Fear Itself: Episode 4 In Sickness and In Health

It took me a while to figure out what was wrong with this episode. Don't misunderstand, it's a good episode, but it seems completely devoid of any actual fear. I considered it from all the possible angles. The twist seems good. It makes sense without being telegraphed. The episode's atmosphere manages to being uncomfortable when needed, without screaming that the audience should be afraid from the very first shot. It even has good pacing, and solid direction by John Landis.

So, I had to ask myself why I'm not afraid. Then, I realized: this episode cast the leads of Psych as the main characters. Maggie Lawson and James Roday are incredibly funny people, but by that same token they are chronically incapable of being frightening. They're just too damned likable.

On her wedding day Samantha (Lawson) is given a note by her bridesmaid Ruthie (Sonja Bennett), who received it from the priest, who received it from a mysterious woman. The note reads “The person you are marrying is a serial killer.” No one else knows the nature of the note, but the bridesmaids all assume the note reveals some horrible secret about her fiance Carlos (Roday), who becomes increasingly aggressive as the maids seem more and more hostile towards him. Samantha is determined not to let anyone know the contents, even as Carlos demands to know what it was.

The climax comes when the two are isolated in the church the night after their wedding, and Samantha retreats into a confession booth and locks herself in as Carlos stands outside, demanding for her to come out, before breaking down. The reveal is a two-fer: Carlos became aggressive because he had dinner with another woman, who began stalking him. He believed she had passed Samantha the note in an effort to ruin their wedding day by revealing his infidelity. Samantha, on the other hand, reveals that the note was actually intended for Carlos, and the priest had passed it to her due to his poor hearing.

We then cut to the apartment filled with bottled body-parts, where Samantha lives with her brother Steven (Brendan Hunter). We see that Steven was the one who passed the note, while dressed in drag. Meanwhile, Carlos says he doesn't care about the note, and makes Samantha promise to show him her secret “when you're ready.” With more intimidating actors, this would have been creepy. As the episode stands, it just isn't.

The episode still works decently as a mystery. A lot of the foreshadowing is effective because it can easily be interpreted to indicate either fear or guilt on the part of Samantha. During the wedding ceremony Samantha sees Carlos' face become a skull. She also constantly questions whether or not she's “making a mistake” by rushing into a marriage after multiple boyfriends have “disappeared.”

Towards the end both Roday and Lawson have a few moments in which they try and fail to broadcast madness, but it's just not within their acting range. These moments are brief, however, and the episode is better for it. Most of the time Lawson's performance is more subdued, and Roday acts more like an upset boyfriend than a sociopath.

Ultimately this is one of those episodes that makes me glad I don't have a rating system. It's quality can only be assessed in terms of whether or not you want to be frightened. There is nothing “bad” about the episode, it fails exclusively within the genre of horror.