Season 8, Episode 3
Remake, AKA Cloudy… With a Chance of Improvement
"Objection! Irrelevant, and inadmissible!" "Sustained." "Really?"
Directed by Andy Berman
Written by Andy Berman
It’s 2006 again. Shawn and Juliet are still not a thing, Shawn’s relationships with Henry and Lassiter are still rocky at best, and Psych is still in its first year of business.While at the Santa Barbara courthouse, Shawn and Gus run into Sandra Panitch, a preschool teacher accused of murdering a local TV weatherman named Jackson Hale after a romantic fling. Shawn believes she’s innocent, but her insecure, disheveled lawyer Adam Hornstock isn’t doing much to help her case. Prosecutor Logan Phelps seems to have a guilty verdict in the bag. Psych jumps on the case as legal consultants, and despite a lack of legal training and knowledge, they soon discover a lot of shenanigans going on behind the scenes at Hale’s TV station.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because the entire episode is a remake of the Season 1 episode "Cloudy... With a Chance of Murder".
Tropes:
- Call-Forward: Woody, who wasn’t introduced until season 4, appears in a minor role as a witness on the stand.
- Casting Gag: The show recreates the Cold Open from the original episode, with Henry taking little Shawn to a courthouse and teaching him about how to work a jury… but since both actors playing “Young Shawn” had either aged out of the role or weren’t available (the flashback-to-Shawn’s-youth style openings had ended a couple seasons prior), the clock is wound back to 1981 and Shawn is still a baby.
- Celebrity Paradox: Gus quotes My Cousin Vinny which featured Ralph Macchio who plays Logan Phelps in the episode.
- Denser and Wackier: A bit more than the original episode, due to the show putting more emphasis on comedy as it went along.
- Groin Attack: While reporting on a charity event, Mr. Leonard gets punched between the legs for no apparent reason by a small child who comes out of nowhere.
- His Name Is...: Ruben Leonard protests his innocence, but adds that he can tell them who the real killer is… just before dropping dead from poison.
- Holding the Floor: After Shawn discovers the identity of the real killer, he tells Gus (who’s already at the courthouse) to stall the proceedings until he can get there. Gus launches into speeches from several famous courtroom films, confusing the judge.
- Imaginary Love Triangle: Morty killed Hale because he believed Connie was cheating on him with Hale. In reality, Hale’s tryst was with Sandra. When he discovered his mistake, Morty pinned the murder on Sandra and fled.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Gus and Shawn get in a brief debate about remakes, and grumble about how so many of them are so awful, particularly the ones that try to remake classics… but give some leeway to remakes of works that had promise, but failed to deliver. According to James Roday Rodriguez, they chose to remake this episode because they considered the original to be the weakest of the series.
- Poor Communication Kills: This was what lead to Jackson Hale's murder. Mortimer "Morty" Camp came to believe his wife Connie was having an affair with Hale due to her suspicious behavior. In reality, Connie was attending meetings with a marriage counselor which she didn't tell her husband about and by the time he discovered this it was too late.
- Really Gets Around: Jackson Hale apparently slept with just about anyone who was willing… and there were plenty who were willing.
- The Remake: The entire thing is a remake of an earlier episode.
- Reboot Snark: This entry is a straight remake of an earlier episode, except with Shawn and Gus roasting the remake of The Dukes of Hazzard (doubling as Actor Allusion, as the two specifically single out James Roday Rodriguez (Shawn)'s role in that film).
- Remake Cameo: Michael Eklund (Floor Manger) played Ruben in the original episode.
- Revised Ending: The original episode had the killer revealed to be Hale's receptionist, who killed him in a fit of passion. This time around, the killer is another newscaster, who thought his wife was cheating on him with Hale.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Husband-and-wife newscaster team Connie and Morty Camp play this up in front of the camera, but their marriage is seriously rocky behind the scenes.
- You Look Familiar: Deliberately invoked. Nearly every character in the episode is played by an actor who already appeared on the show in a different role.
