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 killed off his golden goose main character, Derek Storm, because
he was bored with him. Now, he’s used his charm and connections to finagle his way into the NYPD to shadow the beautiful and streetwise Detective Kate Beckett, whom he’s using as inspiration for his newest character, Nikki Heat. The smarmy Castle continually throws
every cheap line and innuendo Beckett’s way and generally makes a nuisance of himself on her cases. But Castle also brings a keen criminal insight and plenty of connections with city
government that often proves useful. Together, they’re the city’s newest crimebusting team.
The Stars:
– Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle
– Stana Katic as Det. Kate Beckett
– Susan Sullivan as Martha Heath
– Ruben Santiago Hudson as Capt. Montgomery
– Molly Quinn as Alexis Castle
– Jon Huertas as Det. Javier Esposito
– Seamus Deaver as Det. Kevin Ryan
The Episode: “Deep In Death”
Castle and Beckett are at odds following his prying into her mother’s murder against her wishes and discovering new information that there may have been a cover up on it. Beckett agrees to let Castle tag along on one last case, but then she plans to be done with him. Said case involves a man whose body was found high in a tree. But the evidence soon points to murder and takes them into the world of illegal gambling and drug smuggling.
The Lowdown:
There aren’t too many shows left that I actually miss over the summer. But I missed Castle and I’m glad to see it back and picking up right where it left off. Fillion is his usual smarming (i.e. smarmy and charming) self and he and Katic maintain the same chemistry they possessed last season. Katic’s sporting some longer hair by the way, which don’t suck. This episode deals with a normal white, middle-aged businessman who ends up a tree literally when he apparently commits suicide by jumping off a nearby building. But Beckett and Castle soon discover that he was murdered by strangulation with someone who had a finger that didn’t leave as deep a mark as the other nine. What’s even more unusual is that the victim’s body is stolen from the coroner’s wagon, with Castle inside, at gunpoint soon after by three masked gunmen.
Castle and Beckett’s investigation leads them to find that the victim had been lying to his wife about still having his job. It turns out he had been laid off months before and had gotten involved with illegal poker games in Chinatown. His body is soon found again, with his organs removed. The victim’s gambling debts to a tattooed Russian mafia guy led to him drug muling for some local dealers, who were the ones who stole his body in order to recover their product. Having the victim, who’s a Joe Everybody rather than the usual suspicious type, muling for them is good business. This soon leads Castle to go undercover as a card player in order to smoke out the tattooed Russian. When things go south, it’s up to Beckett to pull a quick change in the street (always welcome, FYI) and pose as his Russian girlfriend (with not the best accent, sorry Stana) in order to bail him out and catch the bad guy.
If there’s one quibble about this episode, is that the murder didn’t have the same panache as previous ones (except for the body being stolen of course) and was actually solved quite too easily. Beckett and Castle went through the usual cloues to ferret out the evildoers, but in the end, it was a bit too simplistic. But no quibbles about Fillion and Katic’s work together: it’s as good as ever. Fillion got to play up a photo shoot with two sexy models in cop outfits and Katic played to her hurt and anger with Castle meddling in her mother’s murder. Not a spectacular return, but a solid one nonetheless. I look forward to a full season this time out (no 10-episode bullshit) of this show and even more bizarre murders and storylines.