And Down the Stretch Comes Murder

1987

Young Jimmy Nicholas: Give it up, Spencer. Or I’ll shove a tuna nickel sandwich right in your grill!
Young Gus: I think it’s a knuckle sandwich.
Young Shawn: Okay okay.
Young Jimmy: And from the Kangaroos. {Shawn gets the money from his shoes}

Present Day

Shawn: Jimmy Nickles called.
Gus: Jimmy Nickles called us? From where? Prison?
Shawn: I don’t think so. It didn’t sound like it. What does prison sound like? Is there singing?

Gus: He’s going to try and kill us!
Shawn: He’s not going to kill us. Right? I mean, people change. We haven’t seen him since the fifth grade.
Gus: I don’t need to see him, Shawn! Some people are just born evil. The kid from The Omen. The Children of the Corn. Chad Michael Murray.

Gus: Why couldn’t I be Crockett?
Shawn: ‘Cause, Gus. You stood in front of the entire third grade class and said, “When I grow up, I wanna be Phillip Michael Thomas.”
Gus: Well you said you wanted to be the mascot for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Shawn: Dude, it’s the biggest sausage in the world.

Gus: Why is Jimmy Nickles coming here, Shawn?
Shawn: I don’t know!
Gus: Why couldn’t you be a real psychic!

Shawn: Jimmy, what is it exactly you’d like us to do?
Jimmy Nickles: One of our friends from our old school told me about your company. Even though it sounds kind of gay, I thought I could hire you to come down to the track and maybe, ah, psychicly figure out what’s wrong with the horses.

Are you crazy?
Shawn: I wouldn’t say crazy. Maybe an eccentric who looks good in jeans.

Gus: We’re not helping that little monster, Shawn. Period!
Shawn: Okay, so Jimmy’s still a jerk. I can see that. But the truth is, I feel like I owe him.
Gus: For what? If anything he owes us for a hundred and seventy lunches. You know I added that up once, and with inflation that’s like eighteen hundred dollars.

Shawn: It was me who ratted him out, Gus.
Gus: You did that? Why didn’t you ever tell me?
Shawn: You don’t know all my secrets. I’m a man of untold mysteries.

Shawn: Are you channeling the horse or a little boy with a tight fade who used to wear his OP’s without a drawstring?
Gus: The horse, Shawn. I didn’t have a tight fade in the third grade.

Shawn: So. A jockey who was alive at the beginning of the race is dead by the end. Not to sound insensitive, but I think we have a case.
Gus: That sounds insensitive.

Juliet: Little people make me… Well let’s just say I had a bad experience with a Christmas elf.
Gus: What, he didn’t give you the right present?
Juliet: No. We dated. And then he dumped me for a dancer from the Ice Storm on Ice.
Shawn: She is an enigma wrapped in a little blonde ridddle.

Shawn: Wait! Everyone stop! Let’s acknowledge that the chief is wearing leopard print. And continue.

Lassiter: Apparently the guy took everything in sight. He was four-foot-nine and three feet of that were drugs.

Young Shawn: What are you doing here?
Shawn: I can do whatever I want, dude. It’s my head. What did I miss? What’s going on here?
Young Shawn: Is that what my hair looks like in the future?
Shawn: Sure is.
Young Shawn: I thought I’d be bald by twenty. This changes everything.
Shawn: Yeah it does. Think big.

Barry Saunder (Howard Hessman): Track’s closing down after this meet. Forty-five years I’ve been doing this.
Gus: Why is it closing down?
Barry Saunder: Well no one comes anymore.
Shawn: Is it because of his shirt? Sorry, Dad, but this is like a genocide of color. Somewhere in the world a rainbow is weeping.

Shawn: Woah woah woah. TBW is Jimmy’s wife?
Barry Saunder: Yeah.
Gus: Looks like Juan Carlos was taking all of Jimmy’s mounts.

Gus: Okay, so let me get this straight. You took on this case because you felt bad about Jimmy getting kicked out of school for something he didn’t do. And now you just convinced the police to reopen the case, which led to Jimmy being arrested for murder.
Shawn: Did I ask for nutshelling?

Shawn: I think he looks like a tangelo in that outfit. Or maybe a Clementine, with seeds for hands.
Gus: I think he looks like an evil little Creamsicle.
Shawn: Ha! You mean Dreamsicle.
Gus: No, Shawn. Creamsicle. They’re exclusively orange.

Shawn: A little girl outside just started crying when she saw this shirt.

Shawn: The announcer! It’s the announcer! He sounds surprised, nay—neigh—shocked.

Shawn: Everybody hold your horses! {the jockey pats his horse} I meant metephorically, but I like the love.

Gus: You don’t know all my secrets, Shawn. I too am a man of untold mysteries.