"Psych": review

L to R: Corbin Bernsen as Henry Spencer, Timothy Omundson as Carlton Lassiter, Kirsten Nelson as Karen Vick, Maggie Lawson as Juliet "Jules" O'Hara, Dulé Hill as Burton Guster, and James Roday Rodriguez as Shawn Spencer

[WARNING: spoilers.]

"Psych" was a USA Network detective comedy series that ran from 2006 to 2014. It was another popular series from the golden era roughly spanning the 2000s to the 2010s like "Burn Notice," "White Collar," "Battlestar Galactica," "24," "House," etc. After running for eight seasons and acquiring a loyal fan base, the series spawned an "after-show" episode to cap off Season 8, followed by (so far) three TV movies: "Psych: The Movie," "Psych 2: Lassie Come Home," and "Psych 3: This is Gus." When I purchased the series via Apple TV, the package came with the eight seasons plus the after-show feature and the first TV movie, so I will focus my review on those things only—mostly on the principal series. The show's main regulars were James Roday (later James Roday Rodriguez), Dulé Hill, Corbin Bernsen, Maggie Lawson, Timothy Omundson, and Kristen Nelson. The show also featured almost weekly star cameos ranging from William Shatner to Louis Gossett Jr. to, in the finale, Val Kilmer, a star who was often reverently name-dropped as something like a running joke for most of the show.

The series's main focus is on Shawn Spencer (Roday), a selfish, irresponsible man-child with spastic, chaotic, Jim Carrey-like, idiot-savant tendencies who was trained from childhood by his policeman father Henry (Bernsen) to use his senses and logic and instinct to find clues and make clever deductions. Shawn finagles work as a "psychic" consultant for the Santa Barbara police department (SBPD), using his sensory and deductive powers to help the police solve an impressive number of cases. Shawn is friends with Burton "Gus" Guster (Hill), who works as a pharmaceutical salesman while helping Shawn to solve cases. Over the course of several seasons, Shawn falls deeper and deeper in love with winsome detective Juliet O'Hara (Lawson), whose partner and mentor is the strict, goofily conservative, stereotypically gun-loving Detective Carlton Lassiter (Omundson), who suspects Shawn is not a psychic, and who has little to no respect for Shawn as a person. This is why Lassiter is perpetually astonished when Shawn solves otherwise-intractable cases. Managing the SBPD is Chief Karen Vick (Nelson)—smart, wise, and generally poised, but often harried and off-balance thanks to Shawn's constant antics and lack of respect for procedure and protocol. Pretty much the only way to get Shawn to be serious is to threaten a close friend or loved one with death.

"Psych" continues the trend of TV shows that feature both episodic and long-form storylines. There's almost always a criminal-of-the-week; some criminals (and other characters) become recurring presences on the show. Many of the "middle" seasons end with an especially suspenseful episode featuring a character called "Mr. Yang" (Ally Sheedy, looking cheerfully insane), who is ultimately shown to be a puppet when we briefly meet her sinister father Yin (Peter Weller). A quirky, possibly kinky coroner named Woody Strode (Kurt Fuller... and is "Strode" a nod to Laurie Strode of "Halloween"?) first appears in Season 4; Woody quickly became a fan favorite because of his relentlessly and hilariously left-field takes on whatever situation the gang found itself in.

Over the course of eight seasons, some of Shawn's relationships evolve while others don't. Since childhood, Shawn has had a contentious relationship with his father, who is perpetually exasperated by Shawn's inability to focus or to understand an essential point. Shawn's relationship with Juliet O'Hara begins as a sort of unrequited puppy love that deepens into mutual affection and true love... but the sword of Damocles hanging over the relationship is what Jules will do when she eventually discovers—as she must, being the smart cookie she is—that Shawn has been faking his supposedly psychic powers this entire time. Shawn's relationship with his best friend Gus shows how deeply this show, like "House," follows the Sherlock Holmes template: Shawn—with his sparks of genius—is Holmes, and Gus is basically a quirky version of Watson. As Holmes does with Watson, Shawn has a tendency to disrespect Gus while unjustifiably trumpeting his own greatness, but Gus is one of the people in Shawn's inner circle (along with Shawn's father and Juliet) who is most likely to keep Shawn grounded and to call him out for his aversion to uncomfortable truths.

Shawn and Gus have a bit of a bromance and exist in something of an exclusive friendship bubble that can be alternately therapeutic (when they rely on each other) and toxic (when they prevent each other from growing and changing). They constantly exchange catchphrases like "Suck it" (usually sung to an R&B tune), "Wait for iiiiiit" (also sung), and "I've heard it both ways," and Shawn tends to give Gus an outrageously fake name when they introduce themselves to clients while they're busy solving mysteries. Both Shawn and Gus are easily terrified, and in moments of extremity, they both emit high-pitched, girlish screams. Juliet, eternally level-headed, often finds herself having to save Shawn.

For most of the show's eight-season run, each "Psych" episode would begin with a flashback to Shawn's childhood (or just to that era, without Shawn being shown at all). These flashbacks, a bit like the flashbacks of David Carradine's Kwai Chang Cane and Keye Luke's Master Po in the 70s TV series "Kung Fu," feature Shawn receiving life-wisdom from his father (who had hair in the 80s) and—in a pattern that continues into adulthood—deliberately ignoring or misunderstanding his father's often profoundly pragmatic insights. Generally, whatever theme or point was highlighted in the flashback recurs in the present day, which inadvertently suggests something about the ontologically repetitive nature of the "Psych" universe: the present parallels or echoes the past. And while the show generally trumpets the values of scientific skepticism, empiricism, logic, and common sense in the spirit of "Scooby Doo," which also derided the idea of ghosts, there have been rare occasions when the show has suggested something metaphysically spooky, as when Mr. Yang is stabbed and dying in the Season 7 finale, "Psych: The Musical." In that episode, a bleeding Yang sees a beatific vision of heaven and of the late Mary Lightly (the quietly hilarious Jimmi Simpson, whose character's name might be a whimsical take on Truman Capote's Holly Golightly from his novel Breakfast at Tiffany's), the psychologist/profiler who spent years studying and pursuing the mysterious Yang. While the musical itself is whimsical and surreal (guest starring Anthony Rapp from the stage and film production of "Rent," the AIDS musical based on La Bohème*), the status of Yang's vision is left up to interpretation: was she catching a real glimpse of the afterlife, or was the vision the product of an increasingly oxygen-deprived brain?

"Psych," true to its loopy spirit, lovingly satirized TV and movie genres and tropes, taking shots at movie classics like "The Shining," the entire Halloween franchise, cop dramas, telenovelas, remakes, 80s movies, and most notably, the parallel TV drama series "The Mentalist," about a character named Thomas Jane, a man claiming to be psychic who is actually a trained mentalist, using his skills to help the police while trying to discover who killed his wife and daughter.** Shawn's mother Madeleine (Cybill Shepherd), who had divorced Henry years ago, is a recurring character who gets ensnared in a plot by Mr. Yang to draw Shawn out. While I laughed out loud at almost every irreverent episode, I think the one that had me nearly pissing myself by the end was Season 6's "Shawn Interrupted," a parody of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and guest-starring "Cuckoo's Nest" actor Brad Dourif (arguably better known these days for his role as Wormtongue in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies) as an insane billionaire. The episode's conclusion has Shawn and Gus somehow apprehending the villain while Kenny G's sax plays loudly in the background and Gus, training a gun on the perp, undulates sensuously to the rhythm right as Juliet and Lassiter burst in. Meanwhile, Dourif's character is on his knees, screaming for the music to "Please, stop!"—a nod to how everyone hates Kenny G. I laughed long and hard at that tableau.

The series was generally light-hearted and fun, but it was occasionally serious and had an emotional core involving Shawn and Gus's friendship, Shawn's relationship with his dad, Shawn's relationship with Juliet, and Juliet's relationship with Lassiter (a self-important hardass who has a respectful soft spot for his partner). The show did a good job, over so many seasons, of building out the network of interpersonal interactions. We find out that Juliet's biological dad (Shatner) is a con man, and her adoptive father Lloyd (Jeffrey Tambor) is also a con man. Even Woody Strode, the cheerfully creepy coroner, is given a string of cheating spouses and surpassingly strange paramours and sexual predilections. I can also give the show credit for being recklessly un-PC, with Shawn mocking cultural stereotypes through bad accents, ethnically insensitive costumes, and tasteless pranks, and with what would now be considered a very un-woke focus on the relationship between a single father and his son, with Shawn's mom appearing only occasionally as a minor character.

After eight rollicking seasons of "Psych," there was the after-show episode, which was originally a live broadcast from 2014 with the main cast members of "Psych" sitting on chairs and couches in a semicircle in front of a live studio audience as they were prompted to answer questions from both fans (via Twitter) and the host/interviewer Kevin Pereira. Some of the show's guest stars sent comments via remote video: Ralph Macchio, Ally Sheedy, Cary Elwes (as recurring character Pierre Despereaux), and others. While this was going on, the show's "Blueberry" (the Toyota Echo hatchback driven by Gus) was being auctioned off, a couple of fan awards were given out, a silly game involving hand-held whiteboards was played, and the whole thing ended with a live performance of "I Know You Know," the catchy "Psych" theme song that began almost every episode (except the episode parodying "Twin Peaks"). Watchers of the show know that there were occasional renditions of the song in Spanish, Hindi, or in an R&B style, along with differently animated titles in accordance with the genre being mocked. The after-show was a lame, dry, low-energy mess—too serious, unfunny, and somewhat embarrassing to watch. A few years later, "Psych: The Movie" came out; it was essentially an extended version of a regular-series episode, but with somewhat better special effects, slightly more ambitious sets, and the return of John Cena as Jules's special-ops big brother. Two more movies have since appeared, and I think showrunner Steve Franks has said that he ultimately hopes to make five movies in the spirit of the ten-movie Fast and Furious franchise.

Real life has also intruded on the cast of "Psych." Principal stars James Roday Rodriguez and Maggie Lawson dated pretty much the entire time from 2006 to 2014. They eventually broke up. Dulé Hill met his wife Jazmyn Simon during the filming of "Psych: The Movie." The two have a hilarious chemistry on screen, with Simon playing what is essentially a female-nerd version of Gus who never misses a chance to kiss him violently and aggressively while Gus lamely and meekly protests that he wants to be the hunter in the relationship. Actor Timothy Omundson, who played gun-loving conservative Carlton Lassiter, suffered a severe stroke a few years after the series ended; filmmakers worked around his stroke for the first "Psych" movie (Lassiter appears only as a cell-phone chat image) but included it as a plot point in the next two movies. Perhaps the weirdest bit of trivia involves the sudden disappearance of actress Anne Dudek as Detective Lucinda Barry in the very first episode. Detective Barry is outed by Shawn as Detective Lassiter's secret lover; the discovered impropriety causes her to be transferred out of SBPD headquarters, and we never hear from her again. In real life, what had happened was that test-audience reactions to Dudek (or rather, to her character... I think) were so negative that Dudek was immediately replaced by Maggie Lawson as Juliet O'Hara. Dudek needn't worry: she became something of a love-to-hate character on "House," where she played the role of Amber, a.k.a. Cutthroat Bitch, who eventually becomes Wilson's girlfriend before being killed in a bus accident.

"Psych" the series had many good points, but it also had its flaws. While I generally liked how it portrayed its female characters—even the bad ones—as smart, capable, and possessed of more common sense than goofy male characters like Shawn or hyper-neurotic ones like Gus, I found myself wishing that Chief Vick had more air time. Shawn's dad Henry is retired, but a few seasons in, he too is brought onto the SBPD team as a director/coordinator for consultants, which means he becomes Shawn's boss. I wished that Henry could have had more interactions with Chief Vick, the only woman even close to his age group. I'm not saying I wanted there to be any romantic tension—Vick is happily married and has a daughter—but a little more age-cohort collegiality would have been nice. While we're focusing on Henry, I think my biggest disappointment was seeing how Shawn only once, in the entire series, acknowledged that his dad was the one who had taught him everything he knows about sussing out clues, using logic and intuition, and drawing conclusions. (I also couldn't help noticing that "Psych" parallels "House" in that Shawn, like House, tends to make several wrong turns before homing in on the correct insight.) Shawn, as a character, is frustrating in how he doesn't really evolve all that much over eight years. Season 8, the final and most hastily written season, confronts Shawn with the pressures of the adult world—marriage, leaving town, separating from his best friend, etc.—but these problems all appear rather suddenly. I'm also not sure I ended up believing that someone as solidly commonsensical as Juliet would realistically consider marrying an unstable, inconsistent, lazy, truth-averse guy like Shawn. Jules makes it clear several times that honesty is, for her, a cherished core value. Shawn, meanwhile, constantly lies, exaggerates, breaks promises, and acts on impulse in an effort to resist personal growth, avoid responsibility, and protect his fragile ego. The truth is that Shawn is an incompetent idiot about most things in life, and the one area where he shows promise is in the skills he cultivated thanks entirely to his strict father. But maybe the show's subtext is that opposites attract: Shawn's chaos, spontaneity, and unselfconsciously goodhearted intentions are a good balance for Jules's caution, common sense, and general lack of wildness springing from her cop's instincts for order. I haven't had a chance to see the second and third "Psych" movies; I'll be curious to find out whether these two ever tame each other and reach some kind of happy medium. Otherwise, if Shawn remains incorrigible to the end, then he's nothing but a flat character.

Those issues aside, I felt the show was overall watchably fun, often gut-bustingly so. It wasn't without its flaws, but what show is perfect? I never watched "The Mentalist," so I have no basis for comparison, but I can see why "Psych" acquired the huge following that it did (fans are lovingly called "Psychos"). If you're in the mood for lighthearted, fast-paced entertainment featuring plenty of old movie and TV guest stars, wide-ranging satire, un-PC humor, clever dialogue, and entertaining acting, then "Psych" might very well be the show for you.

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*Rapp also controversially accused actor Kevin Spacey of sexually harassing him.

**"The Mentalist" began two years after "Psych" and ended a year before "Psych" did.