Dr. Emile Herschel is the founder, namesake and head doctor of the Herschel House recovery home, where Lassiter is a patient in Psych 2: Lassie Come Home. Shawn and Gus first meet him when they visit the home's equine therapy stables in order to find the injured figure that Lassiter saw sneak in there the previous night. When they accidentally reveal their motivations for trespassing to Herschel, he dismisses Lassiter's claim as pure fiction and warns the duo not to feed into his drug-induced fantasies.
Shawn and Gus run into Herschel again when they confront Wilkerson, who supposedly suffers from a catatonic coma but was seen running down the hallway by Lassiter. As Gus is tickling Wilkerson's foot to make him give up the act, Herschel spots the duo and angrily throws them out. Shawn and Gus now fear that Herschel is sedating patients like Wilkerson in order to hide the blackmailing scheme that Devon Tileback fell victim to. Herschel becomes especially suspicious when our duo actually find proof of Lassiter's sighting in the form of a bag full of bloody bandages and Gus remembers that Herschel was the doctor on duty that night. However, it later turns out that it is in fact head nurse Dolores O'Riordan who is running the scheme, and that Herschel doesn't even know about it.
Trivia[]
- According to Dolores, Herschel is an incredible doctor and humanitarian who took on Lassiter's case at his own expense.
- The doctor's name is a reference to actor Emile Hirsch.
- At one point Shawn says "Maybe the good doctor isn't so good." This is a reference to Richard Schiff's role on the TV series The Good Doctor.