For me, Jane admitting he's a fake psychic and him starting investigating versus Shawn claiming he's psychic is getting him investigating is less of a similarity than the whole driven by wife's murder/still wearing wedding ring, etc, thing with Monk.

I think of "The Mentalist" as more of a "House" ripoff than "Psych."

How so?

I'm pretty bummed about Southland getting cancelled. It was disturbing at times but very authentic.

ita,

so, I think of "The Mentalist" is being about the alpha male having a negative opinion of most human beings and solving puzzles for/with his team.

This is "House" to me. They are set in different settings, but the misanthropy and self-hatred seems similar across both main characters.

I don't see Jane anywhere near as misanthropic as House (witness his tenderness with Lisbon this week, for instance--I also think he helps people out of a sense of justice)--but I do see the self-hatred. However, on The Mentalist I see that stemming from the Red John trauma. On House is it just a thing, or is it tied up with his addiction issues?

I don't think House had any great opinion of people even before the pain pills. I think he was just willing to ignore them more before his girlfriend went against his express wishes and left him crippled.

Wasn't there an episode (the one where we find out that it was Cuddy that had ordered the surgery that removed the dead tissue from his leg) where we find out that he was a negative jerky bastard even before the pain and the addiction?

yep.

I think that might have been one of the first eps that I watched, and while the storytelling was great, it turned me off of the character immediately.

Just watched House. the character of House is interesting because he is truely only motivated by one thing -- what is making this person ill. Everything else - including his addiction to drugs ( which I still question) can be dropped if an ill person goes by.

Foreman is an annoying character. he just wants to be right. So he does stupid shit. But he could be interesting if he didn't think he was a house clone. And I suspect that he could be a good diagnostician if he didn't let his ego get in the way.

This is the first episde where Chase was interesting. Even though I disagree with him

Carmen and Cuddy are the characters I really like -- mostly because them struggle with the concept of balance. A shifting question , so the answer is never static.

I'd like to see House back in charge.

for those who like Southland and L&O:SVU, here's a new NYT article about the debacle that is NBC and how their programming decisions are having rippling effects:

[link]