Shawn Spencer

Shawn Spencer
'Psych' character
James Roday as Shawn Spencer
First appearance	Pilot
Created by	Steve Franks and Andy Berman
Portrayed by	James Roday Josh Hayden (Young Shawn) Liam James (Young Shawn)
In-universe information
Alias	Byron Bojengles III, Black, William Zane, Levon Tostig, "T-Bone" Turner, Maniac Maniac 19, Shawn Spenstar
Nickname	"Goose" (mother)
Gender	Male
Occupation	Psychic Detective
Family	Henry Spencer (father) Madeleine Spencer (mother)
Relatives	Jack Spencer (uncle)

Shawn Spencer is a fictional character on the American television dramedy Psych played by American actor James Roday. He poses as a psychic and works as a private detective who often consults with the Santa Barbara Police Department.

Creation and development

Actor James Roday says that he thinks the character of Shawn Spencer may have been written with Matthew Perry in mind in terms of a prototype. Roday himself had sworn off television at the time the pilot was being cast, and was planning to go back to New York to do some theater productions, but was convinced by his agents to read the script. He was the first person cast for the series, and was subsequently involved in the casting process of every other character. In preparing for the role, Roday visited a number of psychics and asked them to describe what their visions entailed, "so that when someone asks if I was pulling all this out of my ass, I could say that I met with a few psychics and they say that sometimes their temperature rises and they convulse."

Fictional biography

Born in 1977, Shawn hails from a family of police officers. His parents separated in 1992, and later divorced; his mother, Madeleine (a psychologist), eventually returned and explained that she left to pursue a job opportunity. His father, Henry Spencer, fully expected him to carry the torch, and schooled Shawn in detective work from as early as age 7, aiding the development of his extraordinary powers of observation and deduction. At the age of 15, he achieved a perfect score of 100 on the detective's exam. In college, he majored in psychology. This is drawn loosely from the childhood of series creator Steve Franks, who was also born into a family of police officers and whose father "was training [Franks] in his own way to follow his footsteps." Franks' father would ask him how many people were wearing hats in a restaurant, a tactic employed in the show's pilot episode by Shawn's father.

Despite his obvious talent, Shawn has no interest in entering the police force, and after graduating from Leland Bosseigh High School in Santa Barbara, California, in 1995, takes up a string of random jobs selected strictly for his own enjoyment. In his spare time, he entertains himself by calling in tips to the police hotline based on observations he has made on crime scenes shown in television news footage. After one such tip, the Santa Barbara police become suspicious of Shawn, whose information is so good that they believe it could only have come from an inside source. Desperate to avoid jail time, Shawn lies, explaining that he obtained the information in a psychic vision. Although skeptical, the department is impressed, and hires Shawn as a consultant. Enlisting the assistance of his reluctant best friend, Burton Guster, Shawn opens his own psychic detective agency, "Psych". It has been recently revealed he inherited his eidetic memory from his mother.

Characterization

Although Shawn and Gus often have disagreements, they have been friends since early childhood and actor James Roday describes the pair's bond as "unbreakable. It's one of those friendships that make people who don't have one ask, 'Why does Gus put up with Shawn?' It's not about putting up with one another. It's about knowing each other so well that things that might annoy someone from the outside don't annoy you anymore." Shawn knows exactly how to manipulate Gus, and often frustrates his friend with his antics, but has come to rely on him more in their case work as the series has progressed. Roday believes that Shawn has "evolved a lot" as a partner, moving away from "dragging Gus around by the collar against his will from case to case to case" towards a more equal partnership. He states that under Gus's influence, Shawn has "wisened up a little bit" and is learning to display a little more discretion at times.

Shawn's seemingly random stream of consciousness often betrays the far-reaching logical connections that his observational skills allow him to make. He explains the multiple-personality-afflicted Robert Dunn's condition to Gus by referencing The Flying Nun, which starred Sally Field, who played the similarly-affected title character in Sybil. He also hybridizes movie quotes voiced by James Earl Jones in two separate films (The Lion King and The Empire Strikes Back) when addressing a mountain lion: "Simba, I am your father." Running jokes on the show center around Shawn's love of pineapples (even though he has an "aversion" of pointy objects), which he will often bring as gifts to people he is meeting for the first time; his inability to turn his phone on vibrate, even when spying or infiltrating the homes of suspects; his fondness of Val Kilmer; his owning a motorcycle even though he is almost never seen riding it; and his comments on other people’s hair.