Monk

My latest obsession. The detective show "Monk."

1. Tony Shalhoub is pure genius. He plays an obsessive-compulsive germ-a-phobe with beautiful nuance and subtlty. I couldn't even begin to describe how sometimes he doesn't even have to say anything, and you can read everything in a glance.

2. Amy Sedaris guest-starred as Monk's assistant's horny sister. Any show that gives her work has got to be great. She excels particularly in the oversexed housewife roles. I would go gay for her. I love her so much.

3. The episode following Amy's opened with Willie Nelson singing with his band. Cool, but it could have just been stock footage. Until he stopped in the middle of the song to complain about the sound levels. And then he became the main murder suspect in the episode. He gets me just by playing "Georgia on My Mind." But when he can also act half-way decently? (I'm grading on a curve based on other singers' forays into acting. Hi, J. Lo.) Love. (There was also a subtle and well-played joke about pot smoking, too.)

4. In the Willie episode, I also noticed a tiny incident at the beginning of the show that played into the "Aha! Now I know exactly how the murder happened!" moment that Monk has in every episode. So really, you know, I could be a detective, too. Or at the very least, I could go back and reread all the Encyclopedia Brown books and figure out the mysteries without looking at the answers first.