Fasten your seatbelt. This won’t take long. A masked gunman steals a Lamborghini belonging to loan shark Logan Paget (Angus Macfadyen). The car is found shortly thereafter, with the thief shot to death in the driver’s seat. The dead man is identified as Max Contreras, a known street racer. Shawn snoops around the crime scene and determines the shooter must’ve fired from another speeding sports car.
Juliet and Lassiter interrogate Paget, who spoke on the phone to Max shortly after Max stole his Lamborghini. Paget maintains his innocence and claims Max was afraid someone was trying to kill him.
Calling on their vast knowledge of The Fast and the Furious, with a hefty dose of Point Break thrown in for good measure, Shawn and Gus infiltrate Max’s former street-racing gang, which includes charismatic leader Tommy (CSI: Miami’s Adam Rodriguez) and Max’s ex-girlfriend, sexy mechanic Gina (Vanessa Minnillo). Tommy challenges Shawn to a race to test his mettle. Shawn, driving Henry’s pickup truck rigged up with nitrous, loses to Tommy by a hair. He’s then unable to stop the truck:
Gus: You must’ve accidentally cut the brake line when you installed the nitrous!
Shawn: Please. The only thing I cut was that long cable going from the pedals to the rear wheels.
Impressed by Shawn’s moxie and/or idiocy, Tommy invites them to a wild party. Suspecting that Shawn is an undercover cop, Gina pops the hood of her car and asks him to point out the modifications. Shawn fails the test terribly. Gina pulls a gun on him; Gus bravely intervenes, but Gina kicks both of their asses. Juliet and Lassiter burst in and arrest her on suspicion of murdering Max.
Shawn, however, realizes that Gina is unable to grip anything with her right hand, due to an old injury she sustained in a car crash. Therefore, she couldn’t have steered a car while shooting Max at the same time. Shawn continues to investigate the case.
Tommy and his crew raid the Psych offices and hold Shawn and Gus at gunpoint. Tommy confesses to Max’s murder. He orders Shawn to steal the Lamborghini back from police impound for him, or he’ll kill Gus.Shawn complies. Tommy zips off in the stolen car, with the police in hot pursuit. The Lamborghini sputters to a stop in front of a police roadblock, thanks to the zucchini Shawn stuffed in the tailpipe.
And… that’s it. Really, that’s all I have, and I covered pretty much the entire plot. Shortest damn Psych recap ever, because very little happened in this episode. Oh, sure, nobody looks to Psych for substance and weighty plots, and everything that happened was fairly breezy and amusing, but still, this is strictly a midrange episode, neither notably good or bad.
(The childhood flashbacks at the beginning are back, for whatever that’s worth. Apparently last week’s flashback-free episode was just an aberration.)
Awesome Eighties reference:
Shawn (watching video footage of Lassiter chasing after the stolen Lamborghini): As soon as Lassie hits 88, he goes back in time. And this time, he does not go to the prom with his sister.
Gus: It was his mother. And it was the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.
Gus’s fake name:
MC Clap Your Handz
Lassiter-based awesomeness:
Shawn (after Lassiter and Juliet raid the party and place Gina under arrest): (whispers) You’re going to blow my cover! Punch me in the face!
Lassiter: I’m not going to punch you in the face.
Shawn: Ronald Reagan was a terrible president!
Lassiter: You son of a bitch! (decks Shawn)
Lassiter (to Gus): The fact of the matter is, I’m quite fond of you, Guster. Although, professionally, I do wonder what you bring to the table.
Comments
I agree about the midrange ep. It might be my least fav. of the season but I didn't hate it. Maybe it is because I lived in LA when The F&The F came out and my ex was a street racer and I hated it! And other ex...his fav. movie of all time is Point Break. I need to date better men :) lol
Some great guest stars these season though!
But since I liked the banter between the characters, and there was plenty of that in the episode, I don't really mind. :)
Related to this, I was checking my site statistics yesterday, and I had a bunch of people find this page after searching for some variation of "Why did Tommy kill Max?" Damned if I know. They explained it in the episode, sort of, but things like motivations and plot twists clearly weren't terribly important/necessary to this episode. The plots of Psych are usually just sort of a loose framework that the writers fill with snappy banter and running gags -- I think the framework was looser than usual this time around.
But, like you, I enjoyed the episode in spite of all that. There's something very satisfying about just watching Shawn and Gus goof around and riff off of each other's jokes for forty-five minutes, and this episode had no shortage of that.
Oh, this is interesting!
Wasn't there some kind of explanation for why Max was killed in the episode? I vaguely recall going "Ah, OK" during it, like Tommy's motivations were acceptable enough once they were pointed out - but some hours later, I simply cannot remember why he did it, and that's maybe a perfect sign of how unmemorable the Whodunit aspect of this episode was.
Perhaps I am feeling cheated out on a deduction because the real bad guys just came waltzing into the office with guns, pretty much ending the mystery halfway through.
Then again, I think last week had an abundance of potential killers and motives and took plenty of twists and turns, Psych can afford a more simplistic frame his time around - especially since the movie references pretty much required Tommy to be a killer...
Perhaps I am feeling cheated out on a deduction because the real bad guys just came waltzing into the office with guns, pretty much ending the mystery halfway through.
Heh, yeah, it wasn't so much that Shawn solved the crime as the bad guy solved it for him by spilling the beans. A tad bit anticlimactic. Still, it was pretty damn enjoyable.