Steven Helmer Publications

As I re-watch the series Psych , I am gaining a whole new appreciation to just how brilliant the Mr. Yang storyline was. There's a great mystery about the serial killer's identity; it put Shawn Spencer's ( James Roday Rodriguez ) skills to the test and Ally Sheedy was a fantastic choice for the role.  The secondary story about her partner, Mr. Yin, had the potential to be equally as good but, at least in my opinion, fell short because Professor Karl Rotmessen ( Peter Weller ) was kind of a letdown. Don't get me wrong, Weller was solid. It's just a character that seemed in desperate need of a surprise twist involving an already established character rather than a guy who was suggested to be her father. Here are three that I think would have been much better choices. Mary Lightly (Jimmi Simpson) What if Mary wasn't actually killed by Mr. Yin and instead WAS Mr. Yin? In my version of this story, the murder victim would have been Mary's twin brother, killed by h...

As I go through another re-watch of the series Psych , I find myself a bit amazed at the number of characters who were introduced, some with multiple-episode stories, only to be written off the show and never mentioned again.  My opinion about this is mixed. While some of the characters, like Freddie Prinze Jr.'s cameo as the alien-obsessed Dennis Gogolack made sense as a one-off, other characters, such as Shawn Spencer's ( James Roday Rodriguez ) long-time love interest, Abigail Lytar ( Rachael Leigh Cook ) seemed like they should have been around longer than they were. There is one character, however, that I find myself lumping into a different category - someone who both deserved a bit more time on the show but also in a different capacity. I am referring to Nestor Carbonell's Declan Rand, a character that I think would have made an awesome supervillain but was never given the opportunity. A quick recap for anyone who doesn't remember Declan. Introduced in the seaso...

Synopsis: Concerned for her safety, Nancy Drew's father makes her promise not to do any "sleuthing" while accompanying him on a business trip to Los Angeles. There's just one small problem, the house she convinced him to rent during their stay has a decades-old murder mystery attached to it and, despite her best efforts to honor her promise to her dad, Nancy just can't stop herself from trying to solve it, even when it puts her own life in danger. Who's in it?   The movie stars Emma Roberts , Amy Bruckner , Craig Gellis , Max Thieriot and Rachael Leigh Cook. You can read my review here:  Movie Review: Nancy Drew (2007) (wizzley.com)