10 Best Psych Episodes

Psych might just be one of the best detective shows of all time because it is so different from other whodunnits. The series is part procedural because it does use the case-of-the-week format, but it’s also a comedy that found its niche in spoofing other pop culture phenomena. Many of its best episodes riffed on classics like Clue, The Shining, and even Twin Peaks.

Psych follows Shawn Spencer (James Roday Rodriguez) and Burton Guster (Dulé Hill) as they open a psychic detective agency as a way of explaining just how Shawn manages to be one step ahead of the police on their investigations. As a psychic consultant, he doesn’t have to be tied to the rules and regulations of the police force, despite being trained in them from a young age. It offers a great mix of mystery, comedy, and even found-family elements in its best episodes.

10 The Greatest Adventure in the History of Basic Cable

Season 3, Episode 4

This particular episode borrows aspects from franchises like Indiana Jones and adventures like The Goonies. It sees Shawn’s uncle (Steven Webber) come into town and drag him and Gus into a search for lost pirate gold.

Is the story a little far-fetched? Of course. So are many of Psych’s best episodes. The show manages to take outlandish plots and sprinkle them with a unique sense of humor, hidden pineapples, and a real sense of camaraderie.

Part of the fun here is that the episode also allows the audience to see that not all of Shawn’s family is as strict and straight-laced as his father is. Because of the nature of the show, the audience doesn’t get introduced to very much of Shawn’s extended family. His father gets most of the familial storylines. So, seeing that Shawn and his uncle have the same love for adventure makes for a fun ride.

9 Heeeeere's Lassie

Season 6, Episode 11

If there’s one thing that Psych became known for outside of its self-referential humor, it’s the show’s willingness to offer an homage to great movies and television shows in its later seasons. This season 6 episode acts as an homage to both The Shining and Ghostbusters, interestingly enough, as the episode uses a lot of visual gags from both movies.

Despite that, the episode isn’t a straight homage. The show also features its own storyline that does not really mirror the plot in either movie. Lassiter moves into a new condo, and when he does, strange things start happening, so Shawn and Gus decide to investigate. The episode involves Lassiter’s new and very eccentric neighbors instead of ghosts or mysterious entities, because, like every Psych episode, there is eventually a logical explanation for every hilarious mystery.

8 100 Clues

Season 7, Episode 5

For its 100th episode, Psych had to do something really special, like give an homage to one of the funniest murder mysteries of all time. Aptly named “100 Clues,” the episode is a send-up of the cult comedy classic Clue, which was inspired by the board game of the same name. The episode even brings in several actors from Clue who get to take on roles that make fun of their original parts in the movie.

Not only does the episode set its mystery in a mansion full of suspects, but it also has fun with multiple endings. The episode involves such fun aspects of the mystery as a panther on the loose, an aging rockstar, and a dead body hidden in a freezer. There’s a lot of moving parts in the episode, but they all manage to work.

7 Office Space

Season 7, Episode 11

“Office Space” might have one of the best crime scene openings in the entire series. When Gus shows up to ask Shawn for help in the middle of the night because he stumbled across a crime scene, Shawn decides to help him remove all evidence that he was ever there so he won’t become a suspect. What follows is the two of them making every single mistake in the book and then attempting to clean it all up before the detectives get there to investigate. That is worth watching the episode alone.

What “Office Space” does is allow the audience a glimpse into the world of Gus’s other job. Helping Shawn with the detective business is something he’s supposed to be doing in his spare time, but now, it might save him from being implicated in a crime he didn’t commit since the crime scene is at his place of employment and the victim is his boss. Shawn and Gus have to actually stay multiple steps ahead of the police to keep themselves out of hot water and catch the bad guy.

6 Shawn Takes A Shot In The Dark

Season 4, Episode 9

This is not the lightest of Psych episodes, and that’s part of what makes it so great. It’s rare for the show to get darker or more emotional, and when it does, Psych proves that its cast is more than capable of handling the dramatic as well as the comedic.

While investigating a crime, Shawn ends up getting shot. There’s a real sense of urgency when it comes to solving the crime since Shawn’s life is in danger. It also means that Shawn has to rely on everything his father has ever taught him in order to remain observant and put the pieces together even while he’s bleeding from a bullet wound.

Shawn might not want to work in law enforcement because of his own relationship with his father, but this episode makes it clear that he could have. He’s a rebel who likes to play outside the lines, but he knows how to do the work, even when it’s his own life on the line.

5 Dual Spires

Season 5, Episode 12

Emulating Twin Peaks in a show like Psych might sound like a tall order, but "Dual Spires" does it well. That’s partly because James Roday Rodriguez, who is a huge fan of Twin Peaks, is one of the writers for the episode. The episode is set in a small town where everything seems just a little out of the ordinary. Most of the cast of Twin Peaks even appears in the episode that homages their original show, and it makes for a great love letter to a landmark television series.

Shawn and Gus show up in the small town for a festival only to find that a teenage girl has drowned there - but she also appears to be the same girl who did in Santa Barbara several years earlier.

The only downside to this episode is that if the person watching isn’t at least passingly familiar with Twin Peaks, the episode’s jokes won’t make as much sense, and it won’t have the same feel as a usual episode. That might leave some Psych fans out of the loop, but it also might give them an excuse to start watching Twin Peaks.

4 Tuesday The 17th

Season 3, Episode 5

For fans who enjoy classic slashers like Halloween or Friday the 13th, this is the Psych episode for them. Because the episode takes place primarily at a summer camp that is being fixed up, the nods to Friday the 13th are the most obvious.

This is an episode in which Psych isn’t afraid to go too far. Parts of the hour are genuinely scary, shot from the point of view of the killer, while others are laugh-out-loud funny as the script takes a more meta approach to horror like Scream.

Shawn and Gus end up at a summer camp that was popular when they were kids when it’s being renovated to reopen. There are moments in which Shawn is ready to reminisce about the good old days, which means he is slightly distracted from the actual case of the episode, but that’s part of what makes it so fun.

3 American Duos

Season 2, Episode 1

While this episode acts as a spoof of the music competition series American Idol, it’s also not a direct analog to it. There are judges that fill particular personality types, and there is a serious competition to make it to the top, but there is also a potential murderer on the loose.

Shawn and Gus go undercover as contestants to figure out who is trying to hurt Tim Curry’s cranky judge. Not only does that mean they get up to some ridiculous backstage antics, but it also means they are primed to actually perform in the show. Juliet gets to be their choreographer and she takes it more seriously than the audience ever would have thought.

The final performance that Shawn and Gus do combines Michael Jackson and Tears for Fears, and it’s one of the reasons fans clamored for a musical episode for years.

2 Last Night Gus

Season 6, Episode 2

This season 6 episode of Psych is the show’s take on the same concept as The Hangover. Centering on the male characters of the show, the group wakes up after a hard night of partying with no knowledge of what happened the night before, including whether or not they might have killed someone. It gives the spotlight to characters like Woody the coroner and really plays to the comedic strengths of the cast. It even uses more slapstick than the usual episodes of the series do.

It also features one of Shawn’s best monologues as he has difficulty with his memory. He’s always been able to perfectly recall clues for cases, so he hates when his “psychic” abilities fail him:

I'm not having any psychic visions, flashbacks, or recreation flashbacks, or recreation flashbacks with new psychic visions. Imagine you weren't just a bland, gangly average human; that you could wink at someone and light up their world; that you could make a child think you have given them an ice cream cone without giving them the cone, and then watch them skip off into a beautiful meadow licking nothing but air!

A lot of fans consider “Late Night Gus” to be the best Psych episode. It remains the highest-rated episode of the series on IMDb. While it is the funniest episode of Psych, and certainly one of the best riffs on a movie the show has done, there is an episode, or more accurately, one storyline, that is even better.

1 The Yin And Yang Trilogy

Season 3, Season 4, And Season 5 Finales

Though so many of the best Psych episodes offer their own spin on familiar stories, these three episodes are really the best Psych has to offer. They might be homages to classic cat-and-mouse mysteries, but viewers don’t have to see every Hitchcock movie or read Agatha Christie novels to get the jokes.

The Yin and Yang trilogy consists of three separate Psych episodes, each a season-ender, that form a complete storyline, so it doesn’t seem entirely fair to separate them. Though the series is known for its standalone cases, Yin and Yang are the aliases of Psych's most memorable villains who crop up and threaten everything that Shawn holds dear because Shawn is seen as the only person intelligent enough to stop them. He’s given cryptic messages and clues as the criminals toy with him.

While the episodes are still funny, they also allow the cast to dig into their more dramatic sides and show that there can be as much pathos as there can be laughs in the show. The stakes are high as Juliet, Shawn’s mother, and Gus all end up in mortal danger during the storylines. It truly offers the best of Psych mysteries and talent.