Castle: Room 147 (6x16)

This episode made me smile. It was a lovely little inversion of what you expect from a procedural cop show, and it had a lot of really humorous and surprising elements in it. Also, there was a fantastic subplot that showcased Alexis and Beckett's relationship. Let's dive in.

So, we start off with a fairly ordinary murder in a hotel room. They discover that the victim was a struggling actor, and they notice that his behavior upon checking into the hotel was quite strange - he insisted on Room 147, even though all of the rooms are identical, and he was seen on a security camera texting someone on a flip phone, even though the phone registered in his name was different. Castle is excited about the intriguing case, but things seem to wrap up quite quickly as a woman comes to the precinct and admits to the crime. She is able to describe the crime scene in great detail, and so it seems that the case is solved.

However, this confessor has no real memory of why she killed the man, and she says that the past few weeks have been really fuzzy for her. Then, a man comes in to the precinct and also admits to murdering the victim. He is able to supply the same amount of detail as the first confessor. And then, a third person confesses to the crime as well! Totally baffled, Castle and Beckett try to find a link between these three people. They end up tracking down a cult group based on a symbol that all three of them had been doodling. None of the confessors remember belonging to this cult, but eventually the answer becomes clear: the cult was drugging them to forget their involvement in a project to which the victim played a crucial role.

Apparently, the victim's job as an actor landed him a role in a video made by this cult. He was to be a physical manifestation of the problems the cult members were having, and they were  supposed to enact fictional revenge on him by "shooting" him. Things started to get too real for these patients however, and the cult was forced to end the program. In the end, it turns out that a woman whose brother died because of the cult decided to punish them by killing the victim. She set up the crime to match the video so that these different patients would come forward and confess.

There's also a subplot where Alexis is trying to see out her lease even though she and Pi broke up and she's struggling to live their on her own. She is having to work really hard to make up the money. Castle wants her to move back home, but Alexis refuses. Beckett is worried that it has something to do with her, so she takes Alexis out to lunch and talks to her. It turns out that Alexis is ashamed because her dad was right - she wasn't ready to be on her own. But she feels like she needs to see the lease through to prove she can handle herself. Beckett tells her that she's punished herself enough, and that her dad wants her to come home, and that it's okay if she's not ready to be an adult yet. At the end of the episode, Alexis comes home.

So let's start with the things that I didn't like.

1. The resolution to the case. The identity of the murderer came right out of left field. And I know it's always supposed to be a surprise, or whatever, but this was too much. The murderer got maybe two minutes of total screen time. We knew nothing about her. I literally thought her character was just an extra. She had no noticeable impression upon the audience upon meeting her, and then we don't see her again until Beckett and Castle have caught her for the crime. Very sloppy, I thought.

2. Lack of Ryan and Espo. They were hardly in this one. You could have written them out entirely, in fact. I'd love to see an episode that really does focus on the crime, and we could see our team of four really solve it together, with each of them contributing important facts and insight. I feel like we haven't had that in a while.

3. This might be a nitpick... while I did love the Alexis subplot, I still feel a bit cheated about the whole Pi thing. We didn't really get to see what happened with them, and I feel like I did at the beginning of Season Six, where we had Beckett's awesome new job, and then that plot fell through and we just reset back to where we used to be and never talked about it again. That's essentially what's happening, on a smaller scale, with Alexis. She had a whole arc about finding independence and all that, and now she's back at home. Hopefully they don't treat it like it never happened.

But then there are the good parts.

1. The rest of the case! Other than the anticlimactic resolution to the case, everything about this one was great. The multiple confessions, the cult leader, Beckett's increasing exasperation and Castle's increasing excitement. I was really curious about how it was all going to unfold. Very well done.

2. Alexis and Beckett's relationship! I simply love that this show doesn't forget that Alexis exists. She's very much a part of Castle's life, and so she's a part of Beckett's life as well. It was nice to see that this relationship isn't always easy, but both women are willing to work on it. Castle, despite having such strong and dynamic characters in Beckett, Martha, and Alexis, still doesn't showcase relationships between women all that often. I was happy to see it here.

3. Beckett and Castle's general adorableness. I've said it before and I'll say it again - this show rocks at keeping the chemistry between the two leads, even though their tension is resolved and they are in a happy committed relationship. It's just so sweet how much they love each other, and how much their relationship is very apparent in all of their interactions, even while they're working.

Okay, so there you are! I started this review by expressing great enjoyment for this episode, and I do stand by that. However, after writing all of this out, I realize that the way they resolved the crime is quite a large flaw, and I'll have to mark it down for that.

7/10