Castle: I, Witness (7x13)

I didn't like this episode. I'm saying it upfront. And since I didn't like it, but it didn't, like, piss me off or anything, I probably won't be very verbose about it. Let's just jump in.

So, Castle gets a case that involves working with an old acquaintance of his from high school. She is worried that her husband is cheating on her. Castle takes the case, even though he feels it's beneath him. He finds out that the husband is indeed cheating, but when he goes over to give the pictures to his client, he finds her dead body being dragged out of the house! Castle tries to chase down the car that's taking her away, but ends up clubbed over the head for his trouble. He wakes up later, and the investigation begins.

Castle is convinced that his client's husband murdered her. The evidence isn't there at first, but slowly things start to look more and more suspicious. At one point Castle thinks that maybe the victim never died at all (they haven't found her body), but then the body does turn up, and there's DNA evidence of her husband under her fingernails. When they go to arrest the husband, though, they find that he has hanged himself.

Castle is uneasy with this, because he doesn't believe that this man would kill himself. Turns out, he was right - in the end, we discover that it was the lawyer representing the Whitfields who killed both of them. She was doing it out of revenge for the death of Mr. Whitfield's first wife, who was the lawyer's sorority sister.

After this trying and emotional case, Castle begins to question if he's cut out for this life as a PI. Beckett encourages him to sleep on it, because he worked so hard to get this far.

There's also a brief subplot - back when Espo and Lanie were still dating, the two of them were going to go on a couple's ski trip with Ryan and Jenny. Now that Espo and Lanie have broken up, Ryan and Jenny have been trying to pressure Espo to find someone else to date so that they can go on the ski trip. They set him up with a girl, and Espo reluctantly decides to go on the blind date. Turns out that Ryan and Jenny set up a Match.com profile for Espo, and that that's how they found this girl. He's angry at first, but then decides to have some fun and get back at Ryan for going behind his back. He meets up with another girl who liked his profile on Match.com. This girl is not the kind of person Ryan and Jenny want to spend the weekend with.

Okay, so let's start with my problems. I actually have quite a few.

First of all, the case was really convoluted in this one. There was no way to predict the result, and there were too many red herrings and false conclusions. It was way too crazy and twisted. I don't want cases to be too simple, but I also don't like it when they're indecipherable. It's no fun if the murderer ends up being entirely out of left field.

Then there's the fact that Castle is questioning his PI career again. They have to pick a side, okay? Is Castle ever going to come back to the precinct, or is this the new setup for the show? Either way, they have to make a commitment. It's lovely to watch Castle struggle to make this adjustment, but I do hope they stick to their guns on this.

Also, there was no Gates, Martha, or Alexis in this episode. Gates' absence was a convenient excuse to get Castle back into the precinct temporarily, but I was a little annoyed that nobody mentioned that he wasn't supposed to be there. It's not like Beckett to flagrantly disobey the rules without even commenting on it. And, in general, I just miss Martha and Alexis whenever they aren't there.

Finally, there was that subplot. There's nothing particularly funny about Ryan setting Javi up on a dating site... it didn't really lead to any humor. And the moment where Espo talks about how he's going to bring a girl named "Trixie" to their ski weekend? Well, this was just sexist. The implication was that Trixie was not a "serious" kind of girl and was really just going to be looking for sex, and that this means that she wouldn't be a good person to get to know. It was just... annoying that Espo would pick out a girl specifically to annoy Ryan and Jenny. What is up with that?

Not everything sucked, though. At the center of this episode was the relationship between Beckett and Castle, and that's always excellently portrayed. Beckett's support of Castle is really lovely. She wants what's best for him, and she's willing to trust him with a lot of crazy theories, because she knows he's good at what he does. I think my favorite moment of the episode was at the very beginning, when Beckett asks Castle if he wants to play hookie with her. Of course, Beckett will be doing paperwork, so it's not really hookie, but maybe they can take a break and have a nap! This was just such a lovely moment of domestic bliss, and I really appreciated it.

I think that's where I'll leave it. This episode just wasn't doing anything for me. Also, I really want to know what happened to Castle when he disappeared. When are we getting back to that?!

4/10