"Bollywood Homicide" is the sixth episode of Season Four. A man needs Shawn and Gus's help to lift a curse on him that seems to put all of his girlfriends in mortal danger.
Plot Summary[]
In 1989, Shawn is at the kitchen table making a Valentine's Day card. Henry comes home from work helps Shawn with the card and encourages him to give it to the girl. When Henry asks Shawn who the girl is, he replies, "Mrs. Phillips".
In the present, Rajesh Singh is waiting in an alley to meet his girlfriend Mina, a dancer in a local Bollywood production, who he has been secretly dating. She sneaks outside on a break from the show, but is nearly killed when a runaway truck narrowly misses her. A distraught Raj goes to the Santa Barbara Police Station, where he confesses to not only hurting Mina, but all of the women he has loved. He claims he's cursed.
Shawn and Gus take the case, thinking it will be an easy one since there is no such thing as curses. Along with Raj, they go to the theater where Raj tells them all that has befallen his ex-girlfriends. After each incident he breaks up with them for their own protection. He tried to stay single, but he met Mina and fell in love. Lassiter and Juliet are at the crime scene, and tell them that the truck driver swears he put the safety blocks around the tires but that he has been written up for violations before. To the cops, this looks like an accident. Shawn and Gus go into the theater and talk to Raj's brother Jawaharlal "Jay" Singh, the choreographer of the show. He's very busy, since he's just changed the routine, but he stops to tell them that he doesn't believe his brother is cursed. However, he knows Raj believes in it and in Shawn. So Jay asks Shawn to talk sense into Raj, so he can have some normalcy when he gets married next month.
Shawn and Gus take Raj to Henry's for a 'ceremony' to remove the curse. All they have to do is convince Raj the curse has been lifted, and their work is done. When the ceremony is over, Raj rushes to the theater, free to be with Mina. As a thank you, he invites Shawn and Gus to that night's performance, where Shawn notices the trap door in the stage has been tampered with - and Mina is dancing right over it. He rushes to the stage just in time to catch her as she falls. Raj thinks he's still cursed, but Shawn and Juliet examine the trap door and find the screws were replaced with plastic ones. It was sabotaged by someone who knew only Mina would be dancing right over it.
Shawn, Gus and Abigail go to Raj's house where he's having dinner with his grandmother, Rani, Jay and Jay's fiancée, Sita. Sita offers to postpone the wedding, but Rani assures her everything will work out. Shawn and Gus learn Rani didn't like any of Raj's girlfriends. Back at the police station, Juliet reviews a tape of the incident, which leads Lassiter to show up at Raj's house and arrest Jay. Jay was the one who changed the choreography and Juliet found a rental agreement for the truck in his apartment.
At the police station, Raj comforts Sita as Shawn and Gus arrive. They tell him someone is clearly behind this but if that's true, Raj counters, how do they explain what happened to his past girlfriends? Shawn and Gus then question the women and realize that they were targeted just as things got serious with Raj. So they form a plan to lure the attacker out, using Juliet as bait. She poses as a lost love of Raj's, who he's reconnected with. At the Holi festival, Raj announces they are engaged. The plan works as Juliet is held at knifepoint by the true culprit - Sita. After she became engaged to Jay, she fell in love with Raj. Since leaving Jay for Raj wasn't an option - Raj would never betray Jay - she did everything she could to delay the wedding and then sabotaged all of Raj's relationships. Juliet is able to turn the tables on Sita, and then adds assaulting a police officer to the charges as she takes her away in handcuffs.
Trivia[]
- The title is derived from Hollywood Homicide, a 2003 action comedy film starring Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett.
- The opening credits are written in Hindi, the most commonly spoken language in India, and the theme song is sung in Hindi as well.
- At dinner in Raj's house Gus admits that he's "one-quarter Jamaican", which explains why Shawn has asked him in prior episodes to speak in a Jamaican accent.
- A pineapple appears as a lamp at Raj's home, where it sits behind his grandmother at dinner.
- Sendhil Ramamurthy (Rajesh 'Raj' Singh) and Jay Chandrasekhar (Jawaharlal 'Jay' Singh and also the episode's director) are cousins.
References[]
The list of references to pop culture and other media from this episode can be found here.
Gallery[]
The gallery for Bollywood Homicide can be found here.
Digital Releases[]
