"Santa Barbarian Candidate" is the tenth episode of Season Seven. When the mayor dies in an apparent surfing accident, Shawn decides to run for the office.
Plot Summary[]
The Santa Barbara Mayor, Gavin Channing, is thanking everyone at the SBPD for keeping crime at an all time low. In the middle of the mayor's speech, Shawn interrupts him and begins praising himself. Shawn and Mayor Channing instantly hit it off, and he invites Shawn over for brunch at his beach house. He tries asking Juliet to tag along as his plus one (Gavin still thinks they're together), but Juliet declines, saying that Shawn's most recent childlike act shows that he hasn't changed. Instead, Shawn and Gus show up the next morning, but upon arrival, they learn that Mayor Channing is dead, his body having just washed up on the shore.
Woody determines that it must have been a surfing accident, but Shawn remembers from the surf report he heard on the radio that there were no waves at the time of Gavin's death. Something isn't adding up. Shawn goes to confront Gavin's right hand man, Jason Straub, at City Hall.
There, he also meets Gavin's de facto successor, Tom Swagerty, Head of the City Council. Swagerty is carrying an agenda for the next City Council meeting, and Shawn sees that a proposal to lift developmental restrictions on the Santa Barbara wetlands is one of the issues to be voted on. Shawn knows that Gavin was an environmentalist and was going to vote "no" on this ban lift, so he decides to pay a visit to the company who has an interest in the land should the development ban be lifted. Upon investigation, they discover that the real people behind the land development plan are from a company called "Argus Equities". Shawn remembers Swagerty wearing a shirt with an "Argus Equities" logo on the sleeve. He now thinks that it was Swagerty who had something to do with the mayor's death.
Shawn proposes this theory to Chief Vick, but she tells him that they need more than circumstantial evidence to go after Swagerty; therefore, Gavin's death will be ruled an accident. They only have four days to prove Swagerty's guilt before he takes office and likely uses his power to prevent anyone from looking into the case. Gus, who stole the bylaws from Gavin's office, reads that they can delay Swagerty's appointment if they can find someone to run against him and force an election. Shawn decides to take on this responsibility and announces his candidacy in front of City Hall — and in front of just one eager onlooker.
Gus takes on the role of Shawn's advisor, setting up a television interview for him and giving him advice on answering the tough questions. The interview goes poorly, as Shawn comes off looking like a clueless buffoon.
Woody gives Shawn a call at the Psych office and relays some interesting findings. First off, he notes that most surfers who are injured or killed at the "Vortex" (where Gavin's body was found in the ocean), have bits of rock and coral in their wounds; however Gavin's wounds were clean. Furthermore, he found gray hairs in Gavin's wetsuit that don't belong to him. Shawn knows that Swagerty has gray hair, so now he is extra certain he was the killer.
Straub enters the Psych office, overhears this theory, and is in agreement with it, telling Shawn and Gus that he also doesn't trust Swagerty. To their surprise, he offers to run Shawn's campaign for him, believing that he has enough appeal that he could actually win. But, he also adds that beating Swagerty may not be easy because of Swagerty's sad backstory - his fiancée Abby Sheldon died tragically last year when she fell down the stairs in her home. Straub suggests that Shawn up his game by showing up to the upcoming Founder's Gala with his beautiful girlfriend. Gus tries to tell Straub that Shawn and Juliet are no longer together, but Shawn stops him, determined that he can convince Juliet to play along for just for the day. Shawn also knows that the gala will be his opportunity to collect a hair sample from Swagerty in order to get a match on the hairs found on Gavin's body.
At the gala, Juliet makes it clear that she is only there because of work. Shawn manages to impress Juliet at the gala and she almost falls for him again, but catches herself. She runs away and Shawn chases after her. He apologizes to her for lying to her about being psychic all these years. Juliet appreciates his apology, but can't forgive him unless he does one thing: tell Chief Vick the truth about not being a psychic. Shawn says he's can't do it; his work for the SBPD has saved so many lives and put bad people behind bars. If he were to tell Chief Vick the truth, all of the good that he does would go away. Despite Shawn's plea, Juliet stays firm on her request. On his way out of the gala, Shawn is able to snag a grey hair from Swagerty's head to give to Woody to have tested. Woody tells Shawn and Gus that Swagerty's hair wasn't a match. Swagerty isn't their guy.
Before Shawn can bow out of the race for Mayor, he gets a visit from Straub, who tells him that he is actually leading in the polls. Shawn embraces his popularity with the people, but knows he needs to stay focused on solving the murder of former Mayor Channing. As a result, Shawn tells Gus to run smear ads against him so that he won't actually win the race for Mayor.
So, if Swagerty is innocent, who's their guy? Shawn flashes back and realizes that he's spotted several women wearing gifts from Gavin that he brought back on trips to Mexico. Shawn concludes that Gavin was cheating on his wife Renee, who just happens to have gray hair that she recently dyed. He confronts Renee, but she admits that she and Gavin had been living apart for some time, only staying together to look like the perfect couple in the public eye. She does confirm that she gave Gavin the $50,000 he needed to start an exploratory committee regarding the wetlands.
Shawn and Gus head back to Gavin's beach house to investigate further. When Shawn spots a missing bookend, he concludes that someone broke into the house to steal the money and used the bookend as a murder weapon. Therefore, the person must have had access to the house and it could have been someone like a plumber or a gardener. They narrow it down to the plumber, who is coincidentally named Mike Plummer. They head to his place and discover he has been killed. Clearly, he's not their guy. However, at Plummer's apartment, they find evidence that leads them to believe that Plummer was blackmailing Gavin because he found out Gavin was sleeping with Swagerty's fiancée Abby. Plummer has received two separate payments of $50,000 — the first payment being four days after Abby's death, with the other being the day after Gavin got the money from Renee.
Shawn now knows what happened and decides to let the cat out of the bag publicly at the City Council meeting. In front of everyone, Shawn explains that Abby was killed accidentally in Gavin's beach house, but Gavin didn't murder her - she accidentally fell down the stairs after they had a fight. Gavin didn't know what to do so he called the person who puts out all his fires - Straub. Straub moved Abby's body so no one would find out about her affair with Gavin. However, Plummer was there on business and just happened to snap some candid photos of the incident. Gavin paid Plummer what he thought was a one-time hush fee of $50,000. However, Plummer continued to demand more payments. Gavin was put in a situation where he had to come clean about Abby's death. But Straub, who orchestrated the coverup and didn't want to go down with Gavin, killed him and made it look like an accident by putting his body in a wetsuit and dumping him into the ocean. Straub knew that Swagerty was going to file a motion to reopen Abby's death, so he offered to help Shawn become mayor so that couldn't happen. When this failed, Straub killed Plummer, who was the only other person aware of the circumstances. Straub is now caught and Lassiter steps in to arrest him. Despite Juliet's distaste for Shawn pretending he is psychic to all of Santa Barbara, she appears impressed with Shawn's investigative work regardless.
The next day at the SBPD, Shawn is about to do exactly what Juliet asked him to do in order for her to forgive him. He marches into Chief Vick's office, ready to admit the truth about not being psychic. Juliet sees what Shawn's about to do for her and has second thoughts. In that moment, she recognizes that Shawn loves her so much that he would be willing to give it all up to get her back. She thought Shawn didn't initially agree to telling the Chief because he was being selfish. It turns out it's quite the opposite. Just before Shawn is going to come clean, Juliet barges in, and covers for Shawn before he can admit the truth to the Chief. Shawn doesn't understand why Juliet would stop him from doing the one thing she wanted him to do in order for her to forgive him. She explains why and forgives him for lying to her. And with that, Shawn thinks they are instantly back together. However, Juliet stresses the fact that she needs to take it slow, even though she does want to get back together with Shawn eventually. The episode ends with a picture of Shawn and bears the caption "Spencer for Mayor".
Trivia[]
- The title is seemingly a play on that of the 1962 Frank Sinatra psycho-political drama The Manchurian Candidate.
- Gus' line "I can fix that" could possibly be a reference to Dulé Hill's character Sam from the 2003 movie Holes, whose main line in the movie consisted of "I can fix that."
- Gus talks about how he could have been president and Shawn tells him that maybe he could be the president's aide and then calls him Charlie. This is referencing Dulé Hill's character on the series The West Wing where he played the president's body man, Charlie Young.
- The West Wing is later referenced again, when Shawn suggests that they need a candidate to run for mayor and music very similar to the theme of West Wing is played.
- The song Shawn and Juliet are dancing to at the gala is "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star.
- When Shawn is looking at the bank statement, the deposits are labeled "cheque" rather than the American "check".
- The picture of Shawn used in the damaging TV commercial and the poster shown at the end of the episode is the same picture that was used in TV/newspaper reports in S5E3 "Not Even Close... Encounters" (Shawn remarked then that he looked like K.D. Lang in the photo, while Henry quipped that he looked like Billie Jean King).
Gallery[]
The gallery for Santa Barbarian Candidate can be found here.
Digital Releases[]
