Season 1, Episode 5
9 Lives
The episode begins with a flashback to 1985. Shawn asks Henry to arrest "The Cereal People" because the prize is missing from his box of Fruity Puffs. Henry lectures Shawn on how should try looking at things from a different perspective. He gives Shawn another box of cereal, flips it upside-down, and extracts a ring without having to eat another box.
Back in the present day, Gus says he's tired after all the work they've been doing, and would like to take it easy for a while. Shawn agrees, but then reveals that he's been leading Gus to a crime scene. A dead body was just discovered by a phone company repairman.
Shawn talks his way past the cop securing the crime scene, Buzz, on the pretense of bringing Lassiter coffee. Lassiter mentions to Juliet that this looks like a suicide. Shawn notices that the dead man had a steak marinating in the fridge and had left the door unlocked, deducing that someone who was about to commit suicide wouldn't have done those things. Shawn fakes a vision of another person in the room after spotting a oil smudge on the carpet. Lassiter insists that this was a suicide, and that there are no witnesses for Shawn to talk to. Shawn insists there was one witness: the victim's cat!
Shawn and Gus leave the scene with the cat in Shawn's arms. Gus thinks that there wasn't a crime. Shawn eventually admits that it might be a suicide... before asking how Gus would explain the second body they just found.
At the second crime scene, the victim is lying dead in her car, another apparent suicide. Shawn points out that someone who was about to commit suicide would not have gone to pick up their dry cleaning first. After Lassiter dismisses Shawn, he quietly tells Juliet to check out the dry cleaning.
While in car, Shawn notices a newspaper article about the second victim. She'd just won a big role in a play, making it more unlikely she'd kill herself. At the police station, Buzz asks Lassiter for advice about his upcoming wedding night, but leaves when Lassiter expresses his disgust that Buzz would ask him that sort of question. Shawn stages a psychic episode to bring the article to the attention of the police. Lassiter still isn't sold, but the chief seems convinced. Shawn insists that the police should stop waiting for another "suicide", and start looking for a serial killer.
Back at the Psych office, Shawn attempts to work out the connection between all the recent deaths, but there aren't any. Shawn flashes back to his father's advice on "Turning things upside-down to make them right side up", and realizes that they need to talk to the brother/roommate of the first victim.
Gus and Shawn arrive at the apartment of the first victim. The victim's brother mentions that the first victim was a singer, and "going places", and Shawn grabs a phone bill before leaving. The phone bill shows lots of calls to a stress line, including the last call the victim made. Shawn goes to Juliet and Lassiter to get at the victim's phone records. Lassiter mentions that all the victims called the same stress line. Juliet tells Shawn that the connection between all the victims is their troubled nature, and that sometimes depressed people kill themselves. Lassiter decides to look into the stress line anyway, while Shawn points out to Gus that a helpline that has all its callers kill themselves is very suspicious.
Shawn bluffs his way into the offices of the stress line and sets up camp in a closet. While interacting with the phone volunteers, he notices a line worker on the telephone pole outside. He tells Gus to call the stress line and pretend to be depressed so he can see the volunteers in action. Gus thinks the goth volunteer Rory, who takes his call, is suspicious, as he seems to find the topic of suicide poetic. He wants to call the police, but Shawn points out that Rory is only guilty of bad poetry. Just then, the police enter the building.
Lassiter interrogates Rory. Shawn again notices the line worker outside the window and flashes back to the two times he's noticed him before, how he hid his face when Shawn walked by him, the cop saying that the guy at the first crime scene had been found by "the phone guy," and a sheet of paper in Shawn and Gus's closet that has the maintenance schedule on it. Lassiter orders for Rory to be hauled off by the cops. Gus is upset that Lassiter is going to get the credit for solving the case, and they aren't going to be paid. Shawn reveals that he knows Rory is innocent, and almost knows the identity of the real killer.
Outside Shawn sends Gus up a telephone pole, noticing the shape of the grease mark on Gus's shoe made by the spikes in the pole match the mark on the carpet of the first crime scene. Shawn then notices the shape of the spikes and flashes back to the apartment of the first victim and a key rack with the same spikes. Shawn reveals that he's now certain that the real killer was the first victim's brother, who used a phone tap to waylay calls to the stress line. Shawn takes the phone tap that the killer left at the pole and calls the last number dialed by the tap, which turns out to be Buzz's. Shawn notifies the Chief.
Gus, Shawn, and the cat race to Buzz's apartment, bursting in to find the killer pointing a gun at Buzz. The police follow close behind, and while everyone points guns at each other, Shawn lays everything out with minimal theatrics. The killer's brother really did kill himself, but the suicide sent his brother over the edge, as he's been killing people who he perceives as "weak", specifically the people who called the same hot-line as his brother. Buzz called because nobody would talk to him about his pre-wedding jitters. While the killer stares down Lassiter, the cat leaps from a bookshelf onto the killer and Lassiter tackles the killer. Shawn cuddles the cat before presenting it to Buzz as a wedding present.
Later at the Psych office, Gus and Shawn rehash Gus's complaints about his life that had been sprinkled throughout the episode. Gus resolves not to sweat the small stuff, but then discovers that the box of Fruity Puffs they are eating doesn't have a prize at the bottom. Gus asks Shawn if he opened the bottom of the box, and Shawn reveals a mood ring. Gus angrily leaves the office after sticking his finger in Shawn's bowl of cereal.
Tropes:
- Disproportionate Retribution: The killer targets people who use the suicide hotline for the crime of being "weak", even to the point of including McNab who simply called because he wanted someone to talk to about his pre-wedding jitters.
- Driven to Suicide: Bill Hiltonbook jumped off his apartment balcony after losing his fight with depression.
- Free Prize at the Bottom: The episode is bookended by stealing the prize out the bottom of a cereal box.
- Hanging Around: How Wes Hiltonbook was planning to make Buzz "kill himself".
- Ho Yay: Parodied in Shawn and Gus's visit to the apartment of the first "suicide."Shawn: There's a shower for two!
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Shawn spends most of the episode fawning over the cat he found at the first crime scene. McNab gets to keep the cat at the end.
- Mexican Standoff: The end-of-episode climax has one of these, with the cat attacking the killer and resolving it in a non-lethal fashion.
- Misplaced Retribution: The killer is upset about his brother committing suicide, so he begins serial killing people who call a suicide hotline for being "weak" out of some twisted sense of retribution.
- Never Suicide: A string of suicides seem to strike Santa Barbara. Shawn quickly figures the deaths are actually murders. However, the first of these was an actual suicide, which sent the killer off the deep end.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: "This guy. This man with his gun trained on you is not only a fine man with a strong Irish hairline, he is an exemplary public servant and arguably the finest detective mind in the lower, western Santa Barbara County area... over the age of thirty-five."
- Serial Killer: Wes Hiltonbook is one who kills people that call a stress hotline.
- Shout-Out: Shawn got the idea to write everything on a window from watching NUMB3RS.
- Write What You Know: In-universe one of the desk clerks at the call center is a goth who uses the depressed testimony of his callers as inspiration for his morbid poetry. Arguably unethical, but not illegal and not a sign that he's the killer.
