Watching a show on USA Network rarely gets you hot under the collar. In fact, if ever there was such a thing as a loosen-your-collar network, it’s USA, with its breezy escapist capers—from Monk, the breakout show that started it all (now in its final season; see more below), to the latest feel-good lark, White Collar. (The show premieres Friday at 10/9c.)

The high concept of this buddy mystery-comedy is as familiar as it is inviting: Rakish con man Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer, formerly a rogue spy on Chuck, which would be a good fit on USA as well, come to think of it) teams with straitlaced FBI guy Peter Burke (TV veteran Tim DeKay, a perfect foil) to solve upscale crimes. Neal is Peter’s will-work-for-freedom prisoner, indentured to the agent for as long as he can lend his uncanny expertise to crack tough cases. (Not everyone can spot arcane clues like security fibers from Canadian $100 bills.) But given the nature of these relationships, there’s little doubt who’s truly in the driver’s seat here.

On USA Network, it’s all about the comfort zone, which is why it’s also hardly a surprise when Neal effortlessly relocates within hours from his just-out-of-prison flophouse digs to a posh Manhattan mansion with a spectacular city view. (You can’t help but wonder if a crossover with USA’s Hamptons-set summer hit, Royal Pains, is far behind.)

Did we mention Neal looks great in a Rat Pack-ish fedora when he isn’t lounging around shirtless? This show is It Takes a Thief gussied up with metropolitan panache and tongue so firmly in cheek you don’t even blink, when Neil makes fast friends with rich widow Diahann Carroll (in whose estate he lives) and later bonds with Peter’s adoring wife (Tiffani Thiessen, adding to the show’s fantasy quotient).

Neal has a romantic backstory—a lost love he obsesses over—and an eccentric pal (Sex and the City’s Willie Garson) with underworld contacts that come in handy. But this is basically the Neal-and-Peter show, and as odd couples go, they’ll nicely fill the void now that Psych’s Shawn and Gus are on hiatus. You can’t accuse USA of not knowing its audience.

Other weekend highlights:

His Sharona: How smart of USA to pave the way for White Collar’s premiere by launching it after a very special, and very amusing, episode of Monk (Friday, 9/8c) that welcomes back Monk’s delightfully cantankerous first helpmate Sharona (Bitty Schram) for a final bow. “What year is this?” Monk (Tony Shalhoub) double-takes upon his first look at Sharona, obscured by a fog of vacuum cleaner dust. Before long, she’s reaching for the handy wipes—they’re still where they always were—and bickering with him over the dry-cleaning. Monk is happy to see her, but begins to feel like he’s cheating on the more nurturing Natalie (Traylor Howard). “Together, they’re like bourbon and vodka. They don’t mix,” Stottlemeyer warns Monk. “They’re going to tear you apart like a piece of salt water taffy.”

As always, you don’t watch Monk for the intricacies of the mystery—this one involving the supposedly accidental death of Sharona’s distant uncle on a golf course—as you do for the comedy. This week’s comedy is supplied by Monk being miserably caught between his former and current sidekicks—“Why don’t you try assisting him instead of pandering to him?” Sharona cracks to Natalie—and Sharona’s dismay that her insurance payday could be sabotaged by Monk’s digging into the uncle’s so-called accident.

Several times during the episode, Monk is heard muttering, “I hate this case.” I’m betting that Monk’s many loyal fans, who hate knowing that this season is its last, will love it.

The Great Debate: When asked to compile a list of favorite Law & Order episodes for TV Guide Magazine’s recently published 20th anniversary special collector’s issue (click here to buy it), the first that came to mind—also chronologically the first—was “Life Choice” from season one, about the complicated aftermath of an abortion-clinic bombing. If I were asked to compile the same list today, I’d very likely include as a bookend this week’s episode, “Dignity,” which tackles the divisive issue of abortion with just as much power nearly two decades later. (This season, for those who’ve been missing it, Law & Order airs Fridays at 8/7c on NBC.)

It begins with a shocking murder: a shooting inside a church mid-prayer, leaving dead a doctor who specializes in the controversial procedure of late-term abortion. The case stirs up raw emotions between detectives Bernard and Lupo, with Bernard (Anthony Anderson) revealing an especially deeply rooted personal connection to the subject. Things get much twistier when the case goes to court (with an excellent Richard Thomas as opposing counsel) as Cutter (Linus Roache) confronts “an issue that goes to the very mystery of our existence” and Rubirosa (Alana De La Garza) grapples with a disturbing ethical quandary that divides the prosecution. “You want moral clarity?” declares Cutter. “How about just doing your job. Put the bad guys in jail.”

Law & Order has been enjoying a creative (if not ratings) resurgence of late, especially once Cutter joined the team with newly promoted Jack McCoy his combative mentor. The storytelling has felt sharper, the cases newly relevant—last Friday’s episode dealing with the murderous excesses of reality-TV-show wannabes was another winner. How refreshing to see a show pick up steam again this late in its run.

Underdog Doll: That collective groan you heard earlier this week may well have come from the Whedon-verse (Joss Whedon's vocal fan base, for the uninitiated) as news broke that Fox was benching his strange new series Dollhouse for November sweeps. Hardly a surprise given its dismal Friday night ratings, not to mention the show’s uneven handling of a bizarre and elusive premise. (After tonight, the show will return in December with back-to-back episodes in a march to the inevitable end.)

This week’s episode, “Belonging,” arrives just in time—maybe not in time to save the show, but to remind ambivalent viewers (a camp in which I often find myself) that Dollhouse is still capable at times of being a dark powerhouse. If you want to see a flawed show in its best and most unsettling light, check this one out. It’s easily the most compelling, surprising and emotionally turbulent episode so far this season, always challenging one’s perception of what’s real and unreal, of who’s a hero or villain or merely a tragic pawn in a deadly game.

The focus is not on the problematic central figure of Echo (which may explain why it works) but on her dollmate Sierra (Dichen Lachman, a knockout here), as we learn the unhappy circumstances of her arrival and continued existence at the Dollhouse. Her story gets to the very essence of the Dollhouse’s unsavory methods of mind-control manipulation and subjugation of will to realize the fantasies, often sexual, of unscrupulous clients.

At the center of all this mad science is demented boy genius Topher (Fran Kranz, in probably his best work outside the DVD-only “Epitaph One”), who Echo tells early on, “You’re not looking hard enough. You never do.” Including at himself. “I’m not the bad man,” Topher insists, but “Belonging” suggests that Topher’s immature amorality may be a more damaging character flaw than actual immorality. In the case of Sierra/aka/Priya, formerly a free-spirit bohemian artist, Topher finds (as with the departed Dr. Saunders) he can no longer afford to stay detached. Saying he gets his hands dirty this week is a wild understatement. Topher’s conflicted boss Adelle (Olivia Williams) also rises to the occasion, in encounters with a Rossum Corp superior (Keith Carradine) so cold and calculating he makes her stewardship look like Mary Poppins.

Some of the other dolls are emerging as actual characters as well, including Enver Gjokaj as Victor, whose emotional attachment to Sierra adds a palpable poignance to this heartbreakingly weird tale. Very little of Dollhouse is likely to rank among Joss Whedon’s finest hours, but episodes like this come close.

Peace Talks: Anyone in the mood for a thinking person’s political thriller should check out Endgame, an engrossing docudrama that gets a new cycle of Masterpiece Contemporary movies and miniseries off to a cerebral yet quietly suspenseful start. (It airs Sunday on PBS; check local schedules.) The backdrop is the police state that was South Africa of the 1980s, still gripped by apartheid as the nation careened toward civil war. Nelson Mandela (played with canny understatement by The Wire’s Clarke Peters) is still in prison, and his release along with the dismantling of apartheid are among the goals that fuel the series of clandestine negotiations (hosted in a British country manor) that form the backbone of the film.

The strong cast includes William Hurt (mastering a tricky accent) as an Afrikaner professor representing the white leadership and Chiwetel Ejiofor as a leader of the rebel African National Congress. Stage-managing the talks, and keeping things on track even when outside violence on both sides threatens to derail progress, is Jonny Lee Miller (Eli Stone) as a corporate public affairs exec employed at the time by a British mining company with a financial stake in South Africa’s economic future.

Sounds dry, but the tension is sustained throughout. Even though we know the end result, there is plenty to be gained by this gripping dramatic lesson in political science.