Season 6, Episode 06
Shawn, Interrupted
"You can't catch me, McElroy! I'm going to keep doing this! I'm going to keep driving around in circles, until I get hungry! And then I'm going to eat that fountain! I'm like the ice cream man, except I have barbiturates!"
Directed by Andrew Bernstein
Written by Kell Cahoon
Lassiter has personally cracked a high-profile murder case, sending billionaire Bernie Bethel into court with an airtight case for him killing his mistress, Sheila Hanson. However, the jury finds him not guilty for reasons of insanity. Bernie is sent to the West Haven Psychiatric Center, a cushy asylum for the wealthy. Outraged, Lassiter and Henry spearhead an operation to send Shawn and Gus into the asylum to prove Bernie is faking it. Shawn will be "suffering" from severe Narcissism, while Gus will be a new janitor. However, as Shawn uncovers more and more about Bernie, he starts to legitimately wonder about the billionaire's sanity, especially since it looks like someone else wants Bernie locked away for good. But who?... and why? And can Shawn find out before he becomes a permanent inmate?Tropes:
- Absurd Phobia: Bernie has a number of these. His fear of his own reflection is actually a surprisingly common real-world phenomenon. His crippling horror of saxophone music, not so much.
- Actor Allusion: An episode taking place in a mental institution, with Brad Dourif in a major role. Now that sounds familiar...
- Alliterative Name: Bernie Bethel.
- Attention Whore: Lassiter throws everyone a party for his apparently cracking the case at the beginning... he puts crime scene photos over the punch bowl, and hangs a big "CONGRATULATIONS" banner on the ceiling of his own home.
- Battleaxe Nurse: McElroy is a downplayed one; she's got no sense of humor and has no patience for Shawn's antics, but she's generally good at her job... except when she tampered with Bernie's medication.
- *Click* Hello: Daniel shows up at the end with one of these.
- Disability Alibi: Bernie has advanced arthritis in one hand, meaning he couldn't have strangled Sheila. The fact that this wasn't brought up in court hints that there's something nasty going on.
- Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: Played straight. The second floor of the asylum holds the equipment for electroshock therapy, and everyone there is terrified of it. It's portrayed as an extremely rare treatment that can wipe a person's memory.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Daniel, Bernie's younger brother, is a downplayed case. He didn't want to kill his brother, but he did want his money — so he pinned a murder on him, messed with his already mentally-frail state to protect himself, and was willing to wipe his memory as well. The fact that he explicitly states he didn't want to pull an Inheritance Murder on him, despite having no trouble killing several other people, still qualifies him for this.
- Fall Guy: Bernie was made to be one of these for his brother, the actual killer.
- Girl of the Week: Vivian is this for Gus.
- Insane Equals Violent: Zigzagged, but generally averted. Most people in the asylum are actually fairly harmless, but a couple are surprisingly quick to anger. Oddly invoked at one point, when several inmates start questioning Shawn's lack of sanity, and he lunges onto a golf cart and starts ranting while driving it around them.
- Insanity Defense: In the Cold Open, young Shawn pretends to have been suffering from temporary insanity as an excuse for not bringing in his quarterly project to school.
- Loon with a Heart of Gold: Several of the asylum's inmates. Vivian is the most helpful.
- Medication Tampering: Bernie actually seems to be getting better, right up until someone starts tampering with his medication and he suffers a relapse.
- Obfuscating Insanity: Lassiter is initially convinced that Bernie is doing this for his Insanity Defense, while Shawn has to do it to go undercover in the asylum. His cover story is that he's a clinical Narcissist, so he just has to play up his ego the entire time.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Played for Laughs. After Gus notices Vivian on camera at one point, he somehow travels from the monitoring station with Lassiter and Juliet to the monitored area in less than a second, offscreen. Even Lassiter and Juliet are baffled.
- Show Some Leg: Vivian pulls her shirt off and drags an instantly besotted orderly away, so Shawn and Gus can get Bernie out of the asylum.
- Split Personality: Shameless Fanservice Girl Vivian has a second personality in the form of a middle-aged, male Gulf War vet and plumber named Frank. Gus falls head-over-heels for Vivian, but actually manages to befriend "Frank", as well.
- Typecasting: Brad Dourif plays a mentally-ill man who apparently killed his mistress. Deliberately invoked, to make the twist that he's actually quite harmless hit that much harder.
