Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Friday, January 13, 2006

Monk Returns, and All's Right with the World

O.K., people, get out your toothbrushes and scrub the floors, and don't forget to dust the chandeliers. Grab a wet-wipe and a cool bottle of Sierra Springs and settle down for the first episode of season 4 of Monk, the best show currently running on American television, tonight at 10 EST on the USA Network. In tonight's episode, Malcolm McDowell guest stars as "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show."

There will be a quiz!!!

For those benighted souls who haven't seen the show, the last episodes of a daylong Monk marathon are now running on USA Network, and a free iTunes download is available here.

4 comments:

James F. Elliott said...

No, no, no! I must disagree! While Monk is indeed a wonderful show, The Closer is the best show on American television!

S. T. Karnick said...

I, too, like The Closer. Very good show, though not in my opinion as good as Monk. I found it interesting that nobody ever noticed that The Closer was a direct remake of the British series Prime Suspect, but with the protagonist's difficulty fitting in changed to being because of her not being from the local department (including jealousies among those passed over for the promotion, which was also an aspect of the original) and being a female Southerner in L.A. In Prime Suspect, the main reason the character was not originally accepted by the officers under her command was that she was a woman. Given that it's absolutely illegal to do anything like that in the United States (though I don't doubt that it still happens), the makers of The Closer had to come up with something else, and it's a more interesting show because of the culture-clash angle.

James F. Elliott said...

Actually, you get a lot of the misogynistic boy's club thing in The Closer and the barrier it places in front of Brenda. Hopefully someone will publish my review of it and Wanted and you can see what I mean. I think The Closer is probably the smartest, most psychologically (which is to say, character) driven cop show on TV right now, and it's definitely my favorite. Of course, my second favorite show is a tie between Two and a Half Men and Boston Legal, so I'm not quite sure what that says about me...

Greg McConnell said...

Thanks for the Monk update. Maybe I'll check out the free iTunes downloads you linked to...