Psych: Yang 3 in 2D

Psych season finale! Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts:

A young college student named Allison Cowley (Mena Suvari) claims to have escaped from the evil clutches of Shawn’s mysterious longtime nemesis, Mr. Yin. Yin chained her up in a house, but she managed to escape, after stealing a framed photo showing an adolescent Shawn posing with Yin’s cohort and his own other longtime nemesis, Mr. Yang (Ally Sheedy).

The Santa Barbara Police Department storms Yin’s house and finds it now occupied by a nice family eating breakfast (Lassiter: “Aw, crap.”). Chief Vick suspects Allison made up the entire story of her abduction, but Allison proves her familiarity with the house by blindfolding herself and describing the furnishings. Convinced Allison is still in danger, Shawn takes her to stay in his childhood bedroom in Henry’s home. Shortly thereafter, Allison disappears, leaving behind a yin/yang symbol painted on Shawn’s bedspread.

Shawn and Gus visit Yang in the mental institution to ask for help tracking down Yin and Allison. Yang, who is still sweetly/creepily obsessed with Shawn, agrees to help, provided she’s allowed to visit the crime scene -- i.e. Shawn’s bedroom.
Yang examines Shawn’s room and tells him Yin probably left behind some kind of clue. After sorting through his album collection (Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen… Shawn, you have awesome taste in music), Shawn realizes Yin stole both The Smiths’ Meat is Murder and Van Halen’s 1984. As 1984 contains the song “Hot for Teacher,” Shawn decides Yin must be one of Allison’s professors.

…Yes, on any show other than Psych, that dizzying leap in logic would make me wrinkle my nose in disdain. On this show? It works. Are you really watching Psych for the crackerjack detective work and logical deductions?

Meanwhile, Henry contacts his ex-wife Maddy (Cybill Shepherd, hooray), hoping she might know where the old photo of Yang and Shawn was taken. Maddy, who was kidnapped by Yang in the episode “An Evening With Mr. Yang,” comes charging over to Santa Barbara to protect her son.

Yin turns out to be one Karl Rotmensen, Allison’s Romantic History professor, who hasn’t shown up to class for the past week. When Shawn and Gus go to Rotmensen’s listed home address, they find a box of VHS tapes in a field.

The tapes contain the video diaries of Mary (Jimmi Simpson), who hunted down Yin and was then murdered by him in last season’s finale, “Mr. Yin Presents.” On the tapes, Mary rambles on about how One Tree Hill is just a poorly-executed Dawson’s Creek, before getting to the point: He thinks Yang is merely Yin’s pawn, and that Yin is planning something big and terrible.

Maddy realizes she took the photo of Yang posing with Shawn for her photography class -- Yang was a creepy, lonely woman who lived three blocks away from the Spencers. Shawn and Gus rush over to Yang’s old house and find a note in the mailbox instructing them to use the key under the mat. As soon as they enter the house, the door locks behind them, trapping them inside. The windows are reinforced with metal grates; when Lassiter and Juliet and Henry arrive, they’re unable to break in.

Yang claims to know a secret entrance. She offers to help Juliet sneak into the house, provided Juliet lets her pose for another photo with Shawn.

Shawn and Gus find Allison in the basement of the house. She pulls a shotgun on them and informs them she’s Yin’s new apprentice. She leads them upstairs to the study to meet Mr. Yin…

Who turns out to be… Peter Weller! Huh. Didn’t see that one coming. Pretty cool, though I confess to a lingering disappointment that it wasn’t Judd Nelson. Yin threatens to kill them with a syringe filled with a combination of cyanide, strychnine, atropine, and boat cleaner. Shawn and Gus squabble over who should die first (Gus: “Do you have just the one needle? Do you plan on sterilizing it between uses?” Shawn: “Gus, you can’t be serious.” Gus: “I don’t know where all you’ve been, Shawn.”).

Juliet and Yang sneak into the basement. While The Smiths plays in the background, Juliet gets into a huge, messy, violent, awesome fight with Allison (coffee tables are smashed, water heaters get dented) before emerging victorious.

Before Yin can kill Gus, Yang bursts into the study. She reveals that Yin is her father, climbs into his lap, swipes the syringe from him, and kills him.

And everything ends well. Yang confesses that she wasn’t responsible for the earlier murders -- it was Yin’s doing all along. As her reward, she gets her photo taken with Shawn again, before she’s carted back off to the mental institution. And in the tag ending, Lassiter accidentally discovers that Shawn and Juliet are secretly dating. Which, presumably, will not sit well with him.

None of that made a damn lick of sense, but you know what? Doesn’t matter. It was fun anyway.

Lassiter-based awesomeness:
(Officer McNab marvels at Lassiter’s nonchalance over wrapping up the Yin/Yang case.)
McNab: You don’t feel anything?
Lassiter: Closure. Indifference. Hunger.
McNab: Wow. You’re like a robot.
Lassiter: Thank you. I got the same comment on my eHarmony page, so it must be true.

Awesome Eighties references:
Shawn (riffing on what Yin might’ve done in his formative years to indicate he’d later become a psychotic killer): Memorize episodes of Perfect Strangers, line for line?

Gus (arguing that Yin should kill him before Shawn): You must be out of your damn mind if you think I’m going to sit here and die after watching you die with some ridiculous grin on your face, like you’re thinking about sopapillas or that stupid scene from Summer School where all the students pretend to be dead.

At Allison’s school, a kid in the hallway passes out “Save Ferris” flyers.

Lassiter: Start talking, Yang, or it’s back to the rubber room.
Gus: What does Lassie think this is, Shutter Island?
Shawn: Either that, or Tootsie.

Shawn (showing Allison around his childhood bedroom): I hope the He-Man sheets are acceptable.

Yang (explaining that she doesn’t want to miss the afternoon movie at the mental institution): They’re screening Carbon Copy. I can’t resist a young Susan Saint James. Spunky.