Psych: The Musical, on USA Network
IMDb; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Google Play; iTunes; Peacock; Vudu

This 2-hour special aired on December 15, 2013 (though I had to wait a month to watch it online). It took the place of two episodes at the end of season 7 of Psych, though if it can be assumed to take place within the same continuity of the regular series, it's obviously set some time before that. Some plot points in the musical ignore important events that had happened in season 7; however, there are other plot points from throughout the series that play into this special. (Of course, since it is a musical, it's hard for me to believe it's canonical to the series.) While the series is always hilariously redonkulous, the musical is even more so. The songs are generally not great, but they're okay, and some are better than others. And I did enjoy all the little shout-outs to other musicals.

Anyway, the story is about a playwright named Zachary Wallace Zander (who is just called "Z" most of the time). Several years earlier, he'd had a play called Ripper (a musical about Jack the Ripper) which ended before it even began, because of a fire that had destroyed the theater and killed a critic. Z was convicted of the crime and has spent years in an asylum, but now he escapes, just as a new production of a play is about to begin, which apparently stole his idea. Now people associated with the play start being killed, so of course Z is the prime suspect. While he'd been in the asylum, he'd been befriended by Yang (a serial killer who's appeared in other episodes of Psych). So now she gets the police to get her temporarily released into their custody, to enjoy some time away from the asylum in exchange for her help in finding Z. But eventually she escapes from the police. Meanwhile, Shawn starts to suspect Z isn't actually the killer.

That's all I can tell you about the plot, but it was reasonably fun. Although it seemed kind of inconsistent about whether it was really a musical or not. There were scenes where everyone did some singing as you would expect in a musical, but there were also scenes where people said they weren't going to sing (or were confused about why others were singing), and scenes where they only sang to get Yang to cooperate. And actually there was a lot less singing in the special than I would have expected. And... I said in the first paragraph that it was more redonkulous than usual, but actually there were times (especially in the second episode) that I thought it was less redonk than usual. And therefore not as much fun as it could have been. So, I rated this special considerably lower than I do the regular series, and yet my rating is probably higher than it would have been without the benefit of the affection I already had for the series and the characters, and everything.