"Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast" is the fifteenth and final episode of Season One. Shawn and Gus step into a real-life urban legend when they investigate a death suspiciously like the tale of "Scary Sherry", who met her untimely end at the now-haunted Wispy Sunny Pines mental institution.
Plot Summary[]
On Halloween night in 1987, Shawn and Gus are trick-or-treating with Henry. Afterwards, Henry is driving them to the police station to get their candy X-rayed, when someone stops the police car and tells them someone is jumping from a window at the Wispy Sunny Pines mental institution. At the scene, Henry rushes in and leaves Shawn and Gus in the car with instructions for them to keep their eyes closed. Shawn, of course, opens his eyes to see the woman fall out of the window, presumably to her death.
From that moment on, "Scary Sherry" has haunted the halls of the now abandoned facility. Exactly twenty years later, we find a girl, Doreen Harthan, being chased by what appears to be her ghost through the halls of Wispy Sunny Pines, falling through the same window to her death below.
Shawn and Gus return to the Psych office from a racquetball match to find Juliet there waiting for them. She is undercover as Mary Lou Baumgartner, national alumni vice parliamentarian of the Beta Kappa Theta sorority, of which Doreen was a pledge. The going theory is that Doreen killed herself in a copycat of Sherry's original suicide but Juliet thinks there is more to the story. She's sure Doreen's sorority sisters know more than they are letting on. She needs a psychic to read the sorority house because the girls think they are being haunted by Doreen's ghost.
Meanwhile, Lassiter has been temporarily reassigned to train a rookie detective from another department. It turns out this rookie, Goochberg, is the oldest rookie in department history. She took the test 14 times before she passed and, despite Lassiter's tutelage and her complete lack of experience, has her own set way of doing things. She also has a laundry list of medical problems, including not being able to hear out of one ear and hindered eyesight out of one eye.
At the sorority house, Shawn and Gus are having their best day ever "reading" Betty, Bianca and the rest of the sorority sisters in the middle of their pajama party. As the girls start to describe the creepy unexplainable things that happen there at night, scary things start to happen: the lights flicker on and off, a voice tells everyone to get out, the voice repeats the word "acnaib" several times, a vase falls of the mantle and breaks on the floor, a lamp falls over and breaks, and a ghost appears outside the window. When the lights finally come back on for good, Shawn and Gus are gone, running for their lives to Gus's car outside.
Gus, the quicker of the two, takes off, leaving Shawn to investigate. He finds evidence that the phenomenon was man-made with speakers, wires, and a flood light. Juliet says anyone could have done it but Alice Bundy, Doreen's best friend from childhood, definitely has a score to settle.
Back at the Psych office, Gus has been doing some investigating of his own. By all accounts, Doreen had too much to live for. She wouldn't have committed suicide. Plus, from a picture of the crime scene, it appears the latch on the window Doreen went through was broken, suggesting she fell backward out the window by accident. Shawn then realizes that the word "acnaib" the supposed ghost was yelling is "Bianca" backward. Bianca is in danger. He calls Juliet and they all rush over to the sorority house but it is too late. Bianca has been murdered, as someone dropped a toaster into her bath.
At the station, Karen grills Betty who admits (after some "psychic" help from Shawn) that Doreen's death was an accident; she was being hazed into the sorority. Doreen was supposed to spend all night at the haunted asylum. It was Betty's job to get Doreen to the asylum, and Bianca's job to dress up in a nightgown and pretend to be Sherry and scare her. As Doreen accidentally fell through window, Bianca tried to grab her arm to catch her but was too late. The two girls later buried the nightgown in a nearby tar pit.
At the Psych office, Gus tells Shawn that Alice Bundy, now the top suspect for the murder of Bianca, has an airtight alibi. She lives with Doreen's family and was upstairs in her room all night. Shawn doesn't believe there is such a thing as an airtight alibi. He knows Alice did it; he just has to figure out how. Shawn talks to Alice at her school, but only finds out that Alice and Doreen were more than best friends and they always did everything together.
Meanwhile, Lassiter and Goochberg are investigating a petty robbery at a convenience store, when she jumps the counter and starts attacking the robbed store employee because she thought he was withholding information. After the victim runs out, Goochberg runs after him with Lassiter reluctantly following behind slowly.
At the sorority house, Juliet gets an invitation to a candlelight vigil being held by Doreen's parents at Wispy Sunny Pines.
Later that night, Gus, Shawn, and Henry are having dinner at Henry's place. Shawn makes up an excuse that they have to go because of a case, but Henry knows it is the Wispy Sunny Pines case. When Shawn admits that the case hit close to home because they were present when Sherry "jumped", Henry quickly realizes they had their eyes open during the whole event. What the kids didn't see, however, was Henry reaching out of the window just before Sherry jumped, rescuing her. Henry explains that Sherry was rehabilitated and married and living in Fresno. Shawn and Gus ended up telling their classmates in the lunchroom the day after Sherry "jumped", leading to the urban legend of Scary Sherry.
The next day, Shawn and Gus go to the Harthans to investigate. Gus distracts the housekeeper, who tells him that Doreen's parents are at the cemetery, while Shawn sneaks in the back. While there, Shawn gets a call from another sorority sister who tells him that Juliet went to a candlelight vigil at the asylum hosted by Doreen's parents. He soon discovers a tar smudge on the drain pipe as well as the gutter and deduces that Alice retreived the nightgown from the tar pit. He also figures out how Alice was able to sneak out of the house unseen the night Bianca was killed. When Gus rejoins him, he tells Shawn that Doreen's parents aren't at a candlelight vigil. Shawn realizes Juliet is being set up. They race over to the asylum, calling Lassiter for backup on the way.
At Wispy Sunny Pines, Alice guides Juliet through a maze of candlelight to room 413, the room where Doreen fell from (as well as Scary Sherry, apparently). Alice appears from the shadows holding an axe and starts blaming Juliet and people like her for making other girls feel inferior. Alice sees Juliet as the queen of these people (and of the "perfect" sorority) and is going to take her out as justice for Doreen. She starts swinging the axe at Juliet, who is able to avoid every swing. Shawn, Gus, and Lassiter arrive outside and hear screams coming from inside the asylum. As they run to room 413, Gus gets stuck in the floorboards, but Shawn and Lassiter arrive just as Juliet gets the upper hand and takes the axe from Alice. Alice is taken away in handcuffs, Shawn goes back inside the hospital to rescue Gus, but not before teasing him with a sound system.
The next day at the police station, Carlton explaines to the chief why he can't work with Goochberg again. Since her pacemaker has put her in the hospital, Lassiter's temporary reassignment is thankfully over. He asks Vick what he did to "earn" a partner like Goochberg, and Vick tells him she thought they would get along because they had similar personalities. Now a little depressed, he walks out to see Juliet with Gus and Shawn laughing and eating Chinese food at her desk. He tries to fit in briefly, but then walks away dejectedly. Right as he walks away, Gus throws him a fortune cookie and Shawn and Juliet turn and smile at him. Lassiter opens the cookie and smiles at it.
Trivia[]
- "Bianca's Toast" is a triple play on words: it refers to Bianca's "salute" to the Scary Sherry legend by accidentally recreating it, it can be interpreted as a threat on Bianca's life, and it's a very literal nod to how Bianca would eventually meet her end: electrocution by toaster.
- Shawn holds up a pineapple and asks Alice if she would like to split it.
- Alice is mentioned briefly by Shawn in S3E1 "Ghosts" when he mentions that he visited her in prison for tips on haunting Paul Haversham.
- This is the first time Gus is mistaken for Bud from The Cosby Show, which would become one of the show's running gags.
- This is the first time Shawn utters the phrase "I've heard it both ways", although in this case it's a variation using "seen" instead.
- In S1E3 "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece", Shawn gets Gus off work by telling his colleagues he has an orange tabby cat called Mrs. Pickles who needs his moral support at the vet. He tells an angry Gus "The next time I need you, Pickles is having kittens." This episode, Gus uses the excuse of losing a pregnant Mrs. Pickles so that Shawn can sneak into the Harthan house.
- At one point Shawn says "Good luck, we're all counting on you" in a nod to a repeated line from the 1980 comedy Airplane!.
- Juliet says that "the girls are sleeping over at the Omega Mus," which is a reference to the sorority in the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds.
- Maggie Lawson chose this as her favorite episode for USA Network's "Psych All-Night" event on March 21, 2014. It aired as first of six.
- James Roday Rodriguez revealed in this episode's DVD commentary as well as on the rewatch podcast that Alexandra Breckenridge's performance when Karen tells Betty she committed a crime genuinely caught him off-guard and almost made him laugh.
- This is the first Psych episode for which James Roday Rodriguez received a writing credit. Rodriguez loves writing horror and originally wanted Bianca to be decapitated after which her head would tumble down the stairs, but Steve Franks vetoed this idea because it would be too gory for the show.
- Troy Rudolph, who plays a doctor in this episode, had been a trainee assistant director throughout the first season.
Quotes[]
Henry: I have no idea how that ridiculous urban legend got started in the first place.
[Henry walks away and Shawn and Gus lean in to whisper to each other]
Shawn: Your big-ass mouth!
Gus: I wanted to keep it a secret! You're the one who was broadcasting it at the lunch table!
Shawn: I can't believe this.
Gus: We actually started an urban legend!
Shawn: That's dope!
Gus: What! [they bump fists]
Shawn: [using the scary voice intercom] Wooooork theeee laaaaaceeees!
Gallery[]
The gallery for "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast" can be found here.
Digital Releases[]
