TVSquad

Psych has been on a roll. The last several episodes have moved along at a funny, rapid-fire pace. The episodes involving the use of the elders of our sleuths (with John Amos as Gus' uncle, Ernie Hudson and Phylicia Rashad as Gus' parents, etc.) have been great. This week's episode, bringing Corbin Bernsen to the forefront, was stellar. I'd love to see periodic episodes where Shawn and Henry are paired up more to solve cases. Also, I agree that we need to see Brian Doyle Murray as Shawn's grandfather in the modern storyline (maybe even teaming up with Shawn and Gus on a case).

"Grandpapa is 72. He used to be a male model." - freaking hilarious! :-)

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Well, yes things have been tweaked a bit, and one of things tweaks was indeed that the cops are now not involved in the case anymore, or not until the very end, and that's a really bad change obviously.

They're now confined to boring fillers, and I really wish they'd have actual parts to play in the episodes again, or just disappear. I for one did not like the criminals "coming clean" about how jail is fun, or the last scene with Juliet.
The whole thing with the kid was boring & predictable, really.

As for the rest, it was a good episode, and funny (unlike last week's!) Although i have to say, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see Shaw & Gus versus Henry : who would solve the case first ?
I would have loved that.

As for the pop references, I'm guessing you are missing out on the greatest show on TV right now, otherwise you'd have spotted (& remembered) the references to House !

http://tvoholic.com/episode-reviews/psych-the-old-and-the-restless/

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This show is much better than the first few episodes of the season. They are starting to concentrate more on the characters and developing their backgrounds (especially Gus with the introduction of his parents and crazy wife). IMO this is exactly where Psych needed to go to keep things fresh. The staleness of American Duos I think showed that they needed to move in new directions, whether it be separate story lines for the detectives and Shawn/Gus or even the Chief starting to question how good Shawn really is (Psy vs Psy). Moving forward to the end of the season I would really like to see Shawn and Juliette start to get a little closer and maybe even starting to pick up that Shawn might not really be psychic. Of course I wouldn't want to see Shawn outed completely, since the premise of the show would be over, but it would definitely be cool if Shawn had to struggle to reel in another confidant out of necessity to keep his gig going.

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Hmm.... references? Shawn used the name "Dr. Howser", as in Doogie.

Easily the thing that intrigued me the most about the episode was Gus wanting Shawn to taste blood. How funny/weird was that?

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I just discovered this show (thanks to the strike...I was desperate for new television so I recorded both the marathons they aired leading up to the new episodes and thus have watched about twenty episodes in the last two weeks) and I am hooked. I liked this weeks episode except for the lame story with the cops. I want O'Hara and Lassiter back to their normal level of involvement. At least last week's converged (as mentioned above) at the end. I didn't like having two separate stories this time.

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I think that y'all are missing part of the point of the show. Psych is not like Numb3rs where the FBI cannot solve crimes without a civilian mathematician.

The Santa Barbara police in this show are more than able to solve most of the crimes there ... it is only on occasion that Shawn and Gus help them ...

The rest of the time they are doing their own thing for their own clients (like this episode) that just happened to be a real case ... which is why they got paid in the end.

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Did anybody notice any pineapple references in the last two episodes? I'm collecting them, but unless it was really subtle, I don't think there were any these last two weeks.

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I'm just excited that Guam got a shout-out this week. They also mentioned the village of Talofofo which was very near where I grew up. I don't think I knew anyone named knick-knack though.

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There is intrinsically a problem with the setup of the show, in that the lead officer (lassiter) hates Shawn, and the Chief is reluctant, if not enthusiastic, to go running to him every time they have a problem, and Jules may secretly like Shawn and thus won't advocate for bringing him in on cases. At the same time, Shawn always solves the case. So, either shawn starts to mess up, or the cops give in and start to like him and bring him in and they all become friends. This is what happened on Monk. At first, Stottlemeyer and Disher resented Monk, hardly ever called him in on a case, and were horribly annoyed when they Mayor called Monk in on a case as a personal favor. However, as Monk proved his worth, they all began to like and rely on him. Now, the one difference is that Shawn is lying about his method, while Monk is not. But I don't see that as being relevant to this situation, shawn certainly has no problem keeping up the psychic act.

I think the show is starting to seriously suffer due to no movement, no give at all, from this situational character problem. In the first season, they did show Lassiter starting to warm up to shawn, admitting while drunk that he is "Astounded" by shawn, and helping shawn out in that murder trial. Ditto with Jules, she warmed up to shawn tremendously from the second episode of the series (in which she first appeared) to last fall's mid-season finale when they almost kissed.

Clearly the writers are unnerved with taking it the next step and having them all be friends, so they're separating the cops from shawn and gus. Big mistake, as was seen in this episode and the last. Go ahead and let them get along. Lassiter can still be annoyed, in general, with Shawn's joking and baiting, much the same way Stottlemeyer can get annoyed with Monk's quirks.

What's important for the writers to realize is that the cops liking and befriending shawn is not the same as them conceding that he is a real psychic. It can be a running joke between Shawn and Lassiter that Lassy knows he's faking it, but respects him because that means his detective skills are for real (hey, Shawn beat him on the detective's exam, so there's no reason not to believe it!).

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I'd have to say this week episode was not as good as I thought it was going to be, sure it had its moments, but it just feels a little "off" for lack of a better word. I've also been thinking back to the episode "Bounty Hunters" and wondering why they haven't carried on with the Shawn/ Jules situations that they had at the end of it, they have barely even mentioned it. I was kinda hoping that it we would have an episode where they did something to advance that plot-line.

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My absolute favorite was Henry's image being included in the center's group photo a la The Shining. Brilliant.

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I was laughing throughout the episode, but no doubt the reference to 'The Shining' was the best moment of all.

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