New York – Like any multi-day event with a whole lot of speakers, exhibitors, and patrons, New York Comic-Con is an ever-shifting experience. I wrote on Friday about that being my longest day and how I was going to have a couple articles at TV Insider up on panels from Friday. Things shifted and rather than the Friday panels, I ended up covering the Saturday panel for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, which stars John Krasinski. Doing that meant having to leave another panel 15 minutes prior to its scheduled conclusion, but I still spent enough time at the panel for Psych: The Movie, to be incredibly enthusiastic about the upcoming TV special.

The event started off with the audience getting to see the first 20 minutes of the movie, which we later found out will air on December 7th. As we saw in that portion of the film, while Shawn Spencer (James Roday) and Burton Guster (Dulé Hill) were no longer in Santa Barbara due to the events of the series itself, their life in San Francisco felt largely unchanged from what audiences have come to expect. That is to say, Shawn was getting into trouble, Gus was skeptical, Juliet (Maggie Lawson) had fears of her own, and Chief Vick (Kirsten Nelson) was still unamused by Shawn’s antics.

Yes, the status quo had been relatively maintained, and when they walked out onto the stage, the cast and producers—Roday, Lawson, Nelson, Corbin Bernsen, Steve Franks, and Chris Henze were present—were every bit as down-to-earth and funny as one would hope. For instance, while Hill couldn’t be there, he sent an enthusiastic video apology which, among other things, gave the premiere date listed above. Psych star Timothy Omundson was not in attendance, he suffered a stroke earlier this year, but, just as the cast did when they attended San Diego Comic-Con this summer, they had the audience send a video to Omundson (at SDCC, this short video consisted of the crowd yelling “suck it!” to the actor, and at NYCC everyone yelled “suck it again!”). Omundson’s name was in the credits for the movie and there is, apparently, a scene with him in the film.

One of the repeated jokes(?) at the panel discussion was the idea that they were going to come back and do several more films down the line. There was talk that this particular film, like the series, will end with some open questions, with the audience feeling like not everything is fully resolved. The notion here being that this can lead into another film, while if they were to perfectly tie everything up, people might decide that it could just be left at that.

We were also told that, in terms of returning actors/guests, the panelists felt that everyone they really wanted to come back did. They even talked about how much of the crew was able to return for filming.

I loved hearing that. For me, Psych was always about the show’s feel. There was a sense of camaraderie not just amongst the cast when the series aired, but one that reached out of the TV to the audience as well. Not every episode of Psych was brilliant, but at the core of it were these relationships that we all became a part of, that were always great. Getting to see that live on stage, getting to hear stories about how that camaraderie wasn’t/isn’t feigned, was wonderful.

They may have been kidding about doing another five movies, but I hope not.

photo credit: Cindy Ord/USA Network

Categories: New York Comic Con

Tags: Burton Guster, Corbin Bernsen, Dule Hill, James Roday, Kirsten Nelson, Maggie Lawson, New York Comic Con, Psych, Shawn Spencer