Thursday, January 30, 2014

Psych - Somebody's Got a Woody


When a murder suspect (Peter Stormare) breaks into the police station and takes Woody (Kurt Fuller) hostage, Trout (Anthony Michael Hall) organizes the troops for a siege and to prepare to take the morgue by force. Believing his abductor might actually be innocent, Woody convinces Shawn (James Roday) and Gus (DulĂ© Hill) to take the case and solve the murder of a recently-released con. And Juliet (Maggie Lawson), not willing to let Trout risk Woody's life needlessly, puts her own life in danger by pretending to be the coroner's daughter.

Although it provides plenty of cheap jokes, Trout's inclusion in the show continues to throw off the chemistry of the cast (thankfully for the final time). The man is more over-the-top gung-ho than even Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) in the show's early episodes (which makes you wonder why the pair aren't friends and how Trout ever earned the job of interim police chief). "Somebody's Got a Woody" has some fun moments, but it also has unnecessary callbacks to past gags (such as the half-beard disguises of Shawn and Gus) that mostly fall flat.

The mystery isn't all that complicated as the murder of several members of a halfway house obviously points to their Parole Officer (John Lacy), although it takes Shawn far longer than usual to come to that conclusion. It's nice for the show to give Woody his own episode, but extra scenes of the one-joke character aren't necessarily a good thing. As for Trout, I'm hardly going to miss him as the show never got around to finding a way to properly weave the character into the Psych family. Hopefully Chief Vick (Kirsten Nelson) is on her way back and things can get back to normal for the remainder of the show's final season.

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