Dimwitted courier Donnie Lieberman (Ernie Grunwald) wakes up hungover, with sketchy memories of the night before. All he knows for sure is he’s lost a vial of the extremely rare and deadly Thornburg virus. Instead of alerting the police or CDC, Donnie decides to hire Shawn and Gus to find the virus before anyone else finds out.
Zap2it.com’s listing for this episode read, “Shawn and Gus try to recover a deadly pathogen before it can be released,” which, in itself, sounded like the plot for a show like 24 or CSI. A good deal of humor, not too much, kept the tone right for Psych.
I enjoyed seeing Shawn and Gus do a fair amount of traditional detective work helping Donnie piece together the events of the night before. He met a woman in a bar, invited her back to his hotel room, and believed he had sex with her. Shawn and Gus deduced she was a prostitute hired to steal the virus from Donnie. Unfortunately for her, she became curious about what she stole and fell victim to the Thornburg virus.
From there, Shawn and Gus determined the outbreak was a scheme for more government funding by the doctor who came up with a cure for Thornburg’s. Having figured that out, they still had to find the doctor among dozens of quarantined people. The stakes were raised when, during a confrontation with the doctor, Juliet cut her finger, possibly contracting Thornburg’s herself. Facing the possibility he might lose Juliet, Shawn decided to profess his true feelings.
Contrary to my concerns going into the episode, in the end I was disappointed it wasn’t more serious. I could have guessed Juliet would be free of Thornburg’s, but Gus revealed this to Shawn just as he was working up the courage to tell Juliet how he felt. Shawn tried to say how he felt anyway, but fell short. He still gave a believably heartfelt speech, but there’s no telling what he would have said had he believed Juliet was going to die.
As the show pulled back from this serious premise, I felt the tension between Shawn and Juliet might be dragging on too long. I’d like to see it pay off by the end of the season, but the writers may be worried “the show will be over” if Shawn and Juliet become a couple.
