You could say this is Psych's Halloween episode. In November. Ah, the one drawback of the midseason hiatus.
Juliet is concerned about what might happen when her relationship with Shawn becomes public, and has therefore asked him to keep it private for as long as possible. However, she does make it up to him with two tickets to Scare Fest - a Halloween-themed carnival - the following night. He's already made plans to go with Gus, though he probably wishes he hadn't when he witnesses a murder in the haunted house. No one believes him, given the time and place, and he and Gus end up in "carnival jail." However, he's proven right when the body of the missing carnival boss is found. Furthermore, an employee claims he knows who killed the man: the ghost of John Ricketts, someone who died there years earlier.
Of course, this isn't what really happened. Shawn and Gus uncover the truth about Ricketts' death, a subsequent cover-up, and a young woman who's out to make all the employees pay for it, by killing them off one by one.
I know I've mentioned this before, but I normally loathe themed episodes of any show. Especially holiday episodes. Most of them that I've seen either A) are really poorly done as the writers are forced to write plot around the holiday or B) are a decent episode but the holiday elements end up seeming forced. Thankfully, Psych escapes both of those worries. "In Plain Fright" makes good use of the episode's spooky setting, in a logical way - if I was going to kill someone, a Halloween carnival would be a perfect place to do so, because just like what happened to Shawn, it might take awhile to tell the real from the fake. Furthermore, the plot comes together well enough, and is still a good mystery on its own. The only thing that starts to bug me is how Shawn is always explaining how everything comes together at the end; a lot of shows do that, but it's always kind of seemed cliche, like the show is giving us all the answers to a test after we've studied for it.
The plot also forces Shawn to reveal his relationship with Juliet to Gus, and consider what it might do to their friendship. It's the first step in the evolution of Shawn and Juliet into a real couple, and I'll be interested to see what the writers do with them next. Lassiter has to find out sometime...
Psych is off next week, but we come back with the long-awaited Twin Peaks reunion episode. I'll see you then!
Source: Digital Airwaves
