BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

I'm not a huge fan of holiday episodes of ongoing series: Said episodes force shows to indulge in a sentimentality and spirit of uplift that they may not otherwise ordinarily truck in, making it all seem all the more forced and phony.

Additionally, I don't watch "Monk" or "Psych" all that often these days, though I will watch whenever a screener traverses my doorstep, and generally I'll be entertained.

But then, sometimes there are episodes like these - their holiday episodes, surprise, surprise.

"Monk" opens with a trio of fairly clean-cut homeless guys visited by a panicky friend who screams that someone's out to kill him. Being drunk in that adorable TV-way of being drunk, they laugh merrily at him, and then next morning they find him dead in an abandoned refrigerator.

Cut to: Monk (Tony Shalhoub), fastidiously setting up a cardboard Christmas tree. The colorful homeless guys show up at his home; Monk predictably freaks out as their germs invade his house. It's not terribly funny. The next scene, in which he examines the crime scene from afar and yells at them as they yell at him and neither can really hear the other (though) they're not all that far from one another, isn't very amusing, either. Monk refers to them as "ne'er-do-wells," which is kind of funny, though probably for the wrong reasons.

Natalie (Traylor Howard) invites the "ne'er-do-wells" to Christmas dinner at Monk's. That scene falls surprisingly flat, as well, but at least we're relieved of the bum jokes for a while.

So now let's consider Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), who, as Lt. Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford) puts it, is "in a bad place right now."

Stottlemeyer is depressed, divorced, dateless and suffering from a bad back - or, as we put it at Mayor of Television Headquarters, a typical day. He receives a message sending him to a fountain at a monastery, where a bunch of people claim to have been cured by drinking its waters. He does, he is, and suddenly this curmudgeon is pursuing a righteous path as a monk, not a Monk.

The two storylines dovetail into one another, albeit not very convincingly, and really, this could've been an ordinary episode of "Monk" without the holiday hopefulness shoehorned in. There's a scene at the monastery where Monk is repeatedly shushed by another monk, which is either really embarrassing or ultimately becomes funny because they keep doing the same joke over and over again, sort of like the Mr. Creosote gag in "Monty Python's Meaning of Life."

Shalhoub has a couple of inspired line readings ("Two years? That's almost three years!" is a lot funnier in context), and a bit with Disher trying to grow a mustache earns its laughs, as well. But this Christmas episode doesn't exactly have me waiting with baited breath for "Monk's" "Martin Luther King Day" episode.

On "Psych," a scam artist masquerading as Santa Claus and targeting holiday revelers is unnerved when his partner is killed. Shawn (James Roday) is unnerved when Gus' (Dulé Hill) sister Joy (Faune Chambers) comes to visit for the holidays, because they're hot for one another and that would threaten the user-friendly gay subtext within Shawn and Gus' camaraderie.

Gus' parents - who figured into last season's Christmas episode - are unnerved because they're withholding big secrets from one another than could put a decisive end to the seasonal cheer. And I'm unnerved because I have to watch this through to the conclusion.

Actually, "Psych's" holiday episode this year is a smidgen better than "Monk's." Neither, however, is up to the shows' usual standards unless you've been hitting the eggnog and brandy with a vengeance.

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke@dailynews.com.

previews>

MONK AND PSCYH

>What: Holiday specials of the two detective series.

>Where: USA.

>When: "Monk" at 9 tonight; "Psych" at 10 tonight.

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