Pilot (Psych episode)

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“Pilot”
Psych episode

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 1
Guest stars	Don S. Davis Anne Dudek Sage Brocklebank Robert Parent Jason Bryden Pascale Hutton Josh Hayden
Written by	Steve Franks & Andy Berman
Directed by	Michael Engler
Production no.	1001
Original airdate	July 7, 2006
Episode chronology
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–	"Spellingg Bee"

The extended Pilot episode of the USA original series Psych aired on July 7, 2006, and ran 90 minutes.

1 Plot summary
2 Arc Significance
3 Allusions
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Shawn Spencer (Josh Hayden), 11, has lunch with his police officer father, Henry (Corbin Bernsen); when Shawn asks for a piece of fudge cake, Henry makes him earn it by asking him questions about obscure details of the diner. Shawn complies and impresses the waitress with an extraordinary display of eidetic memory, which Henry calls merely "adequate." When the waitress tells Shawn that she knows what he'll be when he grows up, Shawn tells her that he has no intentions of growing up.

20 years later, Shawn (James Roday) returns to his apartment with a waitress (Ingrid Tesch) he has seduced - or been seduced by - but in the middle of a particularly passionate series of kisses, they accidentally turn on the television to the Channel Eight news. In between their passionate flirtation, Shawn realizes from minute clues that the man being interviewed by the Channel Eight reporter is actually guilty of the theft about which he is being interviewed; he calls the police and leaves a tip before returning to his romantic interlude.

The next morning, Shawn appears at the local precinct, trying to claim his reward for calling in the tip. Instead, he is lead to an interrogation room by Head Detective Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) and Detective Lucinda Barry (Anne Dudek), who, Shawn deduces within seconds, are having an affair. The detectives are all suspicious that Shawn is involved with the guilty man, whom they assert must have had a partner; Lassiter also produces a laundry-list of crimes solved with Shawn's previous tips, claiming that Shawn now looks like a suspected participant in all of them.

To avoid getting arrested, Shawn claims to have come by his uncanny knowledge of so many disparate crimes through psychic means. When the police are understandably skeptical, he reveals a number of facts about each of them, drawing natural conclusions from previous observations he made while waiting earlier — but he does so while putting on the traditional act of a psychic. After being released from custody, Shawn is offered a trial consulting position by Interim Police Chief Karen Vick (Kirsten Nelson); the case in question is to find the missing son of a textile magnate.

Shawn convinces his long-suffering high-school friend Burton 'Gus' Guster (Dulé Hill) to go along for the adventure of solving a crime, and the two head to the sprawling mansion of Camden McCallum Sr. (Don S. Davis). There, Shawn picks through the trash outside, then carelessly examines a set of family photos, coming to an understanding of the wealthy family's interpersonal dynamics. He also meets the missing mogul's sister, Katarina McCallum (Pascale Hutton), and accidentally describes in perfect detail her boyfriend Bill (Dylan Rhymer) to the police sketch artist after glimpsing a picture of the couple.

The next morning, Shawn meets Gus at Gus's apartment to discuss the likelihood that Camden McCallum Jr. (Jason Bryden) was not kidnapped at all — but rather faked his disappearance to bilk his family out of money. After some old-fashioned investigation, he and Gus locate the cabin where the heir is hiding with his dog and his best friend, Malcolm Orso (Robert Parent). They intercept Lassiter and Lucinda having lunch at a restaurant and Shawn has another "psychic vision" that leads the four of them back to the cabin. Unfortunately, they find Orso and the junior McCallum dead in what looks like a murder/suicide.

Chief Vick, Detective Lassiter, and, strangely, the senior McCallum, appear content to call the case closed. Based on minor details of the cabin scene and a newly discovered wrist injury sustained by Mr. McCallum, Shawn convinces Lucinda that the crime is still unsolved; he also demonstrates an incredible prowess with a firearm, following Lucinda on the firing range by shooting out the same bullet holes that she put in a paper-target.

Shawn is later pulled over by a police officer, from whom he learns that his father is back in Santa Barbara. Shawn meets with Henry and the two have lunch; when Shawn asks for Henry's help with the increasingly strange McCallum case, Henry suggests that Shawn's gifts have deteriorated due to his lack of discipline, and Shawn asserts that his skills have never been better. When forced by his father to offer proof, Shawn correctly identifies the six hats in the room, just as he had when he was 11, and when Henry smugly tells him that he missed one, Shawn corrects him: the seventh hat left the room while Shawn was rattling off the other six and Shawn heard the owner's boots. His father seems displeased even with this, and still offers only the statement that Shawn has missed something.

Later, Shawn and Gus follow Katarina McCallum, who they see delivering a suspicious duffel bag to a man in an alley. Shawn discovers that the bag actually contains old clothing that Katarina intended to donate to a thrift-store, but Shawn later acquires the empty bag and determines by the stretched fabric that it had once carried a large amount of money — easily the five-million-dollar ransom that had been demanded for the junior McCallum's safe return.

Shawn and Gus confront the elder McCallum at his home, and Shawn meticulously reconstructs a theory of the crime in which Camden McCallum had made the ransom drop for his son's return, only to pass Malcolm Orso's car in the vicinity. McCallum was only naturally suspicious of Orso's presence, since his son had claimed he would clean up his act 18 months ago and hadn't seen Orso since. Shawn surmises that McCallum followed Orso's back to the cabin and found his son inside; McCallum roughed up his son, accidentally knocking him into the kitchen table where the junior McCallum hit his head and died. When Orso himself returned to the cabin, armed, McCallum wrested the gun from him, shot Orso, and set the stage as a murder/suicide. In the midst of the explanation, Gus has a nausea fit and heads for the bathroom.

McCallum has Shawn and Gus summarily escorted from the house, where Gus tells Shawn that McCallum had a bottle of consumine — a medicine designed to treat dog bites. From Gus's car in McCallum's driveway, Shawn calls the Santa Barbara Police on...himself and Gus. Detective Lassiter and Lucinda, along with Chief Vick, arrest the two amateur detectives in front of a host of newscameras on McCallum's lawn, and as Shawn is being piled into a squad car, he has another "psychic vision." He tells Vick to check McCallum's wrist injury, which he claims will be a dog bite from Camden McCallum Jr.'s golden retriever. McCallum blusters before the cameras, then breaks down and confesses.

Shawn returns to the police station to find his father, who has been put off by Shawn's flippant use of his honed ability, leaving Chief Vick's office. Having done a background check on Shawn, Vick learned from Henry that Shawn has possessed his "gift" since he was 18; Vick offers Shawn a second consulting job, on a car theft case. Shawn runs into his father in the parking lot again, and Henry makes it clear he doesn't approve of Shawn's psychic act; unfortunately, the newspaper clipping of Shawn's "psychic" exploits on Henry's car seat makes it clear that Henry thinks more of his son then he lets on. But Shawn plays along, admitting that he wouldn't expect approval.

Later, Shawn takes Gus to their new office, for which he has signed a six month lease — along with forging Gus's signature on the lease. Gus takes note of the ironic name of the business — "Psych" — but reluctantly agrees to the partnership.

[edit] Arc Significance

This episode establishes the breadth of Shawn's eidetic memory, and shows that he is not only able to notice minor details, but is able to integrate these details into a deeper understanding of a situation, allowing him to spot patterns where they are not clearly visible.

Gus is shown to have his own expertise within the pharmacology field, at least in terms of being able to recognise drug names and functions.

Henry is shown to be a supporter of his son's success in general, and sets up his role as a continuing paternal force.