You'd never guess from its present state of decay that "Psych" was once such a clever and endearing show

The evidence suggests that Shawn and Gus are beyond saving.

"Let me apologize for Gus's behavior. It's juvenile and not very likable."

-- Shawn (James Roday), about best his friend, Gus (Dulé Hill),
in the Psych episode "Shawn and the Real Girl"

by Ken

I'm sorry to have to say that what "psychic detective" Shawn Spencer says about his childhood best friend, Burton "Gus" Guster, has become lamentably true. However, it passes over the disturbing reality that Shawn's behavior" has regressed from juvenile to infantile, and he has leapfrogged from "not very likable" to positively loathsome.

This weekend I finally caught up on the four new Psych episodes piled up on my DVR. (Officially, I see, they're known to USA Network as Episodes 10-13 of Season 6, continuing from October-December.) Whatever force kept me from watching any of these episodes sooner turns out to have known whereof it was forcing. I think it's no exaggeration to say that these episodes were uniformly appallingly awful. It was all the more discouraging that the "super-sized" first of them, "Indiana Shawn and the Temple of the Kinda Crappy, Rusty Old Dagger," was written and directed by series creator Steve Franks, which would seem to certify that this is where he thinks the show is these days.

In fact, I was all set to delete the show from my DVR's automatic-recording list when I noticed online that the next new episode, coming up Wednesday, focuses on Kurt Fuller's Woody the coroner, whose sleazy crassness (or is it crass sleaziness? I think it works either way) provides me my only moments of pleasure these days.

It matters quite a lot that Shawn and Gus have become so utterly unlikable, because the charm of Psych has always been the likability of its characters -- that and the central conceit that it's easier for Shawn, who grew up being trained in fastidious forensic observation by his former-police-lieutenant father, Henry Spencer (Corbin Bernsen, who in the earlier seasons was simply sublime, laying the groundwork, I wrote here, for a whole new career as a character actor), to get people to believe that he's psychic than that he is so compulsively observant and so skilled at deducing dazzling deductions from his observations.

Of course there was always a risk in building a show around a boy who's too old to continue being a boy, and is getting older year by year. Even more dangerously the show's creative team allowed Shawn to win the romantic interest of Santa Barbara Det. Juliet O'Hara (Maggie Lawson). The more Shawn regresses instead of advancing, the more bewildering, even alarming, it is that someone as smart and competent and attractive as Jules could allow herself even to contemplate a relationship with him.

The other quote I scribbled down during my weekend Psych-watching was bit of dialogue involving Jules's crook-father, Frank O'Hara -- a return appearance by William Shatner in the second new episode, "Heeeeere's Lassie." Rather than return Shawn's phone call, Frank has simply shown up in Santa Barbara.

SHAWN: I left you that message a week ago. Where were you?
FRANK: Tanzania.
GUS: You climbed Kilimanjaro?
SHAWN: Gus, don't make up words. What were you doing in Australia, Frank?

As The Simpsons' Nelson would say, "Har har." You get it? Shawn doesn't know what Kilimanjaro is! Har har! Plus he chastises Gus for making stuff up! Har har! Plus, he thinks this place Frank has announced is in Australia! Har har! Oh, that Shawn, what a goof!

Um, no. Even if any of it was believable, it wouldn't be amusing, or much of anything else. Yet what was most alarming was that there was, as far as I could tell (but then, I acknowledge that by then I wasn't watching exactly carefully), no reason for Frank O'Hara to have turned up, except the fact that Shawn had indeed left him a message when he was contemplating proposing to Jules. But his appearance had nothing to do with this show, and worse still, wasn't interesting, or humorous, or anything else I could determine. "Gratuitous" was the word that leapt to mind. I guess it was an opportunity to slip pop-culture iconette Shatner into the guest cast, and offer regular viewers a little "in" joke (minus the joke part).

About the only remaining pleasure of Psych is Kurt Fuller's wacky-sleazy Woody the coroner. It's something, but not much.

I don't know anything about the show's ratings, and I guess I would be still more alarmed to learn that any appreciable number of viewers are still tuning in. (Why?) Unlike USA's In Plain Sight, which is formally announced as being in its final season, nobody involved with Psych seems to have summoned the resoluteness to pull the plug on this ghastly ghost of its former clever, vital self.

I don't know if it qualifies as irony, or just a fact of life, but so far the new episodes of In Plain Sight (which, I noticed, far from leaving languishing on the DVR, I pounced on) have been terrific -- not only finding serviceable new plot lines (is the Psych creative team even trying?) but advancing the lives of its equally terrific set of characters in believable and interesting ways.

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