Castle: Meme is Murder (7x05)

Okay, so... social commentary. The pros and cons of social media in our growing technological world. Wow, this was not even subtle at all. To be honest, it got a bit cloying. But let's look at what actually happened first, and then I'll talk about this some more.

Castle and Beckett are put on a case involving an internet celebrity. This young girl was very popular on "snap-o-matic," where she would post pictures including one-sentence reviews of different establishments. She was murdered by someone who had been following her - just before her death, she was sent pictures of herself to her own phone. The killer, after the murder, takes pictures of the body and posts them to his own snap-o-matic account.

As Castle and Beckett investigate, they learn that the people at the snap-o-matic HQ can't help them, since the site is run on an interface that provides anonymity to its users. The killer sends the police messages through his snap-o-matic, and through these hints, Castle figures out that the killer is after another famous internet kid. They rush to protect her, but it's too late - she isn't killed, but another one of her internet friends is. The killer is getting bolder and bolder.

For a while, they suspect an ex-cop who worked in cyber-crime. But no - it turns out that the murderer was targeting this ex-cop as well. At first they look in his files for cyber criminals that could be responsible, but then they realize - they aren't looking for a criminal... they're looking for a former victim! After snagging a picture off a security camera, the pieces fall together, and the ex-cop is able to ID the murderer.

Beckett and the others go to find him, but this kid has got some serious tricks up his sleeve. He has taken the two brothers who worked at snap-o-matic, and hooked them up to electrical circuits. He then incites the internet to vote for which brother should live. When the timer runs down, the brother with the least amount of votes will get an electric jolt to the heart, and be killed. So, they're on a tight schedule.

While Espo and Ryan work with the snap-o-matic people to try and track down a gps signal to the pictures, Beckett works on the kid. She tries to get him to fess up to the location of the two brothers, but he won't be budged. As the time grows shorter and shorter, Beckett has to use desperate measures to get what she needs. She ends up telling the kid that he's weak, and that he'll never be anything but a victim. This infuriates him, and he lets slip something that leads the ex-cop to remember the locker room where the kid used to be bullied.

Ryan and Espo are able to arrive just in time to save the lives of the two snap-o-matic brothers. The murderer is put away, but Beckett muses that in arresting him and sending him to jail, they're giving him his fame, which is sort of what he wanted all along.

A very minor subplot involves Castle creating a web-commercial for his newest book. He's excited about it, but when it finally airs, he sees something quite different from the dignified advertisement he was expecting. Instead, it's an auto-tuned video of him singing about his book, messing up his own name, and knocking things over. Beckett, Martha, and Alexis are all delighted, while Castle is horrified to see that the video is going viral.

Yikes, where to start?

Okay - lesson number one: when you're doing social commentary, you want to make sure that it's a) subtle and b) relevant. And boy was this NOT subtle. It was everywhere! The killer used the dangerous new technology of 3-D printing to create a key that got him into his victim's apartment, and later his second victim's car. The "snap-o-matic" (seriously cringe-worthy name, by the way) website becomes a platform for the killer's soapbox, and the terrible dangers of anonymity on the internet make it impossible for the killer to be found. Then there's the whole "once it's on the internet it's there forever" thing. Sure, it's a good point, but did they have to hammer it in so much?

And then there's the relevance issue. Sure, technology can be dangerous, but the NYPD uses it to track down photos and help solve the cases, too. What about that aspect to the story? This "technology is dangerous" thing is not new, it's not particularly thought-provoking, and it wasn't handled with any particular adroitness or uniqueness here. Castle's little commercial thing was also a failure, since I'm pretty sure the whole auto-tuned youtube video thing is old hat by now. Things move fast on the internet, guys. You gotta keep up.

Also, the suspenseful ending to the episode was a bit difficult to feel connected to. I didn't mind the idea of the "netslayer," as he wanted to be called, attempting to kill someone without even being in the room. That was actually pretty clever. But when he slipped up and gave a clue to Beckett, I was rolling my eyes. It was a weak moment in the script.

That's not to say that there was nothing at all to enjoy in this episode. For example, the title is actually pretty interesting. People thing of "memes" as funny pictures on the internet, but it's actually a lot more complicated than that. Memes are sort of... culturally pervasive thoughts or ideas. They seem to come from nowhere, and then they latch on to the minds of a collective society. "Memes" as we understand them on the internet are popular because of this phenomenon of "meme theory," as this idea of ideas, if you will, is called. I'm not an expert in this field by any means, so take it with a grain of salt, but I do think there's a legitimate social commentary here about the way that technology informs and adds to a society with an incredibly small attention span. The fact that people were actually voting to choose which of the two brothers would die is an example of how technology of this sort can be desensitizing to people. They can't understand the reality of the murders - all they see is the sensational aspect.

I'll also praise some of the "netslayer" twists and turns, because I think this guy was actually a pretty intense adversary for our crack team of detectives. In particular, I loved when he released a picture of Beckett and Castle before the case broke, laughing and enjoying coffee. He made it look like they were resting on the job, and that altered the way the public was responding to the case. That was very clever.

Also, even though Castle's commercial parody wasn't all that funny in and of itself, I did like the idea of Castle having to eat his words and see how his grand, dignified perception of himself is far from the reality. It was a decent moment of comedy, even if the method of the video itself didn't hit its mark. I mean, come on. They could have done something way funnier with this idea!

Finally, I mentioned that there was a weak script moment when the killer accidentally let a hint slip during examination. Even though that was a bit silly, I liked the buildup to it, especially with how Beckett handled the case. She knew she needed to go hard and get results, no matter how terrible she had to sound. Great moment for Beckett. She's great at her job.

I'll leave it there. As you've probably noticed, I was not a fan of this episode. I think it was too blatant and very unsophisticated, and it didn't offer me anything new in the way of characterization.

4.5/10