Season 1, Episode 2
Spellingg Bee
Shawn walks into a diner and notices a beautiful blonde sitting at the bar, and in his place, where he had already put his drink and started a caterpillar thing. Instead of booting her out, he starts chatting her up, sometimes playing her part as well. He finds out her name is Juliet O’Hara, but before things get too far a shady-looking character comes in, and Juliet suddenly gets defensive. Shawn realizes that she’s a cop and the shady dude is a suspect. Moments later, Lassiter and half a dozen others charge in and nail the guy.
It’s 1987, and Gus is a contestant in a spelling bee. As he attempts to spell "Aggiornamento", he hesitates after the second g, and looks out into the audience to Shawn who is mouthing the letter O. Gus takes Shawn's suggestion, and loses the spelling bee.
In the present, Gus is watching a replay of the national spelling bee finals, much to Shawn’s utter disbelief. Shawn mocks Gus’ nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the history and contestants, but things suddenly get interesting when Shawn notices something strange about the inhaler the current contestant is using. The contestant collapsed at the microphone earlier that day. Shortly after the Chief calls, and brings Shawn in on the investigation into the sabotage of the contestant's inhaler.
The Chief is insistent that the case be solved as soon as possible as the contest will end in two days, and the suspects will be spread across the western United States.
At the spelling bee, Gus is in heaven while Shawn is bored stupid, until the spellmaster, Cavanaugh, suddenly falls to his death from his perch in the back. Now, things are definitely more interesting! The police show up, and Juliet is with them. She’s Lassiter’s new partner since his girlfriend was transferred for some strange reason. They, of course, come to the wrong conclusion, that it was a heart attack, and while Lassie goes to shmoose the press, Shawn and Gus decide to snoop around the spellmaster’s lair.
There’s lots of food, and Shawn finds “1953” written on the rule book. Shawn notes that rules aren’t numbered that way, and there are only 200 contestants. Gus suddenly notices a strange smell with his nose, "the Super Sniffer". While Shawn suggests he’d be better off naming his butt, Gus locates a box of Chinese food. This can only mean one thing, poison!
As Lassiter is explaining what happened Shawn suddenly goes into psychic mode, he shouts the names of various Chinese foods, and declares Cavanaugh's death to be murder.
- Shawn: “Oh, did I just say all that out loud?”
In order to confirm that there actually is poison, Shawn, unfortunately, needs to talk to his dad. Henry is as warm and helpful as ever, but eventually agrees to help if Shawn finishes the dog house he started building back in eighth grade, which Henry kept for some strange reason. Eventually, he gets frustrated, remembering how building the thing turned out last time, and rides home, but is run off the road by a gray van.The next day, Gus is at some café where the spelling bee is, for some reason, being shown in a public area, when he notices one of the contestants has an inhaler from a Dr. Zavin, which is strange since there is no Dr. Zavin. Shawn is delighted and goes to build a doghouse. Henry, shockingly, decides to help.
- Shawn: This is weird.
By morning it’s done, and Shawn has his results. It was poison, high grade stuff. Shawn goes to tell the chief but she’s content to wait for the toxicology report, by which time all the suspects will have gone home. The chief is skeptical, so Shawn decides to look in the spellmaster’s room again, stealing the new spellmaster’s keys.
The bee has resumed, and Shawn is caught having to simultaneously examine the room, while giving nerdy little kids words to spell out, from the spellmaster’s grocery list, much to Gus’ outrage, but since he wouldn’t help with words, tough. He does find something interesting; a set of indentations in the carpet where Cavanaugh had a camera with a telescopic lens mounted on a tripod, apparently to keep tabs on someone, the Czech. Later, Gus explains that Cavanaugh had a way of finding rule breakers. They also find a program that has all the words for each round, which would have been immensely helpful earlier. As Gus looks them over, he notices that the words of this round are winning words from past bees, scaring Shawn in the process. He does find something interesting, the next word is from 1953, and it’s the Czech’s son, Jiri. Shawn realizes that’s who Cavanaugh was going to disqualify.
The bee ends with Jiri as the winner, and Shawn goes up on the stage has another episode and announces that he knows who killed Cavanaugh. He asks Jiri to spell a word, but Jiri gets all deer-eyed, since he can’t actually spell anything without his dad helping him, through pulses in his inhaler. Cavanaugh was going to expose them, so the Czech put something in his food, knowing he wouldn’t stop the bee until it was too late.Juliet steps up to support him, since she had some of the food analyzed, bright young thing that she is. She actually renders Shawn speechless. Father and son are carted off and Shawn…is chased around for admitting he deliberately gave Gus the wrong letter at that spelling bee.
Tropes:
- All Work vs. All Play: As much as Gus wanted to keep competing in spelling bees, this was Shawn's motivation for making his friend spell the wrong work all those years ago. From his viewpoint, competing in them would mean being just another overly competitive drone who's forgotten how to have fun.
- Berserk Button: Even after all these years, Shawn’s admission that he sabotaged Gus’ chance at the spelling bee leads to a merry chase.
- Blatant Lies: When Shawn denies that checking the food for poison is for a case, and actually for a friend.
- Brick Joke: The spelling bee Gus was in when they were kids at the beginning of the episode, at the end it turns out Shawn actually knew the right spelling and deliberately gave Gus the wrong letter.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Jiri and his father were using an electrified inhaler to send signals to the former during the spelling bee whilst the latter gave the answers. When Cavanaugh was about to oust them for their dishonesty, it lead to him being the victim of the week. His death lead to a chain reaction where Shawn and Gus got involved. And despite the Czech's best efforts to off Shawn, he and Jiri are ultimately discovered and arrested for their troubles.
- Mundane Made Awesome: “I am going to build a doghouse!”
- Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: To stall for time, Shawn starts giving spelling words that are pretty obviously from his grocery list because he gives the brand name Mitchum (and tries to apply Pretentious Pronunciation to it.)
- Papa Wolf: First sentence: this is very serious poison. Second sentence: I want you to drop this case.
- Serious Business: The spelling bee. Not only does it being jeopardized cause Gus to be far more gung-ho about cracking the case than usual, but the guilty party was willing to commit multiple murders to make sure his son wins.
- Shadow Archetype: Invoked. At the end of the day, Shawn points out to Gus that if he hadn't failed his spelling bee years ago, he might've ended up just as overly competitive as Jiri and his father.
- Take That!: “Even Dan Quayle could spell that!”
- This Is My Chair: Shawn meets Jules for the first time when she sits in his seat at a restaurant.
- You Didn't Ask: This is Henry's justification for why he didn't help Shawn build the dog house sooner, despite being willing to help now. For Shawn, this is cold comfort for the fact he could've had a dog all those years ago if his father had offered help instead of letting his son give up.
