TV Makes You Smart

White Collar - All In

When a FBI agent goes missing, Peter and Neal go after the money launderer the agent had been investigating.  Neal plays pai gow with the launderer undercover of one of his old aliases, Nick Halden.  Mozzie is adorably excited about helping Neal by forcing him to watch a cheesy pai gow movie, then teaching him about the game. The FBI team sets up in the apartment of a man who is a confidential informant against the launderer.  He has a cute little daughter who gives Neal a chance to show Peter how to act with kids.  After the pai gow game, Neal runs up against an undercover Interpol agent who lies to him to get the FBI away from the launderer.  She tells Neal if he helps her she can lead him to Kate.  Neal keeps the Interpol influence from Peter, who figures it out anyway.  Elizabeth reminds him that the only reason Neal would keep something from him is Kate.  The missing FBI agent is dead, of course.  Peter and Neal find his body in a warehouse.   Peter calls Neal out on the Interpol agent and explains she was lying.  He forces Neal to choose to help the FBI or end their partnership.  There’s a lot of back and forth about whether or not they are partners.  In the end, Neal manages to get a bug onto the launderer, who quickly incriminates himself to the FBI’s satisfaction.  The Interpol agent tells Neal that the guy who has Kate is FBI.  What FBI agent has time enough in their day to keep a prisoner?

White Collar - The Portrait

We see Neal's forgery skills at work this week.  He and Peter investigate the theft of a painting from a private home.  They quickly figure out who was behind it, but things are complicated by the fact that it was stolen from a museum years before.  When he recovers the canvas, Neal sees that the artist meant for the subject of the piece to have the painting.  He makes a copy of it and returns the original to its rightful owner and the fake to the museum guy who knows it should not have been the museum's in the first place.  In his spare time, Neal is still working with Mozzie to find Kate.  Neal actually talks to her on the phone, and sees her from across a street but she just wants to know where he hid some stolen goods.  He won't tell her.  Kate looks remarkably like Elizabeth, doesn't she?  Why are we finding it hard to care about her? 

White Collar - Flip of the Coin

Peter is extra motivated to solve a crime this week, since the Innocent American Soldier just back from Iraq who is framed for the crime also happens to be married to a friend of Elizabeth's.  Peter can't go home on account of all the crying going on in his house.  He goes to Neal's place instead.  The bad guy is really bad.  We know because he's obviously a Terminator who killed not only Wild Bill Hickok but a bunch of innocent whores.  Before they get to him, Neal walks the line of illegality while Peter watches.  Peter and Mozzie meet while Peter is avoiding the crying and they immediately fall in love over drinks and mocking Neal.  The Really Bad Guy is about to get away when Mozzie stops him.  With a limousine.  While sipping champagne.  It's even cooler than it sounds.

White Collar - Book of Hours

Super guest stars galore this week, with John Ventimiglia (Artie Bucco) and his marvelous hand gestures playing a mob boss who has taken control of a church with a centuries-old bible that is rumored to have healing powers.  When the bible is stolen, the boss turns to the FBI for help.  Peter and Neal clash with Kirk Acevedo over jurisdiction before retrieving the bible from Callie Thorne.  In the process, Neal gets flirty and grabby, Mozzie impersonates a FBI agent (and gets all the funny lines again), Kate's bottle is found to have a NY subway map and an Iraqi Veteran gets free doggy health care from the mob boss.

White Collar - Threads

During fashion week Peter and Neal hunt down a mysterious murdering Isreali counterfeiter called The Ghost.  They entice him to show himself by throwing a fabulous rooftop garden party littered with models. Fabulous rooftops abound in the New York of White Collar.  Their bromance blossoms cutely through successfully clever banter and both admiring the skills of the other.  Mozzie helps Neal decipher a message from Kate and in the process gets a good laugh from his familiarity with Mad Magazine.  The Ghost is convincingly evil and stays competent and ingenious for most of the hour.  Stealing and smuggling data is nothing new in crime fiction, but smuggling a currency hologram into America via couture?  Pretty frakkin' cool.  Escape by an elevator not on the latest blueprints?  Pretty frakkin' smart.  One thing we still don't get is why we should care about Peter and Elizabeth's marriage.  We want to care, we just don't have a good reason for it.  The business with the watch is cute at first, then overdone when she somehow ties his old watch to his ability to stay alive...or something.  At least if it continues to go nowhere it doesn't take much screen time to get there.  Next week we get Callie Thorne and Kirk Acevedo (or as we call them, Sheila and Alvarez) and that is a very promising start to any hour of television.

making me mental

We couldn't help but notice, while browsing tv ratings, that The Mentalist rates #9 for the week and #8 for the season.  Please, America...if you like The Mentalist and have a fondness or tolerance for goofiness try Psych on USA.  It's a great way to spend an hour.  Corbin Bernsen is astonishingly fun to watch as Henry Spencer, a crotchety retired police officer perpetually disappointed in his only child, Shawn.  Throughout his childhood (snippets of which we see at the start of every episode) Shawn was schooled and constantly tested by his dad on every aspect of detection.  Shawn appears to have learned it all begrudgingly but he clearly excels at noticing details and connecting the dots.  In his adulthood he is a slacker with no desire or discipline for becoming a police officer or for holding any other job.  When he solves cases on his own to earn the reward money he becomes a suspect.  That's when he begins to claim he has psychic ability.  He claims the clues and answers to the mysteries come to him in visions instead of through detection and deduction.  It gives him a chance to fake visions and spells and swoon around theatrically.  His best friend and straightman Burton Guster is often in on the joke and his practicality and collection of random interests is vital to Shawn's continued hoodwinking of the Santa Barbara police department.  The police are always dubious of his psychic powers and very often annoyed by his antics but he gets results so he stays a regular police consultant.  Every episode has several quirky pop-culture references, Henry is always mad at Shawn for something or other, Shawn always needs his advice, Gus gets spontaneous pseudonyms and Shawn and the adorably hot, impressively competent female detective may someday get together.   Give it a chance.

Murder Can Be Comforting

Monk and Psych have both been back on for a couple weeks now and while I didn't think about them while they were gone, it is nice to have them back.  I refer to them as a unit because they're on back-to-back and have the same basic format.  Each episode is more or less a stand-alone so if you miss one it's no big deal.  The crimes are never all that gruesome or heinous, so you never really care or remember who did it, it's just fun to watch the cases being solved.