The supposed head of security for Richard Branson-like billionaire Austin Bonaventure offers Shawn and Gus $8,500 a day to join a focus group tasked with averting assassination threats against Bonaventure. The other group members are a former U.S. Secret Service agent (Miguel Ferrer), a Russian former assassin (Sandra Hess), and a risk assessment expert. As friendly as he’s become with Lassiter, O’Hara, and Chief Vick, Shawn struggles to convince these relative strangers of his psychic prowess, and Gus doesn’t do much to help him keep up the act.
Gus implored Shawn to call Henry for help, to contribute an actual plan instead of trying to get by on his usual charm. Shawn didn’t call Henry, but after checking in with Lassiter, he realized the head of security was an impostor, a man actually out to kill Bonaventure–whom he held responsible for his wife’s death. I was somewhat surprised Shawn didn’t catch on to the impostor sooner, but then I was surprised at this twist, myself. Bruce Davison played the impostor, and he brings an earnest quality to all his roles.
After a lot of stalling, Shawn did manage to help Lassiter and O’Hara catch the impostor at a conference where Bonaventure was speaking. Cleverly, the impostor was working with another focus group member to assassinate Bonaventure, and that member’s identity was a bigger surprise. This episode clearly intended to point out that, despite his powers of observation, Shawn isn’t fit to be a cop or work security. It was a good reminder, but I don’t have much tolerance for stalling.
At times this season, Chief Vick has seemed quite exasperated when Shawn’s shenanigans don’t produce results. In this episode, she expressed to Bonaventure the SBPD’s embarrassment while Shawn wasted his security team’s time. At the end of the episode, she offered Henry the job of basically keeping Shawn on-task. Nodding nicely to how their relationship has matured, Henry turned down the job. Henry already unofficially reminds Shawn of the consequences of his actions. The show would suffer if he did it in an official capacity.
To sum up, working security, Shawn was as far out of his element as he’s ever been. I wouldn’t want to see him take too many jobs like this, but I did find this episode notable for Henry’s decision not to keep a closer eye on Shawn than he already does.
