Battle of the Television Detectives

Posted by Maggie August 14th, 2006 at 09:48am In All Things TV Monk Veronica Mars Vintage

The Contenders

Veronica Mars, spunky teen with a dark past. Strengths: accents, computer savvy, and irresistible blond pixie cuteness. Weaknesses: bad boys, overly complicated capers, and an overprotective dad.

David Addison and Maddie Hayes, mismatched pair of bumbling detectives. Strengths: attractiveness, chemistry, preternatural ability to stumble on to the solution despite earlier lack of insight or ability. Weaknesses: all strengths lost when they actually hook up.

Adrian Monk, obsessive-compulsive ex-police officer. Strengths: attention to detail, excellent memory, and a crack team of helpers. Weaknesses: attention to detail, memory of wife's murder, and fear of everything.

Jessica Fletcher, kindly woman writer of a certain age. Strengths: ability to appear totally harmless, and twelve freaking years on the air. Weaknesses: constant barrage of crime everywhere she goes seems suspicious.

Shawn Spencer, irresponsible gadabout with daddy issues. Strengths: charm, the zoomy-eye thing, ability to act psychic. Weaknesses: borderline narcissist personality disorder, and no one watches his show yet.

The Match

Monk easily annihilates Shawn Spencer in the first round, though Spencer nearly disqualified himself for excessive mugging. Monk then takes down the Moonlighting duo, who are too busy trading zingers to give the bout their all. But in the next round he's bested by Jessica Fletcher, who distracts him by a devious mismatched-buttons ploy. And then it's Fletcher versus Mars. Veronica pulls an All About Eve and asks Jessica to tell her stories about the old days. While Jessica's distracted, Veronica hacks into the social security database and erases any evidence that Jessica ever existed.

The Winner

Veronica Mars

The Loser

Maggie, for having way too much time on her hands