Recap / Psych S 05 E 015 Dead Bear Walking

Season 5, Episode 15

Dead Bear Walking

"Hello, bear! Hello polar bear! Would you like some more fish sandwiches?"

Directed by Andy Berman

Written by Andy Berman

Lassiter’s kid sister, Lauren, arrives to work with him one morning. It seems she’s a film student, there to film a police documentary. Shortly after her arrival, the Santa Barbara Zoo’s polar bear trainer, Jasper Zane, is found apparently mauled to death in the polar bear’s exhibit, and Psych and Lassiter take a trip to the zoo. While the case seems open-and-shut, Shawn notices the situation doesn’t quite add up, and decides the bear was framed. The real challenge will be figuring out who it was, how to keep the bear from being euthanized while everyone investigates, how to keep a group of protestors out of their hair, and how to get themselves to look as good as possible on camera…

Tropes:

• Alliterative Name: Lauren Lassiter, and the episode's real killer, Ritch Renaud.
• Bait-and-Switch: When Lassiter is about to interrogate the murder-victim's wife, it looks as though Gus is creepily sniffing Lauren next to him... then Shawn passes him some of his popcorn.
• Beary Friendly: The polar bear was trained well since she was a cub, and is very laid-back and friendly. She still scares the hell out of people, though, particularly Gus, and nobody’s willing to test her attitude.
• Big Brother Worship: Lauren has always been very impressed by her older brother’s impressive-on-paper career track, and even does a school project based around him. This particular pedestal she’s put him on is broken and rebuilt over the course of the episode.
• Big Eater: The bear is one. Shawn tries keeping her fed – temporarily – by pulling up to a fast food place and ordering 128 fish sandwiches. Later, he asks Henry about a 40-pound salmon he caught awhile back, but gets interrupted before he can follow up on it.
• Blatant Lies: Shawn claims he knows nothing about the bear’s whereabouts while hiding it at his dad’s house. Juliet sees right through it. It doesn’t help that Shawn left a huge pile of tartar sauce packets on the doorstep from the fish sandwiches they were feeding her.
• Brick Joke: The petting zoo that distracts Gus on the way into the zoo shows up again when he heads there after the bear escapes.
• The Comically Serious: The head of animal control joins Lassiter in not being amused by Shawn's antics.
  Cody Blair: All right, Mr. Spencer, with this evidence, I'm inclined to grant you your "stay of execution". Damn, now I'm saying it.
• Cuteness Proximity: As the crew walks into the zoo to investigate the body, Gus disappears off camera and Shawn has to pull him away from the path leading to the petting zoo.
• Dramatic Drop: Gus walks into the Psych office, pours himself a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, walks into the main room, and sees a live polar bear standing where his desk used to be. Cue one dropped bowl of cereal.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: At one point, Shawn keeps the bear in the Psych office using a fake “electric fence” made of wire. It works, but largely because it fools the fairly docile bear, and it’s pretty clear it could crush the fence with ease if it wanted. It terrifies Gus into pulling a Super Window Jump to get away from the bear.
• Insurance Fraud: Shawn and Gus suspect C. Lee Banting, the zoo director, of framing the bear for murder after he took out a large life insurance policy on the bear.
• Large Ham: Lassiter tends to be overly dramatic and hammy whenever Lauren’s camera is on him. Everyone else gets in on the action, too, after a while.
• Missed Him by That Much: While Lassiter and the police are searching for the bear in a neighborhood with lots of restaurants and dumpsters, Shawn, Gus, and the blueberry – towing a trailer with the bear inside – drive past in the background as Lassiter is talking to the searchers.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Lassiter definitely feels this way about his baby sister, but it's Shawn who enforces it when Gus starts hitting on her.
• Noodle Incident: Woody, for some reason, is concerned by the possibility that Lauren's film will be aired in the Philippines.
• The Pig-Pen: Shawn insists on viewing Sinclaire this way. It doesn't help that Sinclaire kind of proves him right.
  Sinclaire: Mind if I climb up on my soapbox?
  Shawn: I'd rather you climbed in one.
  Sinclaire: I showered yesterday.
  Shawn: That's the day before today.
• Property Line: The real reason Jasper was killed; his neighbor Renaud had a long-standing dispute with him over a two-foot difference in their property line, and the arguing went too far one night. Jasper strangled him, and dumped the body into the polar bear exhibit.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Cody Blair, the county director of animal control, wobbles on this a bit. He agrees to grant the bear a stay of execution after Shawn and Gus show him solid proof that the bear didn’t kill anyone… but it’s only a twelve-hour stay. Fortunately, that’s plenty of time.
• Soapbox Sadie: Macleod Sinclaire, a Straw Vegetarian and Granola Girl type who has long had issues with the polar bear being in the zoo, and with zoos in general. He tends to wobble between Animal Lover and Animal Wrongs Group, though that’s largely because nobody actually gets hurt by the (well-trained) bear, and while he kidnaps the bear from the zoo to keep it from being euthanized, he doesn’t harm anyone to do so, and takes pains to keep it away from anyone else until he can release it.
• This Bear Was Framed: The Trope Namer episode. Someone murdered the bear’s trainer, then dumped him into the exhibit.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After Lassiter spent the whole episode failing to solve the case and looking bad during the filming of his sister’s documentary, Shawn purposely flubs his summation so that Lassiter can look good and arrest the real killer.
• Waving Signs Around: The zoo’s polar bear has long been a point of contention between the zoo and certain groups of people. When Psych and the police first arrive at the zoo, they find a large group of protestors demanding the bear go free.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Normally, Lassiter's guess that Shawn is making faces at him from behind the interrogation room mirror would have been spot on, but Shawn was distracted by flashing back to the evidence necessary to exonerate the victim's fiancée.