Season 2, Episode 2
65 Million Years Off
"Oh, good, you're all here! Get ready to be shocked!... Can we get the sheet off the dead guy, please?"
Directed by Tim Matheson
Written by Steve Franks
Psych has been having a month-long dry streak, and Lassiter has been on a roll lately: he’s singlehandedly solved nine cases in a row, without any outside help. However, a recent case has been testing his limits. A John Doe has washed up on a beach, wearing work clothing and suffering a series of huge puncture wounds in the pattern of a bite mark. Lassiter suggests a boating accident or a whale, but Shawn notes that the wounds match something very unusual: the bite radius of a Tyrannosaurus rex. While everyone brushes off Shawn’s theory as insane, and Lassiter is determined to continue his winning streak, Shawn’s theory gains new merit when the John Doe is identified as Dr. Christopher Franzen – a paleontologist…Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Shawn tries and fails to remember the name of a film with Sigourney Weaver, Shia LaBeouf, and holes. He's referring to the 2003 film adaption of Holes, in which Dulé Hill played Sam.Shawn: It's like that movie, the one with Sigourney Weaver... the one with the holes and Shia LaBeouf.
Gus: They had holes in Shia LaBeouf? - Apathetic Teacher: One of Dr. Franzen's students claims him to be this – constantly late, exhausted, and disheveled. In reality, it was because he was so dedicated to his course that he was digging for fossils in the middle of the night and came hom to teach with barely any sleep in between.
- Bad with the Bone: A rare accidental case of this happened when Walker killed Dr. Franzen. He knocked Franzen into the hole he was digging, where the teeth on the Tyrannosaurus skull impaled him, resulting in what looked like a huge bite mark.
- Blatant Lies: While digging in the Walker farm, Gus asks how Shawn's progress is going. Shawn is taking a break, and claims to be digging while he's lying down. Cue an annoyed Gus pitching his shovel at him.
- Brick Joke: When Shawn and Gus first try interviewing the farmer Mr. Walker, he slams the door in their face before they can get much information out of him. Shawn gets annoyed, knocks again, and introduces himself as Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Near the end of the episode, when Shawn shows up to summarize what happened, the farmer is very confused as to what "Lenny" is up to.
- Chekhov's Gun: Shawn tries using Gus' old papier-mâché dinosaur head to demonstrate that the marks on the body match a tyrannosaurus bite. Chief Vicks shuts him down before he can succeed, though.
- Cold Open: This one has a young Gus walking into his classroom with his half of a group project with Shawn: a life-sized papier-mâché Tyrannosaurus head that took him three months to make. Shawn's half of the project took him about an hour: he taped a plastic dinosaur to a racecar. Gus is not pleased.
- Condescending Compassion: Lassiter pokes Shawn with some of this when Lassiter's streak of success means a dry spell in cases for Psych.
- Crazy-Prepared: Shawn brings Henry's leaf blower to the dig site, which makes it easier for him and Gus to unearth the skull.
- Death Glare: Lassiter's ninth consecutive closed case ends with him simply glaring at the suspect until he confesses.
- Disposing of a Body: Walker's motivation for killing Dr. Franzen is based around his troubles with this trope. He'd killed his partner Deacon twenty years before, and buried the body on his land… only he didn't remember exactly where he buried the remains. Twenty years later, Dr. Franzen wanted to hunt for fossils on the property. Walker refused, fearing he might find Deacon's body. Dr. Franzen, desperate for a major find, went ahead anyway, and found a large, well-preserved Tyrannosaurus after some time… but Walker, fearful of the attention this might bring to his property, killed Dr. Franzen and disposed of his body at sea.
- Failed a Spot Check: On the way into Walker Farms, Gus and Shawn both completely miss a buckshot-riddled sign reading "Private Property – Trespassers Will be Shot!"
- Gilligan Cut: Shawn grimly notes that he and Gus will probably have to go through a local university's paleontology department's entire collection to see if anything there might have been used as a murder weapon, and that the process will probably take hours. Cut to the two of them staring at the entire collection, a small handful of fossils on a table.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: A Running Gag in this episode has Gus working hard on something, only for Shawn to take credit for it or overshadow his achievement with ease.
- Hillbilly Horrors: This episode has some overtones of this, with the shotgun-toting farmer in a remote area who killed his business partner and then killed a paleontologist to cover it up.
- Lame Comeback: Shawn is caught so flatfooted by how successful Lassiter's been over the last month that he can't even think of a good insult in response to his smug attitude. "Where did you get that suit, the toilet store?" is apparently the best he can think of.
- Master of Unlocking: Gus gets to demonstrate his skills again on a lock on Dr. Franzen's shed.
- Noodle Incident: Some time before the episode starts, Shawn apparently requisitioned a Segway for "department business".
- Papa Wolf: When Henry learns that Shawn and Gus are up at the Walker farm with its trigger-happy farmer, he tears up there at top speed.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: Not deliberately, but Shawn learns why Walker is so eager to keep everyone away from his farm when Henry calls, and explains he remembered where he heard of the farm before: twenty years prior, Walker's partner Deacon went missing. Walker claimed he'd returned to England, but since no evidence was ever found, the case went cold… until Dr. Franzen started snooping around the property for totally unrelated reasons.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: While poking around Walker Farms, where Dr. Franzen was apparently spending a lot of time, Shawn and Gus hear someone shooting at them from the woods nearby. They sprint back to the Blueberry at top speed, and drive off as fast as possible.
- Shout-Out: A few:
- Shawn quotes Anchorman when flails for a comeback to Lassiter.
- The body washing ashore with a dinosaur bite mark prompts a few Jurassic Park references.
- Shawn notes the multiple holes all over Walker Farms remind him of the film version of "Holes". Also doubles as an Actor Allusion with Gus' actor having played the deceased onion salesman Sam in the movie.
- Shawn suggests questioning Walker by pretending to be George and Lennie from Of Mice and Men.
- Shawn mistakes Trilobites for Cenobites.
- Staging an Intervention: Chief Vicks is so weirded out by Shawn's assertion that the bite mark on the victim came from a Tyrannosaurus that she sends the department psychologist over to have a "talk" with Shawn, along with Henry and Gus. It ends with Shawn charming and impressing the psychologist, and Vicks and Lassiter showing up to admit that there might be some truth to his theory after all. A second one is held at the end of the episode, but this time, it's for Henry's control issues.
- "X" Marks the Spot: Inverted on Dr. Franzen's map. The "X" marks are where he didn't find anything – here, it's "O" that marks the spot.
