Psych is a new USA network show about a fake psychic detective. When I first heard this, I thought “hey, it’ll help to expose the psychic detectives as the bottom-feeding loathsome con artists that they are, and perhaps counterbalance in some way the severely unethical support and comfort that some of the big networks are giving to ‘psychic’ con men.” No such luck. This psychic detective really solves crimes, and just uses the psychic claims because they won’t pay attention to his real explanations.
But not fighting for a specific cause is not something to fault, and while it does put a positive spin on those who present themselves as psychic detectives, its divorced enough from any reality or claims of reality that I’m not particularly concerned about it having an impact.
But that said, it ain’t great. It falls into the same pattern as Monk – the mystery is fairly light and not particularly the point of the exercise. This show is really about the character and watching his powers of observations and his antics. Thing is, neither of those are really that interesting, and things grow redundant even within the hour-and-a-half pilot. With Monk, at least you have an interesting central character and a particularly strong performance. Supporting actor Dule Hill as the lead’s business partner exists only to react to the audacity of his life-long friend.
It’s not painful to watch (mostly), but it doesn’t add up to much.
