Psych – Recap & Review – Heeeeere’s Lassie

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Psych
Heeeeere’s Lassie

Original Air Date: Mar 7, 2012

Anne – Associate Editor
anne@thetwocentscorp.com

This week we get our gang’s take on the movie The Shining. There are a couple other horror references thrown in there as well. Some may be in my imagination, but I’m sure there are some that they meant to put in there. Let’s jump right in, because there is a lot of detail to go into for this one.

Gus comes across Shawn and Jules having a yard sale in the Psych office, supposedly to pay Gus back for their spa trip, but I don’t know if I buy that. Gus tells Shawn to just sell the engagement ring that he never gave Juliet that he was carelessly storing in his Nintendo DES. Shawn says absolutely not! It’s his Gamma’s and it’s in a much safer place now…a Thundercat. Snarf to be exact, and Jules just sold him. Shawn is forced to give the kid all the money they’ve earned so far to get it back, $57.

Juliet receives a call from Carlton and they boys follow her, of course, to the crime scene at the Prospect Gardens apartment complex. It’s a creepy building, with a really creepy black and white awning and a really creepy caretaker. The victim has hung himself in his condo, number 536. But Lassie really takes a “shine” to the guy’s pad. Sure enough, two weeks later, he moves in. McNab warns him that the building has bad juju, but Lassie laughs it off. A neighbor, Amy (Sara Rue), shows up with a welcome basket and very obviously has a crush on the Lassman. That night, Lassie wakes up to a multitude of noises and voices, gun in hand. He sleeps with his gun, just like Sledgehammer. They should be introduced. Can you imagine? If you haven’t seen Sledgehammer, get the dvds immediately! Back to Lassie, he enters the hallway and sees elderly twins standing at the end of the hall in the same light blue dresses as the little girls in the Shining movie. Then when he goes back into his place, the kitchen chairs are all piled up, Poltergeist style.

We are treated to a special edition of the Psych theme played over the little boy riding around the halls on his big wheel. It’s short, but perfect. Over at the Psych office, Shawn has an epiphany that toys are probably not the best place to hide expensive things. Enter a disheveled Carlton Lassiter, who actually wants to hire them to look into the weird happenings going on at home. Much to their chagrin, it is not dead hookers or robot cockroaches, but they are giddy with pleasure when they find out his place might be haunted. They do their happy dance and gather their ghost busting gear. Literally. Full proton packs goin’ on here.

They meet Amy, who is apparently a nurse, in the hall outside the elevator and Shawn introduces Gus as Fellatio Del Toro. Then the little boy on the big wheel and his mother get off the elevator. The mother is pregnant, has a pixie haircut and her name is Rosemarie. She’s even wearing an almost identical dress to Mia Farrow’s white dress in Rosemary’s Baby. Then the little boy does the finger thing. Red-rum, red-rum. (He didn’t say that, but I can’t see that without thinking it!). Shawn discovers that the twins actually do live in the building, then when they go into Lassie’s kitchen the chairs are all back to normal. So they think he’s clearly losing his mind.

Shawn and Gus pigged out on junk food until they passed out on his living room floor, so Lassie went to bed. Shawn and Gus both mutter in their sleep, by the way. Again, Lassie woke up hearing voices. And there was someone in his shower. Uh oh. The bathtub scene was the scariest scene in the movie for me. He finds a prison uniform on the floor of the bathroom, but there is nobody there when he pulls back the curtain. When he turns and looks at the mirror, he sees an older and dirtier version of himself who reaches out of the mirror and starts to strangle him. Then Lassie wakes up and the dude is in bed with him. Then he wakes up again to Shawn and Gus yelling for him. Dude. There’s blood in the light fixture. Not cool.

Woody analyzed the blood and it wasn’t human. Again, much to Shawn and Gus’ chagrin, it was not chupacabra or dead robot hookers. But it was some sort of rodent with an STD. Lassie assumes it’s the rats that are common in the Prospect Gardens. So everything is fine, right? Of course not. There’s still 30 minutes left! He fires the boys, but Shawn can’t let anything go, so they go to question the neighbors. They start with Rosemarie and her hubby. They wanted to break down the wall and make one big penthouse, but they changed their minds. Poor little Tony had a fever, but he was still in the living room, somehow riding away at that big wheel while the thing was stationary. They’re innocent. Then they talk to the caretaker, Lloyd, to whom Shawn introduces Gus as Eddie Addams from Torrance. Now, bear with me here. I see this as three references, but I might be reaching. Eddie Munster. Addams Family and Jack’s last name was Torrance in the Shining. Lloyd tells them that condo 536 is cursed. All previous residents killed themselves.

Spooked out, they go back to Lassie’s apartment and find him wearing a monacle! Oh, and watching a static filled tv screen. He looks at them wildly. I think Sara Rue is somehow behind this. Just a theory. Woody finds that both of the previous tenants who killed themselves had a certain psychoactive drug in their systems. Gee, who would have access to that? Well, I might be wrong. It turns out that Lloyd is somewhat of a klepto. He’s been stealing from his tenants and has the same psychoactive drug in his apartment.

Gus finds the jar of gas in Lassie’s vent, but Lassie catches him and thinks he put it there. What follows is the most epic chase ever done on this show. Lassie full on attacks and chases Gus with a sword. It put Nicholson and Duvall to shame. They even did the sword through the door thing. Gus did the perfect Shelley Duvall screams in the corner. I always love it when Gus acts like a girl. Dule does it so well. (I love you, Dule!) The chase ends in the laundry room, where Shawn tackles Lassie and saves the day, while the kid on the big wheel watches through the window doing the finger thing (red-rum). Oh, they also find Lloyd in the dryer. Hmmm.

Shawn does his flashy thing (Gosh, I miss Chuck) and realizes that I was right! It turns out that Amy has major psychological issues, both mommy and daddy, in fact. She was left at the altar, twice. So by the time she was rejected by each of the residents in 536, she had had enough. She used the history that the builder of the apartments had gone crazy and killed himself and his wife to her advantage and created the curse of 536. Not to mention that she lived in apartment 237, and we all know what lived in 237 in the Shining. The evil. It’s also the room that Stephen King stayed in at the Overlook when he wrote the book. She killed Lloyd because he found out about all of it when he stole a bill from her shrink.

Naturally, she flees when they reveal all this to her and our boys take chase up to the roof. She charges them to push them off the roof, but they move in time for Shawn to shift her path so that she flies off instead. I loved the shot of her falling. Right onto the brand new awning, where the police were waiting below. Back at the office, Gus finds the ring again, inside a toy frog. He tells Shawn to take it back to his dad’s already. Shawn agrees because a marriage proposal is the farthest thing from his mind. Enter Juliet’s dad (William Shatner). He says that Shawn left an urgent voicemail on his phone the week before he and Juliet went on their spa retreat, but he was out of the country. Shawn explains and asks for his blessing for the distant future. He doesn’t get a direct answer, but Daddy Shatner does ask if Shawn has ever lied to his daughter? He tells him he’ll wait for his next call and off he goes…with Gus’ Color Me Mine plate.

I loved this episode! I love horror movies and I’ve always loved all the pop culture references they use. The physical comedy that all these guys are capable of is just astounding. I always knew that James and Dule were great with it, but Tim Omundson was amazing! My only complaint was that there wasn’t more Maggie Lawson. But I still give the episode 5 out of 5 huge stars! What did you think? Did you get all the references? Please leave your comments below and give me YOUR TwoCents! Thank you for reading and I’ll see you back here next week for more!

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