Review – Psych: Bollywood Homicide

Charming Raj (Sendhil Ramamurthy) believes he is cursed after a series of girlfriends fall victim to accidents just as he decides to commit to the relationship. When his latest girlfriend is almost crushed by a runaway truck, Raj turns himself in to the police, and Lassiter hands him off to Shawn.

Although Lassiter and Shawn have always tried to show each other up, Lassiter watching through one-way glass while Shawn bumbled his way through questioning Raj seemed especially mean. O’Hara mentions this to Lassiter as well. His behavior didn’t seem to jibe with previous episodes where he and Shawn have shown a growing respect.

Skeptical of curses, of course, Shawn initially performs a bogus cleansing ritual. The next night, though, while performing a choreographed dance, Raj’s girlfriend falls through a loose tile in the floor, and only Shawn’s quick action saves her from a worse fall. Lassiter arrests Raj’s brother Jay, who choreographed the dance, and Raj turns against Shawn, believing him a fraud. Against the odds, Shawn talks Raj into letting him stay on the case.

This was another of Psych‘s theme episodes, complete with Indian music and lyrics over the opening credits. I knew the idea was to poke fun at Bollywood movies, but some of the humor fell flat for me, particularly Shawn calling Raj “Roger” several times after he’d been told “Raj” is short for “Rajesh.” There’s also a typical dinner scene with Shawn and Gus unable to handle the heat of Indian food. Shawn’s girlfriend Abigail (Rachael Leigh Cook) was along and showed the proper manners, but I had the feeling if this weren’t a TV comedy, Shawn and Gus might be thrown out of the house.

Shawn deduces that someone very close to Raj is causing the accidents—someone close enough to know precisely when Raj is committed to a relationship and to strike only then. You’d think this deduction would narrow things, but I liked that it left Jay, Jay’s girlfriend, Raj’s mother, and even Raj himself as suspects. Raj claims to be backing out to save his girlfriends’ lives, but up until the end, it’s plausible he’s simply afraid of commitment and staged the accidents as excuses to break up.

The episode climaxes with Raj pretending to get engaged to O’Hara, which draws out the culprit. In the process, I was a bit surprised to learn that Abigail hardly knew about Shawn’s past and present feelings for Juliet. I had assumed Shawn told Abigail about Juliet as a way of putting all the cards on the table, showing he was ready to commit to Abigail. It also fits Shawn’s character, though, that he’s not ready. That tension should make for a bigger, better payoff later.