The third season tries to start off with a bang, but what we end up with is a mess of an episode.
First the good stuff: This is a fun ghost story with a bit of a mystery within a mystery. It's fun to see where it goes, and then when it gets there, to find out that there's still a layer or two to uncover. Couple that with Gus on the verge of losing his job, and you have what is easily the best part of the episode.
Because the rest is lackluster at best. Juliet is barely even present, and Lassiter's role amounts to little more than the build-up to a predictable reveal.
And then we have the drama, which fluctuates between being inconsistent and nonsensical, and which gives us a Shawn who has transformed from being occasionally annoying to borderline unlikable.
The first two seasons made it clear that Shawn's strained relationship with his dad was due to the fact that his father was so hard on him when he was young. But suddenly, Shawn is no longer just resentful but downright bitter. And his anger now stems from the fact that he blames his dad for breaking up their family. This is a pretty big shift in tone for a comedy about a slacker who spends most of his time coming up with ever-more-obscure '80s references.
But the worst part is that most of it doesn't make any sense, and the part that does paints his mom in an extremely negative light. Let's break this down: Shawn was a senior in high school when his parents split, yet somehow he had absolutely no clue how it all went down. His mom moved away, leaving Shawn with his dad in their family house, and Shawn's takeaway from this was that his dad left her? Not that he kicked her out, but that he LEFT her. When in reality his mom left because she got a once-in-a-lifetime job offer, AND SHE DIDN'T BOTHER EXPLAINING THIS TO HER SON! What kind of mother is she??? If anything, his mom deserves all the hatred he's been directing at his dad, but no, nothing could ever make him think any less of her. Because the episode is almost over, and it's Cybill Shepherd!
The writers do their best to gloss over all this, because it's more about the emotions than the details, right? Well, it might have been, if there had been ANY hint of ANY of this before this episode. Instead, it feels like a desperate attempt to justify getting Cybill Shepherd into a few episodes.
This may not be the weakest episode of the series, but it's one of the hardest to sit through, simply because of how Shawn behaves toward his dad, and the unsatisfying reason behind it.
First the good stuff: This is a fun ghost story with a bit of a mystery within a mystery. It's fun to see where it goes, and then when it gets there, to find out that there's still a layer or two to uncover. Couple that with Gus on the verge of losing his job, and you have what is easily the best part of the episode.
Because the rest is lackluster at best. Juliet is barely even present, and Lassiter's role amounts to little more than the build-up to a predictable reveal.
And then we have the drama, which fluctuates between being inconsistent and nonsensical, and which gives us a Shawn who has transformed from being occasionally annoying to borderline unlikable.
The first two seasons made it clear that Shawn's strained relationship with his dad was due to the fact that his father was so hard on him when he was young. But suddenly, Shawn is no longer just resentful but downright bitter. And his anger now stems from the fact that he blames his dad for breaking up their family. This is a pretty big shift in tone for a comedy about a slacker who spends most of his time coming up with ever-more-obscure '80s references.
But the worst part is that most of it doesn't make any sense, and the part that does paints his mom in an extremely negative light. Let's break this down: Shawn was a senior in high school when his parents split, yet somehow he had absolutely no clue how it all went down. His mom moved away, leaving Shawn with his dad in their family house, and Shawn's takeaway from this was that his dad left her? Not that he kicked her out, but that he LEFT her. When in reality his mom left because she got a once-in-a-lifetime job offer, AND SHE DIDN'T BOTHER EXPLAINING THIS TO HER SON! What kind of mother is she??? If anything, his mom deserves all the hatred he's been directing at his dad, but no, nothing could ever make him think any less of her. Because the episode is almost over, and it's Cybill Shepherd!
The writers do their best to gloss over all this, because it's more about the emotions than the details, right? Well, it might have been, if there had been ANY hint of ANY of this before this episode. Instead, it feels like a desperate attempt to justify getting Cybill Shepherd into a few episodes.
This may not be the weakest episode of the series, but it's one of the hardest to sit through, simply because of how Shawn behaves toward his dad, and the unsatisfying reason behind it.