PSYCH Recap: Right Turn or Left for Dead

This week we visit a tale of two Shawns. One Shawn is heartbroken and wonders how things might have gone differently if he just hadn’t put his jacket on Juliet at the wedding. The other Shawn depicts how the scenario might have played out if he hadn’t, if he had instead put a pashmina that was left at the table around her shoulders and kept his jacket on himself.

Both Shawns, real and imagined, leave the wedding. Although one leaves with Juliet and the other leaves looking dejected. They both take a taxi, which is where things really veer off course. At an intersection, alone Shawn (whom we will call Shawn A) tells the driver to take a left, the other Shawn (Shawn B) is sweet talking Juliet and tells the driver to take a right. Shawn A’s taxi almost hits a girl who wanders out into the street. Shawn gets out to see if she’s okay and helps her back into the taxi. She appears to have been through something traumatic and is covered in cuts. She soon passes out, and Shawn directs the driver to take them to the hospital. Shawn B’s taxi is heading home, as he and Juliet talk about getting Lassiter a dog as a wedding gift.

In Shawn A’s world, the girl is still unconscious when Lassie and Juliet arrive. Shawn sustained a concussion when the taxi driver hit the brakes, he’s a little goofy even for Shawn. He’s quite envious of the girls shoes, Kjellin’s and tries to find them online but they are only sold in Sweden. Juliet is cool towards Shawn when she arrives, and this isn’t going to be easy for him to overcome. Lassie notes that the girls stab wound appears to have been from the same type of knife as a recent murder victim. Shawn takes them to the site where he first encountered the girl. In Shawn B’s world, he didn’t take that left turn so he wasn’t there to help the girl…he first sees her on Woody’s examining table when they are all called in on her murder case. Shawn B also has that dog for Lassie, who is unimpressed until the little long-eared pup seems to have a knack for finding dead bodies.  Chief Vick sends the team to investigate the location where the girl’s body was found. Both worlds end up finding another body by a creek…Shawn locates one when he gets a translation for a word the girl was uttering when he found her, Lassiter’s dog finds the same victim in the other version of the story.

The Jane Doe in story A awakens and they learn her name is Elin. She identifies a photo of the other victim as her boyfriend Cory. The body found days earlier is her former boyfriend Erik. She’s certain that an old boyfriend from Sweden, Anders, is responsible. He’s why she left Sweden. In story B, the gang follows the lead of a child’s jacket they found at the crime scene. The child’s mother answers the door, and she’s not really the cordial type but eventually allows them inside. Well, all but Gus, he has to stay with the dog because she won’t let the dog inside. Shawn B spies a photo of Elin with the child and deduces that she is the child’s au pair.

Shawn A and Gus track down Anders. with a little help from a Swedish bartender. He’s been staying with a guy named Torsten. Meanwhile, in story B Juliet runs through all they know back at the station. Chief has to excuse herself, she caught a cold when someone stole her pashmina at Lassiter’s wedding. Gus has problems of his own. He thinks he’s allergic to Lassiter’s dog, but he doesn’t realize he ate biscotti with gold flakes in it. He’s allergic to gold flakes. Shawn A tipped him off to the ingredients in their version of the story, so Gus in that storyline dodged that bullet.

When Shawn A and Gus get to Torsten’s apartment, they don’t find Anders. They do, however, find Torsten’s body. Shawn goes to Henry for advice on the case, but really just wants advice about Juliet. Henry is livid that Shawn was found out, worried that it will reflect badly on him. Their talk is cut short when Shawn learns Elin was released from the hospital. Her employer took her home, although Shawn A doesn’t know that yet because it was Shawn B who already went to the woman’s home. Confused yet? He convinces the woman that Elin is in danger, and they go to Elin’s apartment so he can talk to her. The place has been torn apart. Shawn A thinks Anders must have her. Luckily for him, Elin’s boss has trust issues and had placed a GPS tracker on Elin’s phone. Shawn takes off to look for her.

The story B crew also finds themselves at Torsten’s apartment, but he’s still very much alive in this version. It was his gun that shot the first victim, which is how they tracked him down. He checks his safe and finds the gun is missing. He tells them his friend Anders must have taken it. He’s a psychiatrist who followed an unstable patient to the US.  The patient had an abusive stepfather, and she was attacking men who resembled him.

Shawn B realizes as he hears the story that Elin is not the victim, she is the attacker. Shawn A also has this realization, after he finds Anders body and gets his butt kicked by a masked assassin. As the attacker runs away, Shawn spies the Kjellin’s on their feet.

Gus awakens Shawn at the Psych offices. Shawn tells him about the “what if” dream he had been having. At this point story B is over. Lassiter has learned that Shawn’s hunch was right, Elin escaped from a mental hospital. Shawn runs through the events as he believes they happened. Elin killed Anders because he wanted to take her back to Sweden. She then stole his gun.  She used it on the first victim, but lost it in the struggle so she stabbed him to finish him off. Then she stabbed the second victim, which was when Shawn first encountered her. She killed Torsten because he knew too much. Gus reads the report on her mom and learns the woman died in a car accident in Santa Barbara that was later ruled a suicide. Shawn realizes the location of the accident is where Elin dumped Anders body. Shawn and Gus go there, and find her placing flowers on the ground. She appears to be ready to go peacefully with them, but she’s a fighter and knocks Gus down then struggles with Shawn. She’s holding a knife over him and getting closer and closer to stabbing him when Juliet arrives and orders her to freeze. Shawn takes it as a good sign that Juliet rescued him, but she insists she was just doing her job.

Shawn dreams that Juliet comes to him and although angry and hurt, she understands why he had to keep it a secret. As they hug, he sees Juliet in the doorway, calling out to him. He awakens from his dream and Juliet actually is calling out to him. He thinks if he just hadn’t given her the jacket it would all be okay, totally missing the point of why she’s angry and maybe making her just a bit angrier in the process. She tells him she needs her space. Even worse,  she wants Shawn to move out.

Psych airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on USA.