Psych: Daredevils!
By fred | August 2, 2008
(S03E03) It’s pineapple time again! It’s a summer tradition on Fridays to have fun with our favorite duo of fake psychics but real detectives, Shawn and Gus. So far this season the show had tried to get a little more serious, especially when Shawn’s mother was introduced, but the show remains a comedy. And that’s a really good thing, in my opinion.
Not that I don’t like seriousness or giving more depths to the characters, but the heart & soul of this show lies in the comedy, it’s goofy, it’s fun, it’s filler with pop culture references and there’s a pineapple hidden somewhere in the middle of it. That’s how it rools, that’s how it works best, and I think that’s how it should stay. This episode was all about that, no more look into Shawn’s past or his relationship with his father, and yet it also has a little more of a serious tone as well.
The episode was good, but I have to say I don’t think it was one of their best. Sure, some things were pretty funny, but I have a few things that “troubled” me a little I’d say. First of all is that, once again, they didn’t work on a case for the police department, and once again they didn’t get paid either. I know it’s a comedy and it doesn’t aim to be realistic more than that, but at least during the first season they tried to get on the payroll of the PD so that they could, you know, pay the bills.
And yes, we’ve already seen how Gus managed to do it with his other job, but is he paying for Shawn too ?? I sure hope next week, they get to work on a police case, get paid, involve Lassiter and Jules on the case. Because, as a result, those two were once again not seen much and stuck into some B-plot that wasn’t really that exciting or funny : Juliet was ordered to find a date for he partner…
Anyways, if Shawn doesn’t want to turn into Jessica Fletcher maybe next time they’ll have to go and look for a case. One thing I do appreciate though is that, if at first on the show we used to see how Shawn resolved the mystery, and then he would explain it to his audience, usually the cops, while we already knew about it all, now they try to keep us a little more in the dark, having to guess and figure out for ourselves.
That’s good, but that doesn’t really do nothing to how easy it was to crack this case. I mean, if at first I suspected the kid to be the big new enemy, El Diablo, and to be jealous of his dad so much that he wanted him out or something, which didn’t mean killing him, just forcing him to stop/retire, once that was off it was not hard to see that the father seemed pretty inclined to run towards death on his own…
Bringing us to the final scene with a more serious tone, something quite unusual with Psych but I think it worked. After all it only makes sense that, once in a while, Shawn won’t make a show as he exposes the truth, but play it differently because the circumstances are different. It worked, but it shouldn’t become a regular thing either.
As I said it was a good episode, though I found it slightly less funny than previous ones, and it also has two quite weak elements :
- the action scene. I’m all for action scenes and car (or motorcycle) chases, but this one was a bit too much. First, El Diablo waits 15 minutes for Shawn and Gus to get ready and argue, and then he - a professional who drives his bike for a living - got beaten by Shawn, who’s also using what looks like an antique piece out of a museum than an actual bike. Something was just a bit too much I think there… But Gus and his mini-bike made up for it!
- blue screen, blue screen!! OMG, that entire scene on the roof, when they didn’t jump but almost fall and die, that was pretty horrible. It wasn’t as bad as what Heroes did last season, but still getting dangerously close…
Anyways, another pretty cool episode, another fun hour, another pineapple (i think that’s it, a fake one this time) :
