Recap / Psych S 05 E 014 The Polarizing Express

Season 5, Episode 14

The Polarizing Express

"Look, you don't get it. You're supposed to go on a journey of self-discovery, you boob. Now let's do this, because you got me wearing a dance belt up in here, son!"

Directed by James Roday Rodriguez

Written by Saladin K. Patterson and James Roday Rodriguez

Shawn’s looking to have a very bad Christmas this year. He was recently caught on camera sneaking into the office of notorious criminal Sergei Czarsky to look for evidence, and the whole case has been thrown out of court as a result. Henry’s been fired, Shawn is on suspension, and with Internal Affairs breathing down their necks, everyone’s job is in jeopardy. While Shawn tries to laugh it off as usual, he falls asleep and has an odd, detailed dream with his Superego/conscience showing him how everyone’s lives would have been different if he had never returned to Santa Barbara...

Tropes:

• The Atoner: Shawn wakes up with a new admiration for the people around him, and spends the rest of the episode busting his ass to make things better for everyone.
• Christmas Episode: The third in the series, with the same Variations on a Theme Song as the first two.
• The Conscience: Tony Cox is the physical manifestation of Shawn’s Superego and conscience, and serves as a sort of spirit guide to his dream of the world where he never came back to Santa Barbara.
• Crusading Widow: Juan Lava. His fiancée refused to cow to Czarsky’s demands to use her restaurant as a front for his actions, or pay for his "protection". In retaliation, Czarsky burned the place to the ground, killing her inside. Lava intends to murder Czarsky in revenge.
• Denser and Wackier: Shawn’s dreams of the alternate timeline. His more grounded view of his father living in squalor in the beginning horrified him, so he deliberately made things silly and over-the-top (but with a basis in what he believes would have happened) to cheer himself up.
• Despair Event Horizon: Henry dove headfirst over it in the world where Shawn never returned to Santa Barbara. He’s a hopeless mess who lives in squalor until he can muster up the courage to call Madeleine, who’s now married to a Moroccan prince.
• Dom Com: Shawn decides to watch Gus’ life in the alternate timeline in this format. It even has a theme song, and it’s called “Wilin’ with da’ Gusters”.
• Failed a Spot Check: It looks like Shawn did this in the beginning, missing the camera that caught him snooping through Czarsky’s office. Turns out he didn’t – it was filming him through a window across the street.
• Fake Better Alternate Timeline: The episode had Shawn being shown visions of what the world would be like if he'd never returned to Santa Barbara. The visions all contradict each other (one of them sees Lassie installed as a tyrant at the SBPD, another shows Gus with a family, and a third shows Jules as a successful cop in Miami), but Shawn's guide says that this is unimportant, and the real important thing is that Shawn himself would have been squandering his potential. The real lesson he was supposed to take away from the visions is that asking What If? is pointless.
• Funny Background Event: As Tony Cox introduces Shawn to his dream's It's a Wonderful Plot, we can see the Grinch stealing presents from a couple outside the Psych window.
• Henpecked Husband: Shawn sees Gus as one in the timeline where he never returned to Santa Barbara. He’s married to a woman who sees him as her personal wallet, she moved her cousin into their house without mentioning it until she was already in, she has a son who hates him, and he’s overall deeply unhappy and unappreciated.
• I Hate Past Me: During his dream, Shawn has an argument with his child self, who wants to keep being silly and immature. Shawn ends up pushing him away, recognizing it’s past time he grew up.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: With something of a twist. Shawn sees the concept coming a mile away, but Tony Cox – his guide – isn’t there to tell him how he’s made others’ lives better, he’s there to show how those others have made Shawn’s life better and how he doesn't appreciate them enough.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: Subverted, as a crowd is shamed into coming forward and telling the truth about the activities of a gang in their midst.
• Police Brutality: In the alternate timeline, Lassiter runs the SBDP in a grim and lockstep manner, with prison bars everywhere, “Frau Vick” as his personal megaphone-toting lackey, and he spends some time chewing out the assembled officers for bringing “only” 31% of their suspects in with gunshot wounds.
• Rabid Cop: Shawn’s vision of Juliet in the alternate timeline. Shawn never broke up Lassiter’s tryst with his former partner, the timing never worked out for Juliet’s transfer to Santa Barbara, and she’s thrown herself into her work, scaring the hell out of Shawn with her methods.
• The Real Heroes: The team steps up and inspires the neighborhood, who all finally overcome their fear of Czarsky and step forward to testify.
• Shame If Something Happened: How Czarsky keeps his criminal activities quiet, despite roping lots of locals into his scams and schemes. He’ll go through with it, too.
• Sinister Surveillance: Shawn was caught on camera going through Czarsky’s office. Except it wasn’t a security camera, it was a camera from across the street. The person behind the camera was keeping tabs on the office so he could kill Czarsky with a bomb.
• Smug Snake: Czarsky plays this part exceptionally well, always acting confident until he realizes the neighborhood has had enough of his criminal operations. Perfectly exemplified when he addresses Juan, whose wife died in a fire set by Czarsky.
  Czarsky: How's your wife? Not still smoking, I hope?
• Subverted Sitcom: When Tony Cox explains just how much Gus's life would have sucked without Shawn in his life, Shawn compares it to the premise of "a UPN sitcom from the mid-90's." He then gets the idea to portray it as though it were, watching it from studio audience bleachers. While the details are depressing (a wife who cheats on him constantly, makes decisions for him with no consideration for his needs and is a financial burden to him, with a kid who isn't even his that hates his guts), the blow is cushioned by a Funky soundtrack, a laugh-track, hokey writing and impromptu disco-dancing. While Tony Cox finds the whole thing mean on Shawn's part, Shawn is perfectly willing to do it to "Sitcom-Gus."
• Waking Non Sequitur: We get it, Gus doesn't.
  Shawn: Kareem! You took off your goggles.
  Gus: What?
  Shawn: What?
• Welcome to Corneria: Gus's (hypothetical) "son" only says "you ain't my daddy".
  Shawn: Is that all he says?
  Tony Cox: This season. Last year was "sniff this, unich!"
• Who Will Bell the Cat?: At the very end, Shawn gives a Rousing Speech to the people in the neighborhood where Czarsky operates, saying that Czarsky won’t be able to take revenge if enough people testify against him. Finally, a middle-aged woman comes forward, willing to testify… and she’s followed, one by one, by just about everyone in the neighborhood who has dirt on him.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: A Vigilante Man is trying to bomb a crime lord for destroying the former's business, killing his fiancee, and ruining his life, all as "punishment" for refusing to pay extortion money.