Season 8, Episode 09
A Nightmare on State Street
"Now... tell me about your nightmares."
Directed by James Roday Rodriguez
Written by James Roday Rodriguez and Carlos Jacott
Between the recent dramatic changes in his life, and his unsatisfying breakup with Emmanuelle, Gus is under a lot of stress lately, manifesting in a series of extremely vivid nightmares where reality and fantasy tend to mix and mingle. He goes to a dream therapist named Dr. Ashford Simpson to try to alleviate the nightmares, but they just seem to get crazier and worse.Meanwhile, Psych has a new case: a cable guy named Zach Eikelberry is worried that his wife, an English teacher named Gretchen, is cheating on him with her coworker, Phys. Ed teacher Coach Bagg. Things get more complicated when Bagg is found brutally beaten to death. Did Eikelberry really snap, or did someone else kill Bagg for reasons of their own?... and will Gus’ nightmares stop intruding on his waking life long enough for Psych to solve the case?
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: At the very end, it turns out detective Brannigan beat Shawn and arrested the actual killer before Shawn could name him, stealing the case out from under him.
- All Just a Dream: Gus tends to find himself in various horrifying situations, before waking up and realizing it was all a nightmare. Near the end, it turns out the entire episode was a long dream of Gus’, but it reflected a very real case he and Shawn were working on, wobbling it between this and That Was Not a Dream.
- Anxiety Dreams: Gus’ dreams tend to go bad after Shawn leaves, reflecting his fears about Shawn leaving him.
- Barbell Beating: Coach Bagg was killed by being beaten to death with a large hand weight. Woody says the beating was pretty brutal.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Dr. Simpson's methods are...unorthodox, to say the least.
- Color Wash: The episode warps between several color palettes – even black-and-white at one point – and changes whenever Gus falls into a nightmare.
- Creepy Child: Several of them corner Gus in one of his nightmares.
- Devoured by the Horde: Several characters are killed this way in Gus’ nightmares by the recurring zombies.
- Dream Episode: Much of the episode revolves around Gus’ recurring nightmares.
- Episode of the Dead: Shawn and Gus realize they missed the annual “Zombie Walk”, and Shawn vows to attend next year. After this point, zombies keep popping up in Gus’ nightmares.
- Face-Revealing Turn: During one nightmare, Gus abruptly finds that Shawn has been turned into a zombie when hiding in the bathroom with him.
- The Gambling Addict: Bagg had a gambling problem, and got in deep enough that a mob goon finally caught him and killed him when it became obvious he couldn’t pay up.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Betsy Brannigan once again, as she manages to solve the case before Shawn.
- May–December Romance: Zach and Gretchen.
- Meaningful Name: The obnoxious Coach Derek Bagg – or D. Bagg.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Despite what Zach thought, Gretchen wasn’t cheating on him – her one-on-one sessions with Coach Bagg were her teaching him to read, as he was borderline illiterate.
- Nightmare Sequence: Several of them, usually patterned after famous horror films.
- Running Gag: Dr. Simpson likes to plug his new book anywhere he feels like.
- Shout-Out: Several of Gus’ nightmares are direct references to famous horror movies.
- While following Zach to a job, Gus finds himself pursued by a deranged family in a scary, remote house with several shots directly referencing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
- The title, and a scene involving Gus lost in the basement of a school while pursued by a mysterious figure, reference A Nightmare on Elm Street.
- While lost in the basement, Gus and Shawn are alerted to something creepy going on by a red rubber ball bouncing and rolling out of the darkness.
- Gus finds himself trapped in a spiderweb at one point, crying “Help me! Help me!” in a high voice, similar to the ending scene of The Fly (1958)
- One nightmare, in black-and-white, has Gus, Henry, Lassiter, and Brannigan trying to repel a horde of zombies breaking into the Psych office, in a parody of Night of the Living Dead (1968).
- Dr. Ashford Simpson. Played by Bruce Campbell. What more needs to be said?
