Castle: Limelight (6x13)

This was a thoroughly enjoyable, if somewhat silly, episode of Castle. It actually reminded me a lot of something we might have seen in the earlier days, where the case-of-the-week aspect was fun and silly yet still poignant, and the experiences of the people involved actually connected to the experiences of our leading characters in a meaningful way. Let's take a look at the plot.

Mandy Sutton is a teen pop star who turns up dead. The team is on the case, but then it turns out that Mandy wasn't the victim after all. Instead, her body double, a girl named Claire, was the one murdered. The team now struggles to determine who the intended target was - Mandy, or Claire? And does the killer know that he or she has not succeeded in killing Mandy Sutton? Suspects include Mandy's druggie ex, and her more recent boyfriend, who was upset when a paparazzo caught a picture of Mandy kissing this ex. Neither of these boys are the guilty ones. It turns out that Mandy never did kiss her ex-boyfriend. It was Claire, who was part of a scheme to make some money by setting up Mandy to fall. And who planned the whole thing? Mandy's mother/manager, who wanted to keep her in the papers as a party girl to garner more attention.

Alexis gets caught up in the case when she and Mandy accidentally wind up with each other's phones. Alexis ends up ranting to Mandy about Pi. She's not sure that she wants Pi around anymore, and she thinks she may have made a big mistake in moving in with him. But she doesn't want to tell her father, who has been writing Pi a recommendation for an internship.

While all of this is going on, Beckett experiences the perils of being in a relationship with someone famous. In the papers, Castle is being gossiped about, and the stories say that he's gotten back together with his ex-wife. In the end, Beckett decides to put out a wedding announcement in the papers, because she wants the world to know the truth.

Okay, so what do I dislike about this episode, first of all? Well, not much! Not very much Ryan and Esposito, but I understand that we can't have episodes focused on them all the time. I also wasn't entirely thrilled with the Beckett/Castle plot. It was cute, but I'm starting to feel impatient for them to make real strides towards their wedding. Maybe they're just moving too slow for me... but this is a nitpick.

Honestly, this was one of the best episodes of the season. Here are some of my favorite elements:

- The character of Mandy Sutton was obviously supposed to be a commentary on some of the teen stars who have turned to drugs and partying later in life. (Most recently, I'm thinking of Amanda Bynes, and, of course Justin  Bieber, but Lohan is a standard example). However, Mandy resisted simplicity. She had doubts and fears and she was a truly compassionate person when it came down to it. She had fallen in love with someone, and you really felt like that love was genuine.

- The twists and turns of the case itself were really well done this week. To be honest, I don't watch these types of shows primarily for the cases, but I was really impressed by how well this one went. I was taken in by the different plot twists, and when it was finally revealed that it was the mother, it all made sense. I was also pleased by all of the different characters involved, and how they all managed to carve out their own unique identity in such a short space of time.

- Alexis. I'm glad to see that the plot thread with Pi is still continuing. It will be interesting to see how she navigates the next step in her life, as she realizes that she's made a mistake and moved in with her boyfriend too soon. I appreciate how real this all felt. Alexis wasn't dealing with a nasty breakup. Nobody did anything wrong, exactly... it's just that the relationship didn't work out. That's a very human experience that can be really hard to deal with, but it doesn't have a lot of drama, and thus is not often portrayed on TV. I enjoyed seeing it here.

There's a lot more that I could say, but I think I'll leave it here. What a fun episode!

9/10