Season 6, Episode 11
Heeeeere's Lassie!
"Lassiter, are you crazy?!"
Directed by James Roday Rodriguez
Written by Tim Meltreger and Todd Harthan
When Lassiter moves into Apartment 536 (located at the supposedly haunted "Prospect Gardens" condominium) after the previous tenant was found dead, he hires Shawn and Gus to investigate the strange events that begin going on there. However, in this episode-long Homage to The Shining, Shawn and Gus slowly realize that Lassiter's own psychoses might be a greater threat than any possible haunting...
Tropes:
- Affectionate Parody: The episode as a whole is one to The Shining.
- Anti-Climax: Shawn realizing that the elderly Creepy Twins Lassiter thought he was being haunted with were just two elderly female twins living down the hall from him in Apartment 541.
- Ax-Crazy: Lassiter is rendered this due to being drugged with amyl nitrate in his new apartment.
- Axe Before Entering: Spoofed when Lassiter tries to hack down the door to the laundry room Gus is hiding in but can only make a small hole, so he says:
- Lassiter: You know, this might take a while so why don't you help a brother out and open the door?
- Bathos: The entire episode, being that it's a Psych take on The Shining.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just as it looks like an Ax-Crazy Lassiter is about to hurt Gus in the laundry room, Shawn tackles him and pins him to the ground until the police arrive.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Amy may look like a sweet and adorable nurse, but she's actually a ruthless Serial Killer who murders anyone who checks into Apartment 536 since she developed a Stalker with a Crush for its previous two occupants and she didn't want to risk a professional detective like Lassiter looking into the previous deaths.
- Black Comedy: Everything involving a murderous Lassiter chasing down Gus with intent to kill.
- Body In A Bread Box: Lloyd the landlord's corpse is found in a clothes dryer.
- Brick Joke: Amy keeps asking Lloyd the building manager and landlord to replace the crummy-looking awning outside the apartment building. It eventually gets replaced with a stronger and more modern tarp design, and it's all that saves her life when she falls onto it at the end of the episode.
- Call-Back:
- Lassiter's saber and monocle from both Season 1's "Weekend Warriors" and Season 5's "The Polarizing Express" make a return here.
- Frank O'Hara (from “In For A Penny”) appears in this episode after Shawn left him messages to meet with him, which were because he was thinking about proposing to Juliet during "Neil Simon's Lover's Retreat" and he wanted Frank's blessing.
- Shawn tried to excuse looking through the deceased Mark Warafigt’s fridge by claiming his watch just got stuck in it and he was trying to get free. That actually happened (more or less) in the preceding episode “Indiana Shawn and the Temple of the Kinda Crappy, Rusty Old Dagger.”
- Chekhov's Gun: Lassiter's Civil War saber.
- Catapult Nightmare: Lassiter awakens from his Nightmare Sequence by leaping up with a panicked shout.
- Comically Missing the Point: After Lassiter shows interest in the apartment where a dead body has been found, Jules incredulously gestures to the shoes of the man hanging from the ceiling. Lassie misunderstands.Lassiter: What? I can tell just looking at them they’re not my size.
- Continuity Nod: When he's trying to make footstep sounds to make it sound like he's leaving Gus alone during their chase, Lassiter starts tap dancing (which he learned in part from Gus in "Feet Don't Kill Me Now").
- Cool Old Guy: Frank O'Hara, Juliet's globe-trotting adventurer father (as played by William Shatner).
- Creepy Child: Parodied with Tony Farrow, who despite creepily riding around the apartment complex on his Big Wheel while making the "twitchy finger" motion from The Shining, isn't actually involved in the supposed haunting at all.
- Creepy Twins: The elderly two women in Apartment 541, who are largely used as an allusion to the creepy little girls from The Shining.
- Easily Forgiven: Gus forgives Lassiter for nearly killing him surprisingly quickly.
- Epic Fail: An Ax-Crazy Lassiter attempts to break through a thick oak door with his Civil War saber to get to Gus on the other side a la Jack Torrance in The Shining...but due to how a saber isn't designed like a fire ax, Lassiter's only able to gouge out a tiny hole through the door (with Lassiter then musing that it's going to take him forever to get through the door that way) before he just kicks the door in.
- Freudian Excuse: Amy apparently has severe "mommy issues" and "daddy issues", and that's not even getting into how she was apparently left at the altar twice.
- Gaslighting: Amy's "haunting" of Apartment 536 consists of both this and drug-induced Sanity Slippage.
- Global Ignorance: When Frank O'Hara claims he took so long to get back to Santa Barbara to meet with Shawn since he was in Tanzania when the latter called him, Shawn mistakes him for having been in Australia (he thought he was talking about Tasmania) instead of Africa. Gus actually recognizes Tanzania, though, and even asks if Frank climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (with Shawn responding by asking him to stop making up words).
- Green Aesop: Parodied by Gus, who complains to Amy that her stuffing Lloyd's body into the industrial dryer in the basement after she killed him and just letting it go for a while was very energy inefficient.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Amy tries to shove Shawn and Gus off the top of Prospect Gardens at the end of the episode. However, they manage to get out of the way in time, and so she just falls onto the awning out in front of the building.
- Homage: There's numerous shots and references to The Shining throughout the episode.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: During their talk with Frank O'Hara, Gus tries to stand up for Shawn by claiming Shawn's the kind guy he'd be happy to see his daughter bring home with her...provided "he was mostly black, God fearing, and she wasn't really my daughter."
- Improvised Weapon: Gus grabs a short wooden broom out of a barrel (which included a sharpened plastic shovel) to defend himself with as Lassiter chases him.
- Jump Scare:
- Lassiter gets one courtesy of his stacked living room chairs, and gets another during his Nightmare Sequence.
- Gus gets one from Lassiter during their chase through The Maze in the basement.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: A variant - Amy was trying to drive Lassiter crazy so she could kill him since she knew that as a professional and experienced police officer, he would likely investigate the previous deaths in the apartment and could find enough evidence to link her to the previous "suicides."
- Laser-Guided Karma: Amy's first kill was when she pushed Apartment 536's first tenant out of his window to make it look like a suicide. She tries to push both Shawn and Gus off the top of Prospect Gardens near the end of the episode, but they dive out of the way in time and so she falls to the ground (though she survives since she lands on the building's new awning).
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: According to Shawn, something weird happens to him and Gus “once every seven days.”
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Amy arranged for each of Apartment 536's previous two occupants to die in ambiguous enough ways so that it could look like they committed suicide from the ghost stories associated with the building.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Lassiter's creepy Nightmare Sequence is likely just the result of inhaling amyl nitrate along with stress and not getting haunted by the building's long-deceased architect...but where's the fun in that?
- Mood Whiplash: All of Ax-Crazy Lassiter chasing after Gus in the episode, which manages the neat trick of waving back and forth from being genuinely frightening and gut-bustingly hilarious. A good example of this is during the basement portion of the chase - At first, it's genuinely creepy to have Lassiter cheerily whistle to himself as he chases down a terrified Gus, but it quickly becomes hysterical since Lassie starts swearing and tripping over loads of junk (and twisting his ankle in the process) while Gus picks out a wooden broom for self-defense.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hilariously downplayed by Lassiter after he becomes lucid again and realizes he tried to kill Gus.Lassiter: (sheepishly) ...Sorry I tried to kill you with my sword, Guster.
Gus: (casually shrugs as if to say "Eh, we're cool") - Never Suicide: Zigzagged. The previous two tenants of the apartment were revealed to have been killed by Amy. However, the murder-suicide of the original owner of the building and his family, which kicked off the legend of Apartment 536 being cursed, appears to involve a legitimate suicide.
- Nightmare Sequence: Lassie gets one while in his new apartment. It starts out as an Erotic Dream concerning Marlowe in the shower, but Lassie instead finds a grimy and hairy hobo version of himself in the mirror who then tries to strangle him. He seemingly wakes up from the nightmare...only to have a Bedmate Reveal of Hobo!Lassiter next to him, and he then wakes up for real after that.
- Not So Above It All: After the police uncover the sordid history of Lassie's new apartment building and the multiple suicides, even Henry legitimately thinks the place might actually be haunted.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Lassiter after returning back to his apartment after hearing voices in the hallway to see all of his living room chairs stacked on the table.
- Gus after Lassie post Sanity Slippage takes his Civil War saber off its stand with full intent to kill him. Relatedly, Shawn has a subtle one when he gets an emergency text from Gus during Lassiter's chase of the latter.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Shawn and Gus lampshade this when they realize how freaked out Lassiter really is by this supposed haunting when he goes to them for help investigating it.
- When Shawn and Gus act as their usual annoying selves in Lassie's house, he doesn't linger on their antics, instead desperately pleading for them to take the "haunting" seriously. This causes them to drop the act and they promise to get to the bottom of it.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Zig-zagged with Frank O'Hara, Juliet's dad that appears at the end of the episode and who Shawn was hoping to "bank" getting his approval to marry Juliet in the future. Frank admits that he's not a big fan of Shawn since he wanted her to marry someone that wasn't like himself (namely, someone who wouldn't lie to her), but he never makes a firm statement for/against Shawn and Juliet's relationship.
- Rain of Blood: It pours animal blood into Lassiter's bathroom light fixture during Shawn and Gus' sleepover.
- Red Herring:
- The yuppie couple living next door to Lassiter, who Shawn and Gus initially think is haunting him so that they could expand their property for their upcoming child. They later learn that the couple recently lost their jobs and couldn't have afforded Lassiter's apartment even if he hadn't outbid them, meaning they have no motive.
- And as alluded to above, despite being pretty creepy and clearly being meant to serve as a Danny Torrance Expy, their son Tony isn't connected to the hauntings at Lassiter's apartment at all.
- The creepy backstory given to Prospect Gardens, where the building's architect went through Sanity Slippage and imitated a murder-suicide with himself and his wife, followed by two other tenants supposedly committing suicide there. The former is revealed to just be a bit of history while the latter two are Amy's victims, who used the spooky history of Prospect Gardens to help stop people from investigating their deaths further.
- The yuppie couple living next door to Lassiter, who Shawn and Gus initially think is haunting him so that they could expand their property for their upcoming child. They later learn that the couple recently lost their jobs and couldn't have afforded Lassiter's apartment even if he hadn't outbid them, meaning they have no motive.
- Running Gag:
- Blink and you'll miss it, but there's pineapple slices on the ham found in Lassiter's welcome basket.
- Shawn once again gives Gus a new fake name.
- Amy uses the labradoodle running joke against both Shawn and Gus in order to get a head start in the chase at the wrap-up.
- Shawn and Gus struggling to run after the culprit (here, Amy) since they're both really out of shape.
- Sanity Slippage: Lassiter falls into this due to a nasty mix of paranoia, sleep deprivation, and getting drugged with amyl nitrate.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Gus when Lassiter is trying to hack down the door to the laundry room.
- Shout-Out: As a whole episode reference, there are too many to list for The Shining, of course, but there are also tons of others.
- The chairs in Lassiter's living room get stacked on the table like in Poltergeist. Lassiter is also later shown staring into his TV that has a Snowy Screen of Death in a clear allusion to Carol-Anne from the aforementioned film.
- When Lassiter comes to Shawn and Gus for help with his apartment, Gus first guesses that his issues are due to “robot cockroaches.”
- Shawn and Gus both wear personalized Ghostbusters uniforms to check out Lassiter's new apartment, complete with Shawn wearing Egon's outfit from the first film.
- Ed and Rose-Marie Farrow (the yuppie couple living next door to Lassiter) previously ran a lingerie store called "Frisky Business". Furthermore, Ed Farrow is shown acting out a part in a play about Charlemagne when Shawn and Gus investigate them.
- Speaking of the Farrows, Rose-Marie is a noticeably pregnant young brunette woman introduced wearing a short white dress.
- Amy's faux-Disney Villain Death off the rooftop at the end of the episode is shot in a similar way to the famous fall at the end of Vertigo.
- Frank O'Hara's adventures as alluded to at the end of the episode are quite Indiana Jones-esque.
- Caretaker Lloyd's claim that the room itself is responsible for the deaths, rather than a ghost, is reminiscent of 1408, another Stephen King story made into an acclaimed movie.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: "Ave Maria" plays over Amy's slow-motion fall off of Prospect Gardens onto the awning.
- That Came Out Wrong: Lassiter first says that Shawn & Gus are staying over for a sleepover. After hearing himself aloud, Lassiter corrects it to “official police business.”
- Too Dumb to Live: While he does actually live and it's admittedly both relatively minor and justified due to Gus panicking at the time, it was still pretty stupid of him to pick a short wooden broom as an Improvised Weapon against Lassiter during their chase when there was a sharpened and tough-looking plastic shovel literally right next to it.
- This possibly alludes to The Three Little Pigs story that Lassie quotes during his rampage. Gus unwisely chooses a weapon that is made of straw and stick(s): both materials of the first two houses in the fable that the Wolf blows down.
- Variations on a Theme Song: A poorly-recorded swing version of "I know you know", played over grainy footage of Lassiter's 7-year-old neighbor rolling around the halls on a tricycle.
- Villainous Breakdown: Amy quickly goes through one at the end of the episode after Shawn and Gus corner her.
- Wham Line: When searching around Lloyd's apartment (which is full of stuff he stole from his tenants), Gus briefly notes an envelope addressed to Amy that he skims over and claims it's a paycheck. However, Shawn later takes a closer look at it...Shawn: We thought that Lloyd had stolen one of Amy's paychecks. But upon further inspection it's not a paycheck.
Gus: ...It's a bill. - Wham Shot: Lloyd's corpse being discovered in the laundry room dryer, showing that it wasn't him that was Gaslighting Lassiter.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To The Shining, naturally.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Both subverted and Played for Laughs with Lassiter during his chase of Gus, who (weakly) claims he's hurt his ankle really badly and needs help...before lucidly grumbling that he might have actually broken it and is then shown limping throughout the rest of the chase.
- Yandere: Amy developed a nasty case of this for both of Apartment 536's two previous tenants.
