This Was the Worst Episode of 'Psych'

Psych is a nearly perfect television show. It’s formulaic, funny, unique, and almost ended at the perfect moment (it should have ended after the seventh season). Eighth season aside, there's not much to complain about. The show often took successful big swings—there were episodes dedicated to Hitchcock films, John Hughes films, and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Guest stars on the show include Keenan Thompson, John Cena, Curt Smith, Ed Lover, George Takei, Tony Hale, Jaleel White, Cary Elwes, and Christine Baranski, to name a few. 

But amid all of this greatness, there was one mid-series episode that just barely survives a rewatch. When I’m feeling particularly ungenerous, it gets an automatic skip. This great offending episode? Season 4, Episode 14, titled “Think Tank.”

The title is pretty literal; Shawn (James Roday Rodriguez) and Gus (Dulé Hill) are both recruited by a think tank. They are tasked with drumming up ways to prevent a potential assassination of a prominent figure—the head of the think tank says he’s trying to prevent the murder of a corporate CEO receiving death threats. Among a batch of top minds from all over the world, Shawn’s goofball tendencies make the pair stand out, and as often happens in the show, Shawn is nearly revealed to be a fraud. 

The rest of the assembled think tank group have laughable credentials, even for a show like Psych. When KGB hit woman Svetlana Progoyovic (Sandra Hess), former Secret Service agent Fred Collins Boyd (Miguel Ferrer), and crime statistician Alan Zenuk (Alex Zahara), are all gathered together in the sterile offices of think tank leader Walter Snowden (Bruce Davison), it’s hard not to roll your eyes. The dialogue isn’t credible, and the sets appear cheaper than usual. 

Beyond that, the plot—which comes with two twisty little turns—is hard to follow on the first watch. It becomes easy to lose track of who the bad guy is as we chase Shawn and Gus through their usual hijinks. That might be fun on a high-brow, high-budget HBO show, but it is significantly less enjoyable for a show that has a hidden pineapple in each episode. 

As Shawn struggles to impress the think tank, the show is also labors to capture its typical magic. At one point, Shawn just repeats: “It’s psychicness. It’s psychicness.” The line fails to impress the gathered experts, and it also fails to impress the audience. 

For all of the very big swings that the show takes and connects on, this one felt like too big of a concept for Psych to successfully inhabit. “Think Tank” ultimately needed a bit more consideration.