TV Review — Psych

Psych holds a special place in my heart. With the exception of Monk (which only happened for the last season), this was the first show I really got into while it was actually on TV. I was in high school at the time, and I stuck with it, even when it would change which nights it was on, which actually worked out better for me because it meant I wouldn’t have to miss going to high school football games on Friday nights if it was going to be on Wednesdays.

If I had to describe the appeal to this show, I think I’d compare it to a movie that I grew up with, but honestly don’t think I’d be that fond of now if I were to see it for the first time — Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

Like Carrey’s Ventura, James Roday’s Shawn Spencer is a private detective who constantly refuses to take his job seriously, even when facing dangerous situations. Unlike Ventura, though, Shawn is paired nicely with a far more down to earth partner in childhood friend Gus (Dule Hill of The West Wing).

I’d like to say Shawn’s not as goofy as Ace Ventura, but I can’t really say that, especially not in the later seasons. He’s goofy in just a different way, I guess. But he’s hyperobservant, which means he pretends to be a psychic while gathering evidence from his eyes (and occasionally from Gus’s nose, the “Super Sniffer”).

I’d like to make this clear: I love this show. And I’m saying that now because this review is going to be a bit of a dissection of where I think the series went wrong, and why I think that was.

The first four seasons remain great television, if you ask me. It never really matters if the plot of an episode is that great or not, because the episodes all tend to be about Shawn and Gus’s antics, but some of the plots are actually really neat.

But I can’t really say it’s the plots that would falter in the latter half of the series, so I don’t think that’s the issue. But if you ask me, there was a pretty drastic shift that started between seasons 4 and 5, and would become more apparent starting about season 7 or so. So here are my theories.

Well, first off, Roday put on some noticeable weight, and I’m not going to say the show started going downhill because of that. I think it could potentially be funny the schlubbier and more useless he got, honestly, and the show does provide some good gags with him being out of shape. Just a minor observance. Okay, on to the main stuff.

At a certain point, the show seemed to be less about the characters, and more about the actors. This is arguably best seen in the guest stars they would have on. There was a huge effort to have like semi-forgotten ’80s stars on, and I guess you could say that goes back to pretty early on in the series. Alan Ruck shows up and gives a great performance in one of my favorite episodes, season 3’s “Gus Walks into a Bank.”

But it didn’t feel like he was cast because he was in Ferris Bueller. The episode didn’t draw attention to who he was as an actor. It seemed like he was just on there because he was right for the part (and he was).

But later on, when they would dig up relatively washed up people like Judd Nelson, or Corey Feldman, it seemed like they were playing up that nostalgia angle way too much. It became pretty clear, especially if you’ve ever listened to the DVD commentary tracks, that these people were cast because the people behind the show such as Roday and creator Steve Franks really grew up with their movies.

This sort of ties in with their “homage” episodes where they’ll do an episode that will pay tribute to something like Friday the 13th movies (“Saturday the 14th”), John Hughes movies (“Murder?…Anyone?…Anyone?…Bueller?”), or The Shining (“Heeeeere’s Lassie”). But again, this is something that was always there in the show, and they’re not always bad (the John Hughes one is my seventh favorite episode).

I guess it makes sense if characters like Shawn or Gus are referencing these kinds of things (especially Shawn), because they take the scenarios less seriously than the others. But the show gets too goofy when the ultra-serious Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) breaking down doors in a direct homage to The Shining.

Lassiter himself is a perfect encapsulation of the characters being overshadowed by the actors. If you’ve seen interviews or again, heard some of the commentary tracks, it’s clear that Omundson is hilarious, and possibly the least serious of anybody involved with the show. But his character is very no-nonsense, never putting up with Shawn’s shenanigans. And yet, as the series progressed, he became a bit goofier. The writers were happy to push him really over the top, and at times he’s almost like a clown.

Omundson plays the serious Lassiter so well, it’s kind of a shame that his seriousness became more and more of a joke, because I think it’s kind of done perfectly in the first three or four seasons. But then they push it too far, making him a gun nut obsessed with Ronald Reagan. It just doesn’t work in the same way.

But I think the best example is probably Gus.

He sort of starts the show as a mediating force between Shawn and the detectives. He’s good friends with Shawn and will occasionally be sucked into his shenanigans, but he also works a normal 9–5 job, wants to do the right thing, and frequently reminds Shawn of the importance of what they’re doing. He fits well with either Shawn or the detectives — he’s that right in the middle character.

But eventually, he sort of just became another full-time Shawn. There was no scenario too goofy for the writers to put him in. Does he suffer from a crippling fear of wigs? Sure, why not. Is he a Potterhead obsessed with Rupert Grint? Again, yes.

He became whatever the writers wanted him to be for whatever episode they wrote, and occasionally he’s pushed even further than Shawn as a sort of clown, and that never sat quite right with me. I think you can have him have one or two of these traits (I love the runner that he’s obsessed with snacking), but not all of them.

But in addition to the actors kind of taking over the show, I think there’s another group of people we have to blame: the fans. Like I said, this was the first real show I got into, so maybe it was just my naivete, but it seemed like this show was way more fan conscious than most, and I can’t say I blame the writers or producers. You’re producing a product for a certain group of people, so you want to give them something they will like.

But I think of something like Gus’s wonderful “You heard about Pluto?” pickup line that he drops in my favorite episode of all time — “From the Earth to the Starbucks” in season 1.

This is a hilarious gag, and it works really well in context. Gus is a nerd who frequents a planetarium, and he has a crush on this one woman that works there. He’s also far from smooth, not really knowing what to say, so he just comments on Pluto’s recent demotion. It works in the context that the only connection he has with this woman is their seeming interest in astronomy.

But this line comes back several times, far later in the series. And I’m certain it’s because it was a fan favorite. When it resurfaces, it’s never in this same kind of context, and it leaves Gus just looking lamer and lamer, and I do suppose there’s some humor in that, to be fair. But it doesn’t work the same way as it did the first time, not because of the repetition, but because of the missing context.

I’m going to kind of conclude my examination of where this show went wrong to talk about something that’s both good and bad — an example of something that happened because fans demanded it, and was incredibly silly — but something that also helped breathe new life into the series.

Psych: The Musical.

I get the impression that when the showrunners and cast first started talking about doing a musical episode, they were mostly joking. And yet word got out, and fans were really receptive to this idea. I can’t say I was, as this was around the time (Season 6 or so) when I was getting a lot less enthusiastic about the show, but I’ll admit I was curious. But when it was revealed in an episode that Dule Hill could actually tapdance, it seemed like only a matter of time before it would happen. And I think it happened because of the fans.

I thought season 7 was the worst season by far. So a two-hour-long musical episode coming at the end of the season didn’t seem like a great idea to me at the time. But honestly, I think this kind of saved the show. USA seemed to be less enthusiastic, too, as they cut down season 8 from 16 to 10 episodes, and everybody on the show seemed to be going through the motions, to a certain extent.

But the musical worked. The music was surprisingly good (I bought it on iTunes immediately after seeing it live). And I think since everybody working on the show really wanted to do this thing, once they got to, they felt a lot better about the series going into the final season.

And it was a good final season. It’s not as good as the first four, of course, and it is a bit inconsistent, but it had a fantastic finale.

And I wish that was all I could remember about Psych. Not the rough seasons 6 and 7 (which are by no means bad, just comparatively bad), but the incredibly good first four, and the satisfying eighth.

So, yes, I like the show a lot, though I’ve changed a lot since I was in high school. It’s not my favorite comedy series, but for a pretty casual hour of laughs, it’s always good to turn to.

Rating: 9/10