Looking out of the window

‘Psych’ is back to its roots with this one. Funny lines galore, crisp editing and a fast paced storyline. It’s a throwback to the hay days of Season 2 in some ways, where characters simply had fun jumping from one procedural to the next and the emotional stuff didn’t seem to get in the way.

‘The Devil’s in the Details… and the Upstairs Bedroom’ is the latest in line of Psych’s homages to popular culture and its the cult movie, ‘The Exorcist’ which makes for fodder this time. Gus (Dule Hill)  and a reluctant, skeptic Shawn (James Roday) investigate a case of demonic posession at a Catholic university for their former Sunday School teacher, Father Weley played by Ray Wise.

This episode wins for showcasing one of the best guest star performances of all time. Ray Wise who played the slick and charming Devil himself in(the brilliant at first and then got really weird) ‘Reaper’, plays a man of God with the same panache and smoothness. His complete conviction in his beliefs is wonderfully balanced by his easy nature. A moment in case, where he jokes about how he likes to start every exorcism with a bit of humour.

The bit with Henry (Corbin Bernson) getting obsessed with Shawn’s Xbox was funny enough. The banter between Shawn and Gus was in full form with a full-fledged cat fight thrown into the mix. Since I haven’t seen ‘The Exorcist’, I am not sure how good or bad it was in spoofing it. But independent of that,the whole gig was very cleverly done, complete with the whole ‘tounges’ and ’spiderwalking’ cliches of posession. There were many other singular funny moments in the show like the running jingle joke, and the  digs at FaceBook. It should probably be weird that one episode makes  so many unconnected references like talking about ‘Run Lola Run’ and ‘When Harry met Sally’ in a take on ‘The Exorcist’, but ‘Psych’ always manges to do it successfully.