PSYCH: This Week’s Mystery Throws a Curveball

This week on Psych, we open with another peek into Shawn’s childhood. He’s at Seabirds stadium, 1991, hero worshipping a baseball player. He’s also rambling, but that’s our Shawn. The player hits a homerun, Shawn is in awe. Suddenly we’re back in present day, and Shawn is playing on the department’s baseball team. He ignores Lassiter’s cries to stay on base and tries to slide home, where he’s called out…by Henry. They argue, Shawn throws things. His mood is made better by the arrival of Mel, who was coach of the Seabirds when Shawn was a kid (and still is). He wants to hire him. The other coach, Grady, was killed, and there were drugs in his system. He doesn’t believe Grady used drugs and wants Shawn to find the truth.

The best way to find out what happened is to infiltrate, so Shawn gets to realize his dream of coaching, Gus gets to be mascot. These things never go well for Gus. Gus is humiliated, and pretty sure the costume has fleas. They leave the stadium and go to search Grady’s home. He has a fake rock key holder in his garden, making breaking and entering much easier. They search the house…well, Gus searches. Shawn is goofing off. He’s also acting strangely, even more so than usual. Just before, he had been drinking from the water bottle on Grady’s treadmill, so they take it with them and go off to find Henry at the station.

Henry has tests run and the water was laced with amphetamines. Shawn is still high. They update Henry on their case. Shawn notices the number 42 on the water bottle, and they go to talk to the player who wears that number, Izzy Jackson. Shawn’s high wears off before they get to the bar frequented by the team. Shawn thinks Izzy killed Grady by accident, they accidentally swapped water bottles. He believes Izzy was taking the drugs, but Grady’s heart couldn’t handle them and gave out. Shawn feels Izzy out on whether he’s using. Words are about to escalate into a fight until Cal, the player Shawn idolized as a kid, breaks it up. He’s back playing with the Seabirds. He would do anything to get back in the big leagues, and I get the feeling he really means “anything.” Izzy is being a complete tool across the room, making it seem very unlikely that he would have enough brain cells to kill anyone. Shawn hears someone tell Izzy if he takes another drink he’ll end up whizzing himself again, and Shawn concocts a plan. He and Gus later steal Izzy’s pants to get a urine sample. There were no drugs in Izzy’s system, though, and Shawn’s top theory is out.

Izzy gets suspended for his night of debauchery, and childhood hero Cal is called upon to take his place. Shawn worries his hero set this in motion to get Izzy out of the way. He did say he’d do ‘anything.’ Shawn confronts Cal about setting Izzy up. Cal tells him if he was cheating, he wouldn’t be stuck in this league. Good point, why cheat to get to the bottom of the ladder?

The fans don’t like mascot Gus’s dancing, until fleas start biting him and his dance starts looking like he’s doing “the worm”. He’s uncomfortable, but the crowd now loves him. The team GM approaches Mel and tells him he doesn’t care what Izzy did, he wants him playing. Thanks to Shawn’s keen observation skills, he helps Izzy hit a homerun. A woman in the stands blows Izzy a kiss, and Shawn recognizes her as having left the bar with a different player the night before. Shawn wants to apologize to Cal before he goes after Ricky, the player in question. Shawn thinks she’s Ricky’s wife and he set Izzy up to get back at him. It turns out she’s married to another player, who happens to be standing there when Shawn relays his theory. She’s actually been seeing pretty much every player on the team, and as the truth comes out it turns into a brawl with the Seabirds all fighting each other. Henry, in the stands, tells Juliet this must be Shawn’s doing, she never doubted it.

Mel tears into the team back in the locker room. Izzy gets mad and leaves. It’s Friday night, he doesn’t care what the coach has to say. Coach Mel is angry and goes after him. The GM fires Shawn, Wade Boggs is the new batting coach. Shawn and Gus depart, but on the way out find Izzy on the ground, dead.

At SBPD, Mel can’t believe they think he hit Izzy over the head with a baseball bat and killed him. He says he went after Izzy to tell him off, but never found him. Shawn believes him, but he’s the only one. Lassiter tells Shawn he found a bag full of amphetamines in Mel’s apartment that morning. It looks bad for Mel.

Shawn learns Izzy was hit from the left, but Mel is right handed. Shawn, Henry, and Gus go to see Woody to get his report. Thank goodness, I was missing Woody this episode. He agrees with Shawn, someone hit Izzy hard from the left, harder than a 60 year old swinging backhanded would hit. Shawn notes the photo of the murder weapon shows the bat size 35 on the end, the same size Cal used. Shawn goes to see him, but he’s cleared out his locker and gone. Shawn tracks him down at his home. Cal is headed to Oakland, he’s back in the big leagues. He was with the trainer when Izzy was killed. He has a solid alibi and Shawn is elated. His parting words set Shawn’s thoughts in motion though “it’s all about the money”. Shawn dons Gus’s mascot costume to get back into the stadium and go through records in the office. By reading Izzy’s contract he learns the team has a lot riding on Izzy’s success, which there hasn’t been much of. The jubilation of being right makes Shawn noisy and he is caught in the office. He makes a run for it. The security at this stadium really isn’t very good if a guy in a giant bird suit can get away so easily.

Shawn calls Gus from the road. He knows who the killer is, but the killer knows he’s on to him. Oh, and one other thing, the killer thinks it’s Gus that found this information. Gus is unable to respond because there is a gun pointed at his head.

The man behind the gun is Neal, the GM. Gus tells him he doesn’t know anything, but will take him to the guy who does and he can shoot him. In fact, Gus may even help him with that. Shawn arrives, confirms Gus’s suspicion that the costume has fleas, and exposes what really happened. Neal was the youngest GM in history and took a big risk by signing Izzy, and it wasn’t paying off. He was trying to get rid of Izzy, and used the drugs to try and set him up. When all else failed, he killed him. Neal marches Shawn and Gus to the stadium, planning to kill them and say it was self defense since it is already known they broke into his office. Before he can act, hero Cal steps in to help by threatening Neal with a bat. Something about the prior events was bothering him so he came back to check. Wade Boggs also arrives. Neal runs now, he can’t shoot Wade Boggs. On his way out, he doesn’t see Henry coming from his blind side. Henry decks him, then let’s out a very manly squeal when he notices Wade Boggs. These guys really love Wade Boggs.

Mission completed, Shawn gets to take batting practice with Henry and Wade Boggs. Shawn wants to prove to Mel he’s good enough for one minor league ‘at bat’. The scene goes ‘slow mo’, the pitch comes, Shawn swings, and the ball goes…foul. There will be no baseball debut for Shawn. Henry and Shawn talk, though, and discover they actually enjoyed working the case together. A big step forward for them personally and professionally.

Overall, this episode was a very fun romp, but with the added bonus of peeling back the layers of Shawn and Henry’s relationship. It’s often quite strained, but this episode highlighted that even when they butt heads and drive each other crazy, at the end of the day they do really still care about each other. If there is anything I am missing so far this season, though, it’s the sparse use of Juliet. Hopefully that will be remedied in coming weeks, but thus far this season she’s mostly just delivered a one liner here and there. Hopefully patience on that front will be rewarded eventually, and there are plenty of laughs to keep it fun in the meantime.

Psych airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on USA Network.