Wikia

Henry Spencer
Retired Detective and Consultant Advisor

Gender:	Male
Age:	55
Actor:	Corbin Bernsen
Status:	Alive
First appearance:	Pilot
Last appearance:	Nip and Suck It

Henry William Spencer, Jr. (b. 1958) is a retired police officer and the father of Shawn Spencer & ex-husband of Madeleine Spencer. He is portrayed by Corbin Bernsen.

BiographyEdit

Retired cop Henry Spencer (aka "Old Scratch Johnson" or "Popeye Doyle") is a fan of Jersey Shore yet makes no bones about his contempt for Shawn's new business venture. After years spent training his son to observe and analyze like a detective, Henry can't believe that Shawn would squander his enormous talent only to take his place at the bottom of the law enforcement food chain as a psychic. This is partly his own fault though, as he arrested Shawn in high school for stealing a neighbor's car (although Shawn claimed he was going to return it, and only stole it in order to impress a girl). Shawn's rebellious streak was also partly caused by him, as Shawn believed that Henry was the parent who wanted the divorce, and Henry never told Shawn otherwise. Henry has still shown interest in his ex-wife, even though he has also shown interest in other women.

Even though Henry was the cause of Shawn's position (as Shawn's arrest prevented him from ever becoming a detective, and Henry raised Shawn to become that), it just completes the long spiral of disappointment that has left his relationship with his son strained to say the least.^[1] He does get one good thing out of it, though: A chance to be part of the detective business again. It's worth it, even when Shawn attempts, for instance, to admit him to an old folks home under posing as a new resident, Talmadge McGulager. Or when he passes him off as Phil Collins to avoid being charged with obstruction of justice.

Henry also took a position at the police station as a consultant at the end of Season 4 in order to be able to help with the search for Abigail and Juliet (who had been kidnapped by Mr. Yang), even though he had originally be offered the position by the Chief earlier in the season in "Think Tank" after she realized that Henry had been helping Shawn with his cases. After he started working at the police station, he forms a sort of rivalry with Carlton, who takes his frustration from Shawn out on him. He has also not given Shawn and Gus as many cases as they would have liked, due to his belief that he should not be handing cases over to Shawn. He also has been known to not pay Shawn as much as he desired, as shown in "Not Even Close... Encounters".

Henry has also tried to help Shawn with his relationship problems. First with Abigail, Henry met up with her for dinner without Shawn (Shawn did not want Abigail to meet Henry, but when she insisted, Henry was all right with the fact that he was going against Shawn's wishes to help him with his relationship). Later, when Shawn was determining what to do about his feeling towards Juliet, Henry gave him the advice: tell her about his feelings before she goes off to the Amalfi Coast with Declan Rand, her then boyfriend. He has helped Shawn with other relationship problems, such as "Treat a woman like a person, then a princess, then a Greek goddess, and then a person again." Shawn has also helped Henry with relationships, repeating the quote back to him, even though it has hurt him to know that his father was dating other women aside from his mother.

In the final episode of season 6, he retired, after discovering his former police officer friends Lou Gamble and Jack Atwater were dirty cops, and later is shot at point blank range by his other cop friend Jerry Carp after discovering he was dirty too. In the season 7 premiere, it is shown that Shawn rushes to the beach but gets there too late. Henry tells Shawn to go after Jerry but Shawn refuses to leave his dad alone. He is rushed to the hospital where they remove the bullet. As Henry is lying in bed Shawn starts to tell his dad that he loves him. Later in the episode it is show that Henry's old stalker, Chelsea is taking care of Henry to which he half-jokingly tells Shawn to, "Pull the plug." In the end Henry is safe and sound.

In Juliet Takes a Luvvah, Madeleine is in town to help care for Henry, and Shawn moves back in to get to know Henry on a different level. Madeleine ends up moving back in as well, but Shawn moves out when he walks in on the two having sex.

It has also been implied that Henry does not have many friends, as Shawn and Juliet thought that it would be good if her stepfather, Lloyd, and Henry became best friends. In trying to make this happen, Shawn sets up a lunch for the two of them. Before going to the lunch, Henry agrees to pick up a package for Lloyd, but then almost gets shot and ends up going to Mexico to pay a debt that Lloyd owed. He almost got killed in Mexico, but was saved by the "Mexican version of Lassie," who also ended up being a bad guy. When Henry believed that Lloyd later got shot in that episode, he started giving a heart-felt speech on how he believed that Lloyd and he were friends. Shawn noticed that Lloyd was not actually dead, but was instead wearing a bulletproof vest, and upon his mention of it to Lloyd, Lloyd got up and also told Henry that he thought of him as a friend. Despite his recent speech, Henry was upset that Lloyd would go down to Mexico with protection but not give Henry a bulletproof vest as well. Shawn and Juliet still described their desire that the two of them become friends, but agreed that if it ever happened, that it should be natural, despite the fact that they both believed that it would never happen. In the last scene of the episode, Henry and Lloyd are shown about to go fishing together, where Henry is wearing a bulletproof vest for protection, stating, "Do you think I'd ever hang out with you again without one?" Lloyd still wants to go on similar adventures with Henry at the end of the episode, but upon Henry's insistence, they simply go fishing. In "Right Turn or Left for Dead," when Shawn came over to Henry's place for advice, where he found Lloyd there for drinks.

TriviaEdit

He along with Gus, Juliet,and Declan Rand are the only ones who know for sure that Shawn is not really a psychic.
He is a Sagittarius.
He still loves his ex-wife Madeleine.
As of the end of season 6 Santabarbaratown, he is officially retired.