What I’m Watching: Psych

Psych: Season 5, Episode 8 “Shawn 2.0” (B+)

For anyone who’s worried about “Lost” actors and their chances for success now that the show has gone off the air, this is an extremely strong argument that they’ll be fine. Of course, not everyone is quite as talented and charismatic as Nestor Carbonell. After four seasons of playing the 160-year-old Richard, Carbonell proves to function just fine in the present day as a fake criminal profiler who’s just as energetic and creatively deductive as Shawn, but even more skillful about it. Though I, along with most fans of this show, would love to see Shawn and Juliet actually get together, having Carbonell’s Declan try and seduce her away. It would have been much too trivial a time for Shawn to confess faking his psychic powers to Juliet anyway. Part of me suspects she knows already and just likes to entertain his fantasies and antics. Even though identical twins is a commonly-used device in the mysterious commission of crimes, this show manages to handle it quite well. And while we didn’t get to see it, I love the idea of Shawn going to Lassie to share his theories about Declan being a fraud because they were the only two not seduced by Declan’s charm. The show also gets major points for working in a reference to the suspected use of eyeliner by Carbonell. I’m not sure how long he’ll stick around, but he’s definitely an addition I don’t mind at all. The show only has one more episode before it goes off the air until November, so expect next week to offer some sort of compelling cliffhanger to necessitate tuning back in during the fall.