good send off. A lot of people really missed that character and the dynamic between Monk and Sharona. And so we’re all looking forward to that.

Of course, we’ll see Harold Krenshaw comes back-- one of my favorites. He’s the other OCD patient who is always kind of in competition with Monk, played so brilliantly by Tim Bagley. He’s going to return for at least a couple of episodes.

Dr. Bell, the psychiatrist will be in a number of episodes. I don’t think – people have asked if we’re going to see Ambrose. I don’t really think that's in the cards simply because that’s … John [Turturro] is so busy. It’s difficult to schedule him in. I mean, if I had my way, we’d do kind of what Seinfeld did and bring back almost every guest star there ever was on the show, but ours is going to go in a different direction.

Qs: What Have You Learned from Adrian Monk?
What Has Adrian Monk Learned from Tony Shalhoub? 

How Have the Two of You Changed (the character and the actor)?

Tony Shalhoub: From Adrian... I think I’ve learned sometimes, you know, hyper-focusing on things is actually a good thing to do. Not all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be as kind of fixed – you know, get as fixated and as obsessed as Adrian, but sometimes, you know, I’ve found that it’s really helpful to look at things in my own life with the same kind of sort of relentlessness that Monk does, just turning something over and over and over and trying to see it from all angles, and not being too quick to judge something or label something. So in that sense, I feel like I’ve gained a little real life wisdom.

Sometimes I feel like – there are moments when I feel like I’m just nothing like the character. But then something will happen, and I’ll just realize that I’m rearranging something on a table at a restaurant, which seems that in that particular moment, seems like it’s absolutely essential that the sugar packets are facing one way and that everything else has to stop until this particular task is completed. Then I realize, “What the hell am I doing? I’m channeling the character again.” It just kind of comes over me in waves, and I have to really, really check myself and try and pull myself out of these things.

What has Monk gotten from me? I feel like Monk has maybe become a little more – because I was playing the role-- maybe Monk has become a little more open to others and embraces to the level, to the degree that he can, embraces other people’s point of view. I feel like I’ve been that kind of a person in my life, open-minded.

I wasn’t really there when the character was created. The script was around for a number of years before it came to me, although I do feel that I’ve had some significant input. When I came to the project, the script and the character was somewhat different, and I had long conversations with Andy Breckman about kind of morphing the character more towards to what I wanted to do, more to my strengths.

The original script that I read was somewhat more – was a little more slapsticky-- and I wanted to emphasize the kind of darker aspects of this character and more … and so that was a conversation that a lot of the producers had in the beginning. And I think Andy did such a great job morphing what he had originally written to fit me and what I wanted to do.

Digging Past the Laughs --
Comedy Plus Drama: An Actor's Approach

Tony Shalhoub: The process was really one of - it’s a process that I use and have used in approaching other characters, which is to find out – you know, knowing that it’s a comedy and to find out what – in any comedy, what I try to do is I try and find out what are the more serious aspects of the character. And, conversely, when I do a serious role, I try and find out what’s funny about the character.And the beauty of this particular character is that I’ve had the opportunity to do both comedy and drama within one series, one character.

So it’s really digging out the – when you’re doing the comedic moments-- digging out what’s really, really at stake and what is the most important and most serious thing to the character, which I believe informs the comedy. And then conversely, you know, when the moments are really dark and poignant, trying to infuse those with an unexpected and sometimes inappropriate or seemingly inappropriate comedic flash, you know, a little spark of something absurd or comedic. That’s been my approach.

Favorite Episodes?

Tony Shalhoub: This is so difficult because I have so many that are just so near and dear to me. I kind of will reframe the question in the answer, I think. The ones that – I will say the ones where I think we did, where we’ve done the best, in other words, those episodes where we did 100% of what we set out to do or 100% of how we imagined the show should be in a perfect world when we’re doing our job – just the best. Those episodes would be, I would say, the first John Turturro episode where we meet the character of Ambrose. That was called "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies."

Another favorite of mine was "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" because it was a chance for me to do this character almost as a different character – see a different part of him emerge. We did an episode that we just shot in the first part of season eight, which will be airing in about a month. It’s called "Mr. Monk is Someone Else," and it’s an episode where it’s basically … assume this character of a man who looks just like him, but the character happens to be a professional hit man for the mafia, and this character dies, and Monk is asked to take on, you know, to take this guy on and become him. And so those opportunities to kind of transform within the character are really, really challenging and satisfying.

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Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

Film Intuition Polls: January, 2009 -- USA Network Poll Results

January Poll Results

In case you missed it, readers were asked the following question:

"This Month, USA Network Unveils New Episodes of Burn Notice, Monk, & Psych. For Our January Poll, Please Select Your Favorite USA Original Series from the Following Alphabetical List..." (Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Monk, Psych, The Starter Wife).

And Without Further Ado, Here Are Film Intuition's Favorites:

Psych (35% of the vote)
Monk (28% of the vote)
TIE: Burn Notice & The Starter Wife (14%)
In Plain Sight (7%)
Law and Order: Criminal Intent (0%)

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TV News & Review: USA Network's "Monk" Returns January 9, 2009

Promo:
Monk the Superhero is Back

Monk, P.I.
(A Magnum P.I. Spoof)

What Has Adrian Monk Been Up To?

Visit the YouTube Playlist

& Facebook Fan Page

Explore USA Network's Official Monk Website

Season 7 Continues With:
"Mr. Monk's Other Brother"
Friday, January 9, 2009
9/8 p.m. Central Time

Ever since he was a boy, Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) confesses that he wanted a "real family." And although of course, there's no replacing his equally phobic brother Ambrose (John Turturro) and one could rightfully argue that his friends, coworkers, and assistant Natalie (Traylor Howard) have become his surrogate family--as the continuation of Monk's seventh season kicks off on Friday night, America's favorite obsessive compulsive detective is surprised to encounter an unknown half-brother.

As equally stunned to realize that he has a bonus sibling as he is when that particular sibling-- Jack (played by the perpetual scene stealer Steve Zahn)-- saunters into his apartment having crawled through a sewer during a prison escape, soon Monk is thrust into both a case and a domestic drama while trying to prove that his brother hasn't killed an innocent woman during the getaway.



Passing Jack off as "Joe Gretzky," his pen pal from Canada-- the show's writers and producers push the audience's suspension of disbelief to the max with the zany premise which finds Jack hiding in plain sight and joining the cops on the case. While we're not sure we completely buy into the illogical storyline and series favorites Natalie, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), and Lieutenant Randy Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford) are pushed to the sidelines-- barely appearing in the premiere-- there's some great moments of quintessential Monk humor. This is most notably evident as he finds himself interrogating a man about an extramarital affair by coining awkward phrases like "fornication partner," and during a conclusion that ends in gun-play as he tells Natalie that he'll count to three and on three she's supposed to come up with a great idea.



The first of seven episodes to complete the seventh season-- "Mr. Monk and the Other Brother" offers a mixed attempt at bringing Monk's family life into the story and devotees such as this reviewer will be dying for a reunion episode starring all three Monk brothers to see the talented actors in action. Nonetheless, the show comforts with its familiarity in tone and formula above all.

Continuing on with new mysteries that bring aboard such guest stars as Gena Rowlands and Bob Costas, the rest of the season will find Monk battling an injury in the line of duty, tackling a tail-gating debacle with the captain, trying to resolve childhood issues by taking the case of a former bully, and fighting city hall "when the parking garage where Trudy was killed is slated for demolition in order to build a park."

The first of three continuing seasons of USA Original Series to premiere this January including Psych and Burn Notice (which picks up later in the month), Adrian Monk literally and figuratively cleans up the streets of San Francisco once more starting January 9, 2009.

Promo for January 9



Exclusive Scene