Psych - 100 Clues

For the show's 100th episode, Psych reunites several members of the cast of Clue in a whodunit that goes back to Shawn (James Roday) and Gus' (Dulé Hill) third case with the Santa Barbara Police involving aging rock star Billy Lips (Steve Valentine) convicted of manslaughter. A little more than five years later, Shawn is invited to a super-secret party at a Santa Barbara mansion originally owned by a famous chocolatier. With Juliet (Maggie Lawson) unable to attend, Shawn and Gus are greeted by the mysterious benefactor's butler (Garrett Morris) who offers no clues at his employer's identity.

One by one other guests begin arriving including a former groupie with a speech impediment (Lesley Ann Warren), a biographer (Christopher Lloyd), Billy Lipps' drunk of a former manager Highway Harry (Martin Mull), and their host - Billy Lipps himself, recently released after serving five years for manslaughter. When Highway Harry drops dead before Lipps even finishes his welcome toast, Shawn accuses the lone missing guest, Lipps' former guitar player, as the culprit. With the all cell phones stolen, the phones in the mansion knocked out by the storm, and a live face-eating panther prowling the grounds, the group find themselves trapped in the mansion with the killer.


Splitting up into pairs, the six begin searching the mansion unsuccessfully for the killer. Things pick up when Juliet and Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) show up looking for a missing person whose blood-stained car was found down the road from the mansion, but by the time the group gets around to telling Lassie about the murder the body has miraculously disappeared. However, they do find the body of their would-be killer and Lassie's missing person (who turn out to be the same guy and whose dead body has been stuffed in the walk-in freezer).

After talking with the various suspects Shawn realizes everyone invited to the party testified to put their host behind bars and begins to suspect Lipps might be their killer, but an attempt on Lipps' life makes the fake psychic detective reconsider. The arrival of a shot and mauled Curt Smith and the return of a very much alive Harry only confuse matters further. In true Clue fashion the group runs around the house as Shawn offers various theories to the killings before finally unmasking the true killer.

As with the film, multiple endings to the episode were shot, giving the audience the chance to vote for their choice of killer. USA Network has released both the East Coast and West Coast chosen endings. The reunion of the Clue stars (minus Tim Curry, who has already appeared on the show), and all the nods to the original film (including dedicating the episode to the late Madeline Khan) work better than the two endings. Psych has the same problem Hawaii Five-0 ran into when they did the stunt earlier this season - despite naming a different killer the endings we see are nearly identical as the episodes didn't have enough time or budget to film distinctly different endings to the episodes. I'm hoping that when the season is finally released on DVD we'll see all the endings and at least one or two will feel significantly different than the others (as was the case with the film).