- Title: Psych – Shawn Rescues Darth Vader
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After an exta-long layoff Psych finally returns for Season Six. “Shawn Rescues Darth Vader” wouldn’t have been my choice for the series premiere (it’s a little lacking in the zaniness department at times), but it does provide one great scene between psychic detective Shawn Spencer (James Roday), Head Detective Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson), and a lie detector. Not only must Shawn answer truthfully about his psychic abiities but his consternation at the entire preceding forces him to blurt out the depths of his feelings for Juliet (Maggie Lawson) in front of the entire cast.
The show begins with a sequence of Shawn near expertly crashing a party in a diplomat’s home. The character’s goofiness and lack of focus rears its ugly head later once he’s found his target, but the early moments of this episode (including Shawn’s escape) felt very un-Psych to me.
Shawn crashes a party to steal back a kid’s vintage Star Wars action figure and stumbles on a much bigger crime involving the death of a diplomat’s (Malcolm McDowell) assistant. If it gets off to a somewhat shaky start, eventually the show reestablishes its rhytym, like the conversation between Shawn and Gus and two children about Star Wars that almost comes to blows.
Don’t get me wrong I still enjoyed myself, but had this been the season’s third of fourth episode I might have liked it a little more. As a season premiere, however, (especially after nearly a full year layoff) the episode felt flat in a few places. One interesting note, the flashback scene is saved for the end of the episode, which is a nice twist allowing us to see Shawn practice a skill without first showing us how he learned it.