Psych – Lassiter goes all Bukowski

(Season 3, Episode 11 – “Lassie Did A Bad, Bad Thing” )

What’s the old saying? “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Our pal Lassiter got slapped with the Proverbs stick this week. He was in full Lassiter form after bringing in the notorious gangster, Chavez. But it didn’t last long. That’s both good and bad in this instance. While it was fun to get a look at Lassiter with his world turned upside down, it didn’t exactly make for the best case. Fortunately, the depressed and distraught Lassiter, and the team rallying around him, outweighed the iffy clues and saved the episode.

Let’s start with the case itself. My problem with it was the key piece of evidence. All records of Kenny Loggins had disappeared, because they would point to the killer. OK. But don’t you wonder what a gang unit cop, one with years on the unit, would have to do with rousting drunks? The files on Loggins wouldn’t have connected him to Drimmer, so why would he be destroying them? It just wasn’t necessary. Shawn could have “divined” his guilt all the same without that bit of evidence.

That’s my gripe, but it’s small potatoes when weighed against the rest of the episode. The path of the relationship between Psych (Shawn and Gus Psych that is, not the show itself) and the department is very interesting. I can’t put my finger on just when it happened, but somewhere along the lines the writer’s flipped a switch. It moved from a dynamic where Lassiter and the Chief were a well-meaning obstacle for Shawn and Gus to where all of them were an actual team. This is the next step in that progression.

The same thing tracks in Shawn’s relationship with Lassiter. I mentioned Shawn’s “I’m helping you” line last week, and this week we got his earnest pledge to Lassiter, “I know you didn’t do this buddy. And I’m going to do everything I can to prove it. I promise.” Before, I would have expected that to be followed by some cutting joke at Lassiter’s expense, but now I’m actually starting to believe it. Tim Omundson deserves a lot of credit here too. He played the troubled Lassiter just right.

Of course, the show hasn’t gone all Alan Alda on us. There was still plenty of time for the funny. A few of my favorite bits:

• Funyuns are an onion flavored corn snack.
• A Japanese business man spent a fortune on a two hundred year old Jarlsberg.
• “I never close my eyes with other people around. Ever.” – Not so funny in and of itself, but doesn’t that sound like Lassiter is quoting Dwight Schrute?
• “If he wakes up one day and he’s Howard Jones, I’m like, Dude, things can only get better.” – I have that record.
• “Former lovers? Really?” – It was the delivery that sold it.
• All things Kenny Loggins, and by extension, Jim Messina. Kenny Loggins isn’t as funny as Kenny G (it’s the hair), but he’s still pretty funny.

All things considered, I’ll mark it down as another solid episode. Things were a little haphazard where the case was concerned, but the rest of the episode more than made up for it.

Clacked by Brett Love
on Jan 17, 2009 @ 08:26 EST5EDT