Castle: Child's Play (7x04)

I'm going to apologize for my brevity in advance.

Basically, this week we get a case that starts off with a murder in an ice cream truck. Beckett, Ryan and Espo track down leads involving the Russian mob scene, while Castle follows a different lead. Inside the ice cream truck, the team find a permission slip from a 2nd grade classroom. Castle goes to talk to the kids, trying to figure out the witness.

While there, he butts heads with the teacher, who is protective of her students. Castle makes friends with a couple of kids who he think might be the witness, but once he gets them to open up, turns out they're not. One little girl asks for help with a bully, and when Castle tells her to stand up for herself, she punches him. Turns out, the bully was the one who knew something about the case. But he wasn't the witness - it was his older sister. This sister was connected with the first of the victims. From there, the rest of the case is solve-able.

Meanwhile, Alexis has been pampering Castle by making him food, checking in on him constantly, and even loading a locator app onto his phone. Castle is at first willing to let this continue, since he gets the perks, but eventually he and Beckett agree that it's weird. Castle talks to Alexis, telling her that part of being a grownup is knowing that you can't always protect the people that you love. Alexis reluctantly agrees to back down a bit.

Cons? The case got a bit twisty there in the middle. You'll notice that I didn't write down a lot of details, and part of that was because the case wasn't very interesting and it was a bit hard to follow.

Not enough Ryan and Espo! I always miss them when they're not around.

Pros: I love the idea of Castle hanging out around kids because of his own child-like nature. He must have been such an excellent father to Alexis when she was little. In particular, his tea party scene was precious. I also liked the teacher - she was a good character with a surprising amount of complexity to her.

The case, while not the best, did have the plot line of idealists-gone-wrong, which I think is always interesting. Sometimes it's important to remember that crime isn't black and white... people can have the best intentions.

The subplot with Alexis didn't take up a lot of screen time, but it was my favorite part of the episode to watch. I loved the parallels that they drew between Alexis' behavior now, and Castle's behavior after Alexis was kidnapped. It was so sweet to see how much she cared, and how scared she was of losing her dad. More Alexis is always welcome!

Okay! I think that's it. Sorry again for the lack of details.

7.5/10