Castle: In Plane Sight (7x21)

Yay Alexis! I'm pretty happy with Alexis. The rest of the episode? Well... let's go over what happened.

Castle and Alexis are on their way to London for Castle to attend a writing conference. Alexis announces that she has plans of her own when they get there, and Castle is upset that Alexis doesn't want to spend the whole trip together. After some turbulence, which makes Castle nervous, he notices that the flight attendants look nervous. He goes to ask them what's wrong. The pilot tells him that the air marshal aboard the plane seems to be missing. Since Castle works with the NYPD, he's the closest thing they have to law enforcement. Castle, along with the flight attendants and Alexis, sets out to solve the mystery.

First of all, they find the air marshal, dead, down in the cargo hold. Their first suspect is a man who has links to terrorism. However, this proves to be a false lead, as he only sneaked his way onto the plane so that he could get home to his ailing mother. He's on the no-fly list thanks to his cousin, who was involved in terrorist activity. Next, they track down the air marshal's phone and discover texts that lead them to another passenger. This woman seems to be the logical suspect- and sure enough, they find the air marshal's gun in her bag! Her story is that she was the air marshal's girlfriend, and she was convinced he was cheating on her. She disguised herself and got onto the plane to see what he was up to. However, when they tell her that the air marshal is dead, she seems completely shocked. Castle finds himself believing her.

Finally, they discover that the air marshal normally wouldn't have taken that flight. He did so because he was payed by somebody to act as a guard for a very expensive watch. An intern for an auctioneer was wearing the watch, but somebody drugged him to get him to go to sleep and then switched the watch out for a fake. Who? One of the flight attendants! She was upset because the airline had recently restructured their program and taken away the employee's pensions, just as she was about to retire. She wanted to get the watch, worth millions. She hadn't planned on killing anybody, but the air marshal interfered. Alexis talks her down and gets the gun from her. The case is solved.

I do have a couple of complaints. Castle was all panicked about working the case and finding the killer. He talks to Beckett and the others on the ground, and Beckett has to work him through his insecurities about being able to get the job done. I found myself annoyed by that. Castle has been in much tougher spots before. He's had to take charge before, too. Why is he suddenly so anxious about it?

I also thought the absence of Martha in this episode was a bit troubling. Shouldn't Beckett have called her and told her that her son and granddaughter were in terrible danger? It could have been interesting to see Martha come to the precinct and interact with Kate and the boys.

But now onto the good stuff.

The case itself was really straightforward and easy to understand. There were several different angles it could have gone down, and the evidence led clearly from one suspect to the other, before finally the truth came out. I was really glad the one guy didn't end up having ties to ISIS, since it was a nice deflection of a tired and frankly racist trope. The "crazy jealous girlfriend" angle didn't pan out either. In the end, it was a very disgruntled employee who had been cheated by the company she had worked for all her life.

I appreciated the way that each of these minor characters really had a chance to breathe and develop. I felt like each of the flight attendants and suspects were given their fair share of screen time, which is pretty impressive when working in such a limited time frame.

Alexis was the star of the show. She's a pretty special kid, and we really got to see that play out here. She examines the body with Lanie's help, and is able to give substantial assistance and moral support to her father along the way. In the end, it was Alexis that took control of the situation and took the gun from the guilty flight attendant. Castle was so proud of her, and as a viewer, so was I. She's a remarkable person.

I don't think there's much more to say. While this episode definitely missed out on some opportunities, what we did get was pretty great.

8/10