Detective Donna “Lassie” Lassiter – Lassie and Detective Carlton Lassiter from Psych
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Lassie
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Timothy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassie_(1954_TV_series)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimmyInAWell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Lassiter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psych
There’s trouble at the well, Detective Donna Lassiter, everyone calls her Lassie, alerts Governor Weiler and your wizard to the trouble at the well. There is a chocolate, a delicious smelling but hazardous material to Marleybonians, contamination in the wells. Helping Lassie out, your wizard discovers someone named Timothy has fallen down a well. When your wizard asks Timothy about chocolate, Timothy becomes evasive. Lassie insists that Timothy must be rescued and then arrested.
After dealing with the chocolate contamination, Lassie informs your wizard about a known criminal and master of disguise, a defector to Polaris, the infamous Rententen. Rententen is spying on the Marleybonian troops. Lassie asks your wizard to investigate the whereabouts of this legendary spy. Once you have captured Rententen, Lassie offers a heartfelt congratulations for averting a war amongst the Spiral’s superpowers.
Lassie is a fictional female Rough Collie dog and is featured in a 1938 short story by Eric Knight that was later expanded to a 1940 full-length novel, Lassie Come-Home. Knight’s portrayal of Lassie bears some features in common with another fictional female collie of the same name, featured in the British writer Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1859 short story “The Half Brothers”. In “The Half Brothers”, Lassie is loved only by her young master and guides the adults back to where two boys are lost in a snowstorm.
Knight’s novel was filmed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1943 as Lassie Come Home, with a dog named Pal playing Lassie. Pal then appeared with the stage name “Lassie” in six other MGM feature films through 1951. Pal’s owner and trainer, Rudd Weatherwax, then acquired the Lassie name and trademark from MGM and appeared with Pal (as “Lassie”) at rodeos, fairs, and similar events across America in the early 1950s. In 1954, the television series Lassie debuted and, over the next 19 years, a succession of Pal’s descendants appeared on the series. The “Lassie” character has appeared in radio, television, film, toys, comic books, animated series, juvenile novels, and other media. Pal’s descendants continue to play Lassie today.
Lassie is an American television series, a follow-up to the six MGM movies, is about Lassie and her companions, both human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 25, 1973, making it the eighth longest-running scripted American primetime television series. The show ran for 17 seasons on CBS before entering first-run syndication for its final two seasons. Initially filmed in black and white, the show transitioned to color in 1965.
The first 10 seasons of the series saw Lassie living on a farm, first with the Miller family (Jeff, his mother Ellen, and her father-in-law George—who was called “Gramps” by Jeff). Season 4 saw the Millers taking in young orphan Timmy, who then lived with them on the farm, as well as the unexpected death of Gramps (reflecting the real life death of actor George Cleveland, who played the character), and with that the Millers moved off the farm, but Timmy and Lassie would stay behind with his new foster parents, Paul and Ruth Martin, who also took over the farm. All 10 of the Miller/Martin farm seasons would for the most part focus on “boy and his dog” adventures with Jeff or Timmy getting involved in some sort of trouble, and Lassie eventually coming to the rescue. These “boy and his dog” adventures gave rise to the TV Trope of “Timmy in the Well” even though during the course of the series, Timmy never once fell into a well.
Farmer: What’s that, Lassie?
Lassie: Woof woof woof!
Farmer: Timmy fell down the well?!
Lassie: Woof!
Farmer: That’s the third time this month, right?
Lassie: Woof woof woof woof woof. Woof woof, woof woof.
Farmer: I agree, let him get his own self out.
— A joke dating back to the original airing of Lassie
“Timmy in a well” is a Stock Plot in which Little Timmy falls into danger and the family pet or another animal (usually domesticated) takes the initiative to either rescue Timmy or (more commonly) summon an adult character to help him. The trope also features the uncanny ability of the animal to make itself understood by the human.
“Woof woof”
“What is it, girl? Is Timmy in the well?”
The animal who features in this trope is often a dog, though since many animals have doglike characteristics in fiction, the central critter can be anything from a goldfish to a T. rex.
Psych is an American detective comedy-drama television series created by Steve Franks for USA Network. The series stars James Roday as Shawn Spencer, a young crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department whose “heightened observational skills” and impressive eidetic memory allow him to convince people that he solves cases with his psychic abilities. The program also stars Dulé Hill as Shawn’s intelligent best friend and reluctant partner Burton “Gus” Guster, Timothy Omundson as Detective Carlton Lassiter, as well as Corbin Bernsen as Shawn’s father Henry, a former detective with the Santa Barbara Police Department.
Shawn originally becomes known as a psychic when, after calling in tips on dozens of crimes covered on the news which help the police to close the case, the police become suspicious of his knowledge, theorizing that such knowledge could only come from the “inside” and unwilling to believe that it is merely Shawn having honed his observational skills. To avoid being sent to jail, Shawn uses those skills to convince the police that he is psychic; though the interim police chief warns Shawn that if his “powers” are fake, he will be prosecuted. With no choice but to keep up the act, and having proven himself an effective aid to the police in solving crimes, he establishes a psychic detective agency, Psych, and becomes an outside consultant to the police. Pretending to have psychic powers allows him to engage in strange and comic behavior as he turns real clues into hunches and otherworldly visitations.
Head detective Carlton Lassiter, playfully nicknamed “Lassie” by Shawn and Gus, quietly comes to respect Shawn’s crime-solving skills despite doubting his psychic abilities; Lassiter is constantly exasperated by Shawn keeping investigations ongoing and/or infuriated by Shawn’s antics. However, junior detective Juliet “Jules” O’Hara (Maggie Lawson) and Chief Karen Vick (Kirsten Nelson) are far less antagonistic – with O’Hara expressing belief in Shawn’s abilities while Vick is mum on the subject – and usually willing to give Shawn the leeway he needs to solve cases. Henry and Shawn have a difficult relationship, but despite this, Henry reluctantly helps Shawn on various occasions.
Thank you to Ashley D. for the Psych connection
The current list of all the (known) Novus references are located here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Lassie and Timothy images are from Wizard101, and are copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment.
Lassie is a trademark and copyright Dreamworks Classic, a division of NBC Universal
Color Lassie photo is borrowed from Heroes Wiki.
Lassie Season 4 cast photo is borrowed from Wikipedia. It is in the Public Domain.
“Timmy in the well” cartoon is borrowed from TVTropes.com. It is shared under the Creative Commons 3.0 license
Psych cast photo is borrowed from Entertainment Weekly ew.com and is copyright NBC/Universal
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
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