"No Trout About It" is the fourteenth and final episode of Season Seven. When the mayor hires a consultant to increase efficiency at the SBPD, things don't go as planned for Santa Barbara's lead psychic.
Plot Summary[]
Shawn, Gus, Lassiter and Juliet are in hot pursuit of a suspect riding a dirt bike. The motorcyclist loses them and the scene cuts to Karen's office where the team is getting reprimanded for letting a suspect get away. Shawn tells Vick that there's more to the story. But before Shawn can explain, Vick informs them that a man named Harris Trout, a gentleman considered to be the face of U.S. law enforcement, was hired by the new mayor to turn their dysfunctional police department into a fine institution.
Trout sits everyone down and gets them to recap what happened with the case they are currently in the middle of trying to solve. Shawn starts to tell the story, and we flashback to the Psych office at the start of the case. Shawn says that a man named Leo Quinn came into their office saying someone poisoned him, and in less than two days he will be dead. He wanted Shawn and Gus to help him find his murderer.
Shawn and Gus take Quinn to the ER to get confirmation. There, the doctor tells them that Quinn has ingested a lethal poison called Compound 1080 and that it doesn't have an antidote. Quinn mentions he has a wife named Rita and that she is flying back into town today from a trip to Mexico.
Shawn and Gus offer to pick Rita up from the airport to break the news to her about her husband. They tell Rita the news, and she is shockingly not torn up by it. From this, Shawn and Gus theorize that maybe it was she that poisoned him. But their theory is laid to rest when they later find Rita shot dead in her and Quinn's home. They break the news to Quinn and he is devastated. Shawn and Gus ask Quinn if anything suspicious happened to him before he was poisoned. He tells them that his law office was broken into.
Shawn, Gus and Quinn head to Quinn's law firm where they discover a safe deposit box key has been stolen from his office. Quinn explains that he has power of attorney over a wealthy elderly woman's account and that the stolen key opens the box containing her fortune.
Back at the SBPD, Juliet tells everyone that the key on its own is useless, and that in order to open the safe deposit box, they need another key - a key that the bank owns. They head to the bank and realize that the diamonds that were being kept in the elderly woman's box have been stolen. Shawn asks to see a security tape to figure out who had access to the key. On the screen we see a mustached man. The bank manager explains that this man owns the box right next to the elderly woman's box. Then suddenly, they see another man come into frame carrying a key - Charles Sax, a former bank employee. Sax and the mustached man open the elderly woman's box and steal the loot.
They track Sax down at a hotel and send an ailing Quinn back to the ER to get checked out. They confront Sax in his room, but before they can get any answers from him, he is shot dead.
The next morning they learn Quinn has died. They rush over to the morgue to see the body, but are told that Quinn was already cremated. It turns out Quinn left a note for Shawn and Gus telling them to look into a former client of his named Curtis Stanzen - a client who was heavy into orchestrating identity fraud.
Lassiter, Juliet, Shawn and Gus head to Stanzen's house to get some answers. A beat later, the same man riding the motorcycle at the beginning is seen jetting off from the back of his house. Our guys eventually catch up to Stanzen. His motorcycle crashes. They run up to see his face and discover he has yellow eyes - a distinct side effect of the Compound 1080 poison. Stanzen was poisoned too. The guys now know that the three people involved in the bank deposit box heist - Rita, Sax and Stanzen - didn't poison and kill Quinn.
Trout, who has been listening to this story the whole time, is frustrated. He asks them if they even have a suspect anymore. Everyone is silent until Shawn has a revelation after looking at the autopsy report on Stanzen.
He tells everyone that Quinn isn't dead, nor was he ever poisoned. Shawn explains that Quinn wasn't showing most of the telltale signs of being poisoned by Compound 1080. Quinn pretended to be poisoned and faked his own death by killing the doctor and getting his body cremated right away so that no one would realize it was the doctor who was actually dead and not Quinn. Quinn orchestrated the whole bank job plan involving Rita, Stanzen and Sax so that he would be the one with the diamonds in the end. And now that Quinn is technically dead on paper, he is free to flee town with the money.
Shawn tells everyone that Quinn is still out there and that he is going to track him down. But before Shawn, Gus, Juliet, and Lassiter can leave the SBPD, Trout stops him. Trout tells Shawn that everyone is officially off the case on account of handling it so poorly and sloppily thus far. Trout also tells them he is appalled by the department as a whole - he sites interoffice dating between Shawn and Juliet, McNab being a part-time stripper, Lassiter being married to an ex-con, and the fact that they entrust homicide cases to a psychic.
Shawn, Gus, Lassiter, and Juliet are reeling at the fact that they can't finish solving the case and bust Quinn. Shawn figures it out that Quinn is at the airport waiting to get on a flight to Brazil. The four decide to disobey Trout's orders and head out to bust Quinn.
They are successful, but when they return to the police station to book Quinn, they learn that Vick took the fall for them to save their jobs by lying to Trout and saying that she gave them orders to bust Quinn. Vick tells our guys that she was given a six month suspension from the department. Shawn, Gus, Juliet, and Lassiter are shocked and upset. They approach Trout and give him a piece of their mind. Trout fires back by telling them that he is their new Interim Chief of Police. He also tells them that the SBPD will no longer be hiring psychic consultants and that Lassiter will no longer be head detective. Trout makes himself at home in Chief Vick's old office and Shawn, Gus, Juliet, and Lassiter are left feeling uncertain about their future and the future of the SBPD.
Trivia[]
- As well as employing the new character's name, Trout, the title serves to highlight his defining characteristic, an assertiveness which ignores others and their desires and needs entirely, playing on 'no doubt about it', though unquestionably more piscine puns will follow.
Gallery[]
The gallery for No Trout About It can be found here.
Digital Releases[]
