Psych, USA Network's popular crime comedy—which also airs on NBC—doesn't completely shake free of this vibe. A dead body is found in a refrigerator as Season 2 winds down. Still, the chilled corpse is only briefly seen and it's still in one piece—an unintentional acknowledgement, perhaps, that Psych (at least when it comes to violence and gore) is head and shoulders above the genre.

A Funny Feeling
Psych is Murder She Wrote for Gen-Xers, a hip-but-gentle mystery send up loaded with screwball comedy, deadpan delivery and obscure '80s references, all served on a metaphorical platter by "psychic" crime fighter Shawn Spencer and his longsuffering best friend, Gus.

Shawn is not psychic, by the way, though he does sometimes rub his temples in a mystic-like manner. "The spirits are screaming something in my head!" he's apt to say, thrashing about the room as if possessed by a squadron of paranormal rodents. These so-called visions, though, are merely a cover for his photographic memory and the keen observational skills that make Shawn an unofficial—albeit obnoxious—asset to the Santa Barbara, Calif., police department.

Meanwhile, Gus, this pseudo-psychic's sidekick, calls his nose the "Super Sniffer," refuses to go near museum mummies and is obsessed with telenovelas. And he's the more grounded of the two.

"You can't get Indian blood by working at a casino," Gus points out to Shawn.

"Maybe you can't," Shawn answers.

Family Ties
These two hombres have been busting on each other since the crib, it seems. Indeed, most shows open with flashbacks to the 1980s, when Shawn and Gus were in elementary school and Shawn's father—crotchety ex-detective Henry Spencer—had hair. Shawn owes his abilities to his father's strict training, but he notched a few scars along the way.

"What we have is simple and shallow and unobtrusive," Shawn tells his father when his dad wants to have a "talk." "Let's have this conversation when you're 90 and maybe on an oxygen tank."

Despite the tension, father and son do seem to see each other at least once a week, and there are signs the two are trying to patch things up. Shawn gives his divorced father dating advice. And Henry tells Shawn that he quit a Masonic-like lodge years earlier because he wanted to salvage his marriage. "I realized the only real membership that mattered was family," he says.

Murder Most Foul
But compared to the rest of the conniving, murdering folks who skitter in and out of each episode, Shawn and Henry's generational squabble is the stuff of Leave It to Beaver. People are shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, strangled and poisoned with regularity—mayhem mostly played for laughs.

Onscreen violence is rare, blood-and-guts gore practically nonexistent, thankfully. But such a lighthearted look at such a dark subject should still spark a pretty important philosophical question in discerning viewers: Should we be laughing at folks offing each other?

It's a prickly question, what with most of us at one time having guffawed at Road Runner cartoons (where poor Wile E. Coyote seems curiously obsessed with ACME-brand dynamite). We live in a world where church groups perform Arsenic and Old Lace (wherein two kindly old ladies poison their tenants). And mysteries involving Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple—direct forebears to Psych—are almost universally embraced, no matter their body count. Indeed, Dorothy L. Sayers, perhaps second to only Agatha Christie in the realm of genteel murder-mystery, was a respected and committed Christian who wrote several books about the faith.

Also, it's important to note that Psych's law-and-order ethos is positively retro. Unlike some other modern crime shows (where the law-breakers can even be the show's heroes) the bad 'uns never escape the long arm of the law here—even if that arm is attached to law and order's class clown.

That said, we know that what we watch affects how we think. Many experts believe that onscreen violence can beget real-life problems, and family activists from both the left and right of the political spectrum wonder if our children are being exposed to casual death too much these days. So it's wise to ask just where murder mysteries, regardless how funny (and blood-free) they be, fit in.

Just the Facts, Ma'am
Psych does have a few other problems that may make decisions about it a little easier: When Shawn and Gus try to solve a murder on a telenovela set, for instance, we hear much about the show's outlandish plot involving multiple infidelities, illegitimate babies and vasectomies. Another episode focuses on Henry's resurgent dating life, during which his date strips off her sweater (revealing a black bustier and lots of cleavage), offers to "butter his biscuit" and eventually pushes him into the men's restroom for an out-of-frame interlude.

Language is also sometimes salty, with such words as "a--," "b--ch" and "d--n" surfacing, along with misuses of God's name. Shawn and Gus bend rules, flaunt authority and occasionally break into people's houses.

Still, Psych star James Roday believes the show serves an important, even serious purpose.

"You turn on the news, any channel, and within a matter of seconds, something horrible is going to come on," Roday told California's Ventura County Star. "It's reached the point now where it's like, 'Wow, when's the last time it was this bad?' We need shows ... to help people escape, even if it's only for an hour."

An escape, yes. A perfect one, no, despite the fact that it's better than most of its peers.