Spoilers.
Castle Official Site
The Time: Mondays, 10:00 PM, ABC
The Show:
Richard
Castle is a rambunctious and wisecracking best-selling author of crime
fiction who has just killed off his golden goose main character because
he was bored with him. Now, he’s beset by writer’s block and
is wondering what his next move will be. That is until the
no-nonsense and driven Detective Kate Beckett pays him a visit and
informs him that his help is needed on a murder case. The
womanizing and smarmy Castle is instantly smitten with her and throws
every cheap line and innuendo her way and generally makes a nuisance of
himself at every opportunity, which Beckett is forced to tolerate for
the sake of solving the case. But aside from the hijinks,
Castle also brings a keen insight and plenty of connections with city
government into the case that proves useful. Once the case is
solved, Castle convinces the mayor to allow him to tag along on
Beckett’s future cases as he researches a new female detective
character for his upcoming book, much to Beckett’s chagrin.
The Stars:
• Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle
• Stana Katic as Det. Kate Beckett
• Susan Sullivan as Martha Heath
• Monet Mazur as Gina Cowell
• Ruben Santiago Hudson as Capt. Montgomery
• Molly Quinn as Alexis Castle
The Episode: “Hedge Fund Homeboys”
Castle and Beckett get the call when a high school boy is found dead floating on a boat in Central Park with a gunshot wound to the chest. Turns out the boy was the son of a once-wealthy family who have since fallen on hard times in the rough economy. The boy was also a prep schooler with a group of friends who may know something about the murder, or may have been responsible for it.
The Lowdown:
I liked this episode more than last week’s and I think Fillion and Katic are settling pretty nicely into their roles. This week’s case wasn’t as exotic as the pilot’s mystery, but it was rife with red herrings that Beckett and Castle had to sort through. It was pretty obvious that one of the boy’s friends was going to be responsible for his murder, but since there were five of them, and some were lying and some were telling the truth, it became a shell game.
At first the killer is pointed out to be young drug dealer, due to one of the murdered boy’s, Donny’s, friends, Romy, picking him out of a line up. Of course, that’s crimson fish #1 and the trail eventually leads them back to the five friends, and from their it’s just a process of questioning them, Castle wisecracking and Katic wishing she – or better he – was someplace else. There is a funny bit when Castle tries to listen in on her cell phone call and she starts to put her hand around him, only to grab his ear and pull him by it away from the phone.
Eventually they crack the case and get the killer, who thinks he’s smarter than everybody else to admit he did it. The B-story concerns Castle speaking with his daughter about whether or not she’s ever done anything illegal and that she can come to him or tell him anything if she has. I’m starting to like the relationship Castle has with his daughter and how it applies to and influences his approach of the cases he does.
I’m still feeling the rapport between Fillion and Katic. Beckett has thus far only been seen at work and I’m sure Castle is eventually going to worm his way into her private life. The show’s thus far pretty fun and Fillion is really laying into the smarminess of the character, which is also fun.