Psych Episode 6.02 Review: Perfect Marriage Of Humor And Writing

When it comes to this week’s Psych, I am of the belief that you cannot go wrong with anything that involves a giant donut. You can, however, go wrong when you drink too much.

Team Psych (and a few other guests) are paying their respects to a retiring cop named Jim at a local bar – never mind that most of them don’t even know him. The next morning, Shawn wakes up in a trashed office to find Gus on the floor with no memory of how the evening ended. As if that’s not bad enough, Lassiter and Woody are passed out on the office couch, and Lassiter’s gun is in the aquarium. Oh, and some other random guy is dead. It’s like my favorite Jeff Foxworthy skit (you know, the one that involves the line, “Officer Mitchell! I thought you said you didn’t wanna come back out here tonight?!”)

When the Chief tells the guys that the victim has been shot three times (equivalent to the number of bullets missing from Lassiter’s gun), and Shawn realizes he’s wearing the dead man’s sandals, the foursome go into a complete panic, with Shawn having a neurotic rant about losing his faux-psychic abilities that is possibly one of James Roday’s funniest moments in the entire series. Then we get an awesome slow-motion return to the bar not unlike Reservoir Dogs, as the audience reaps the benefits of a creative team who are clearly as in love with pop culture as we are.

Enter the giant donut, as the trail leads from the bar to a donut shop where Shawn realizes their victim was a private eye – and where they’re confronted by a shotgun-wielding, very angry man who’s quite upset that they knocked over the giant donut in their drunken stupor. Though he doesn’t shoot them, he does show them security tape of Lassiter being punched in the face by the PI’s now very dead client. Investigating his death reveals that Henry woke up with a hangover in the same motel where the client’s wife was having an affair. There’s a gas leak in her room, however, and it blows up just moments after Team Psych takes a mass dive into the motel swimming pool.

It turns out they’ve run amiss of someone on the FBI’s Most Wanted list: Leroy Jenkins, whose adopted daughter Lilly is the woman Gus has been making eyes at since the night before. The whole crazy nightmare has been about the rather ominous Leroy, who is no relation to ESPN anchor Michelle Beadle’s dog. Unfortunately, Gus is so out of it that he doesn’t realize what’s going on until Lassiter and Leroy are engaged in a shootout in his apartment, and only then because his TV takes a bullet.

Sobered up and safe again, our heroes make amends at the donut shop. And what did Shawn tell Juliet in his drunken stupor? He asked her to move in with him, even though they’re only four months into their relationship and he’s an admitted commitmentphobe. Now that he’s more lucid, she can tell that he’s not really ready, and she’s okay with that. All’s well that ends well, even if it goes really, really hilariously bad first.

“Last Night Gus” is one of my favorite Psych episodes…ever. It would be the perfect PSA against drinking too much if I wasn’t laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. From start to finish, it’s full of laugh out loud moments and lines that are worth repeating. Every member of the cast turns in a great performance, although Kurt Fuller nearly steals the show with Woody’s great and often inappropriate lines, like “I just got verified on Twitter.” I particularly love his arms-in-the-air exulting when Shawn tells Woody that he doesn’t have a cocaine problem.

And although there are plenty of laughs, there’s still an actual coherent storyline underneath them all. It’s the perfect marriage of great humor and solid writing. My kudos to the Psych cast, crew and writers for an outstanding episode. I’d raise my glass, too, but I think I’ll lay off on the drinking awhile.

In case you missed it, here’s Lisa’s interview with Psych creator Steve Franks, and my interview with stars James Roday and Dule Hill. Stay tuned next week for more Psych, including an interview you won’t want to miss!