Psych : A Very Juliet Episode

After a couple of slow episodes, it looks like Psych has regained momentum with this week’s extra-entertaining Juliet-heavy installment.

Seven years ago: A young Juliet says goodbye to her boyfriend Scott (Josh Braaten) at Union Station in Los Angeles. She’s returning to school in Miami, so they’ve decided to end their long-distance relationship. They make plans to meet back at the train station in exactly seven years -- if they’re both still single, maybe they’ll try to rekindle their romance.

Present day: Juliet, gussied up in a pretty red dress, waits for Scott with an expectant smile. She waits, and waits, and waits, for hours and hours. This is because Juliet is a cheerful and optimistic soul. Also, because she’s a tiny bit of a doormat.

Back at the station, Juliet abuses police resources to try to track Scott down, until the Chief yells at her to knock it off. Unwilling to let Shawn anywhere near her love life (smart girl, Juliet), she privately asks Gus to help her. Gus promises to keep Shawn out of it, claiming, “You may not know this, but I’m known as The Vault of Secrets.”

So of course, a Jamba Juice-slurping Shawn finds out about it in the very next scene, though Gus refrains from telling him about Scott’s personal connection to Juliet. Shawn cheerfully tells Juliet that he found her missing person -- Scott was murdered four years ago, his car found burned and abandoned in the California desert.

Juliet is crushed by the news. Feeling guilty, Shawn decides to investigate Scott’s unsolved murder. The police files are incomplete, so he uses Agent Lars Ewing’s Treasury Department password (Ewing was Lou Diamond Phillips’s character in a particularly awesome early episode, if you recall) to hack into Federal files, and discovers that Scott was somehow involved with a Los Angeles mobster named J.T. Waring (The Mummy’s Arnold Vosloo), who is currently imprisoned for various offenses, including murder and racketeering (Shawn: “What’s racketeering?” Lassiter: “Nobody knows).

Shawn finds out from Juliet that Scott owned a rare collection of Dumbo figurines. Somebody is (conveniently!) selling the collection on eBay, so Shawn and Gus, on the assumption that Scott’s murderer must be selling his possessions, track down the seller… and discover it’s Scott himself, alive and well and hiding in Witness Protection.

Their discovery of Scott earns them the wrath of federal marshal Daniel Wayne (Craig Sheffer! Good to see you, buddy! There’s someone I haven’t thought about in years!). Scott’s testimony about the murder of Wayne’s partner put Waring in prison for life. Wayne thinks Waring will try to have Scott killed, now that Scott is back out in the open.

Scott, who wants to rekindle his romance with Juliet, refuses to go back into protective custody, so Shawn and Gus visit Waring in prison to convince him not to try to kill Scott anymore. Waring insists he was innocent -- Wayne’s partner was already dead when Scott saw Waring standing over his body -- and agrees to leave Scott alone, provided Shawn and Gus find the real murderer. Shawn thinks Waring is telling the truth. Shawn, in fact, seems to instinctively like Waring. (Shawn: “There’s something very Billy Zaneian about him.” Gus: “You and Billy Zane are the only people who use that term.”)

You know, Shawn’s right -- there is something very Billy Zaneian about Arnold Vosloo:


Shawn, Gus and Scott break into Scott’s old office, where Scott originally saw Waring standing over the dead federal marshal, and recreate the crime scene. The bullet passed cleanly through the victim and was never found, but Shawn finds it embedded in the trunk of a tree outside. Someone starts shooting at them, so they hightail it out of there and return with Lassiter and Juliet… only to discover someone has already dug the bullet out of the tree.

Scott, realizing his life is still in danger, agrees to go back into protective custody. As Agent Wayne leads him away, Shawn notices traces of sap on Wayne’s hands and realizes: a) he dug the bullet out of the tree, and b) he killed his own partner and framed Waring for the crime. Shawn confronts Wayne, and they have a groin-kicking ankle-biting fistfight, which ends when Scott conks Wayne over the head and knocks him out.

With Wayne arrested, Juliet and Scott part once again at the train station, after making plans to meet once more in the same spot in a year.

Pineapple spotting:
Nope. Noooooooo. Not even close.

Gus’s fake name: None. At the maximum-security prison while visiting convicted murderer Waring, Shawn introduces Gus as Burton Guster. Gus squawks, “Now you use my real name?”

Awesome jab at The Mentalist:
(After Gus mocks Shawn’s hand-to-the-forehead faux-psychic gesture)
Shawn: I think it looks pretty sweet when Simon Baker does it.
Gus: Simon Baker doesn’t do it.
Shawn: He doesn’t?
Gus: No.
Shawn: Huh. Well, at least we have that.

Lassiter-based awesomeness: “I want you to listen to me, O’Hara, and believe this, because I mean it from the bottom of my heart: All romance ends in despair. Or death, but mostly despair. Gut-wrenching despair. I hate to say this, but I’m actually happy that this happened, because now you know, and it’s just going to make you a better cop to realize that all people are essentially just out there to destroy any chance of happiness you might’ve had.” Pause. “I feel a hug coming on.”

Awesome Eighties references:
Agent Wayne (to Juliet): Listen, girl: I. Don’t. Care.
Shawn: Tommy Lee Jones. The Fugitive.

Shawn (denying Henry’s claim he wasn’t much help finding Scott): I was on a missing-persons website.
Henry: The band Missing Persons.

Gus: Everything you’ve said in the last two days has been wrong.
Shawn: That’s not true. I was right about Mr. T being an extra in The Blues Brothers.

Juliet (making a Goodfellas reference over a romantic dinner with Scott): When you were in the Program, did you ever order spaghetti marinara and get egg noodles and ketchup instead?