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"Hi, I'm Shawn Spencer and this is my partner Control Alt
Delete." - Shawn Spencer
Still as irreverent, silly, and amusing as ever, Psych Season
5 is just as good as the previous ones.
Usually by the time a show hits its fifth season, the creative
staff
starts to run out of juice and the show starts to decline a bit. Though this season did stumble a bit at the
beginning, it managed to quickly pick itself back up.
It was quickly up to speed and the show's
trademark fast-paced banter filled with semi-obscure pop references
were just
as clever as ever and the mysteries were still fun.
Shawn: Gus, don't be the second drummer from 38 Special.
Shawn Spencer (James Roday) is a psychic who works for the
police force. At least, that's what the
cops think. He really doesn't have any
supernatural abilities, he's just very observant. Trained
from a young age by his police
officer father Henry (Corbin Bernsen), Shawn notices things that the
rest of us
don't and is able to piece together seemingly disparate clues in ways
that make
it seem like he has psychic powers. Together
with his best friend Gus (Dulé Hill, West
Wing) Shawn has started a psychic detective agency, Psych. Yes, it's a pun on the now dated slang word
that meant "fooled you" something that Shawn finds amusing and Gus
finds
surprising that no one has called them on it yet.
Shawn: [Talking about Easter when he was young] You buried
my Easter eggs five feet underground.
Henry: And, I left loose dirt to indicate a fresh dig.
Shawn: Yeah, under a camouflage tarp covered with bricks and broken
glass.
Henry: That was the giveaway!
In season five, Shawn and Gus are still constantly trying to
find work with the Santa Barbara Police Department along side officers
Carlton
Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) aka "Lassie" and his partner Juliet O'Hara
(Maggie
Lawson). The twist this year is that
Shawn's father has come out of retirement and works part time at the
SBPD. He's in charge of hiring consultants
like
Psych, and he knows that his son isn't psychic at all, which leads to a
bit of
tension between father and son.
Carlton:
This is one damn fine cup of cider.
In this season there are a few so-so episodes, mainly at the
beginning, but they are more than made up for by the rest of the season
that
fires on all cylinders. One of the
standout episodes is Dual Spires, a Twin Peaks parody/homage
that managed to poke fun at the ground-breaking show without being mean
or
insulting. Featuring guest stars (and
leads in Twin Peaks) Sherilyn Fenn and
Sheryl Lee the episode, where Shawn and Gus stumble upon a murder of
Paula
Merral (an anagram of Laura Palmer) in
an out of the way town, was a lot of fun for an old Twin Peaks fan like
myself. Spotting all of the references
and in-jokes was great, but the episode captured the odd feeling of the
original quite well.
Shawn: Dude, do you know they make silent window shades?
Some woman in Washington
invented them back in the early '90s.
Gus: Since when is the sound of opening and closing shades
so disruptive that it needs to be alleviated?
Shawn: Why do you have to hate on other people's crimes of
innovation?
Other highlights include the Fast and Furious take
off, Shawn
and Gus in Drag (Racing), and One,
Maybe Two, Ways Out where Shawn and Gus have to help a sexy spy on
the run
(Franka Potente, The Bourne Identity).
Another great episode is Shawn 2.0 where a
suave psychological profiler Declan Rand (Nestor
Carbonell, Lost) who is just as
observant as Shawn manages to beat him to the punch a number of times,
and is pursuing
Juliette.
Shawn: I was way, way
off on the whole bomb thing. It turns out Juan here was just counting
down the minutes
to tonight's season premiere of True
Blood.
Gus: Sookie.
Moving Henry to the SBPD was a logical move, and one that
made the scripts flow a little better, but it didn't totally work. It's easy to see why they did it, Shawn no
longer has to say "Hey, let's go borrow my father's power tools" in
order to
work Henry (a great supporting actor) into the show.
Unfortunately the situation feels a bit
contrived (though not as much as the earlier ways they'd work him in)
and he
often doesn't approve Shawn for jobs that he ends up solving. I just thought that even Henry would be a bit
more supportive of Shawn's business.
The DVD:
The 16 episodes that comprise season five come on 4
DVD. The case matches the cases for the
previous seasons, which is nice. (I hate
when they change styles half way through.)
Audio:
The program comes with a DD 5.1 surround audio track that
fits the show well. There are a couple
of loud and impressive audio scenes through the show, but mainly it's
dialog
based and that comes through loud and clear.
Video:
The anamorphic 1.78:1 image looks pretty good overall.
The colors are bright and the lines are
tight. The level of detail is fine. There is a bit of mosquito noise through the
show, especially in areas where one color is predominant.
While it was evident, it never became
distracting.
Extras:
Like the previous seasons, this set has a good amount of
bonus material. There are deleted scenes
to just about every episode and audio, video, and podcast commentary
tracks to
many as well. In addition there's a gag
reel that's pretty amusing and some funny montages.
Final Thoughts:
Most series, even good ones, start to decline in quality by
the fifth season. That's not the case
with Psych. Though this season does
start out with a couple of average episodes, as a whole it is just as
fun and entertaining
as ever. Highly Recommended.
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