Castle: Mr. & Mrs. Castle (8x08)

Okay, I don't mean to be so negative but... what the hell was that?

Cons:

Castle and Beckett are back together, proving once and for all that their separation was total nonsense. Nothing but a cheap narrative ploy to mix up things that did not need to be mixed up. Castle learns the truth about Beckett's plans to take down these evil drug people, and he confronts Beckett, asking her why in hell she had to break up with him to do this. Beckett goes on with some nonsense about protecting him, but Castle shoots down that argument just as firmly as I've been shooting it down all season - he points out that Beckett could have told Castle the whole truth and then they could have staged a breakup and took down the bad guy together. Castle says that Beckett is clearly broken, needing the obsession to drive her.

All of this would actually be a good point if Beckett's real behavior had backed it up during the season. But she "pushed Castle away" in name only, continuing to see him on a regular basis, and not fighting very hard against his attempts to fight his way back into her life. How does that indicate a broken person unable to form a good relationship? And how is that supposed to protect him from the baddies? It makes no sense. And if that's the explanation we're going with, why on earth did Castle forgive her so easily? It's pretty weak.

Haley and Vikram's silly hacker duel formed something of a climax for this episode. Castle tries to hack into Beckett's network to find out the truth, while Vikram works on frying Castle's system to prevent his finding it out. The whole thing was punctuated by a lot of frantic typing and diversionary phone calls between Castle and Beckett. Beckett's stated reason for shutting Castle out is, again, that she needs to protect him. But if Castle is hacking into a system that Beckett is sure is safe from the bad guys, how exactly does that put him in danger? If she knows that he's on to her to the degree that he's got Haley nearly bypassing Vikram's defenses, surely she knows that frying his system isn't going to stop him from finding out the truth? The whole thing was supposed to have the feel of other Castle episode climaxes - drama mixed with humor, mounting tension and an exciting conclusion. I felt none of it in this scene.

Vikram is unlikable and bland. This episode tried to make him more interesting by adding in a couple of comedic moments about a strip club that he'd found as a HQ for his and Beckett's secret investigation. All of these little jokes fell flat. We also found out that he texted Beckett during her anniversary with Castle not because he had a legitimate lead, but because he wanted to pull her away from Castle. What the hell is this dude's deal? The only acceptable explanation for his completely unlikable behavior is if we learn he's been a spy working for the bad guys the whole time. Otherwise I just find him totally boring and unnecessary.

This episode didn't really feel like a mid-season finale, especially since it had almost no time with most of our characters. Espo, Ryan, Martha, and Alexis all had only minimal parts to play. I was particularly disappointed with the lack of Alexis. I thought it might be interesting to see if she would help her father spy on Beckett or whether she, like Martha, would think it a gross breach of privacy.

The case was practically a footnote in this episode, although it had the elements of a promising story. A woman is murdered on a cruise ship and tossed overboard. She had a bag of drugs down her throat, suggesting that she was a drug mule, but things get intense for Beckett and Vikram when the heroin inside the victim ends up being a match for the stuff that Vulcan Simmons was pushing before his death. From there, the victim is basically a side note in a larger problem. But since nothing really gets cleared up on the larger front either, the whole execution of the plot comes across as messy and unfocused.

Pros:

I guess I'm happy that Beckett and Castle have patched things up... But in reality I still think Beckett's motivations were weak as all hell, and I still think Castle is forgiving her all too quickly. But now that we've gotten all that weak separation nonsense out of the way, I'm hopeful that the second half of the season can make a stronger showing.

I did like the moments of humor in this episode, especially Castle with the dancers on the cruise ship, and Beckett questioning the old ladies who live on the boat year-round. These moments of levity, and indeed the whole segment with Beckett and Castle solving a crime together, was really reminiscent of the good ol' days, where we didn't have to have awkward forced excuses for Castle to be helping the NYPD. Hopefully we're going to get back to that now, and end this season on strong footing.

That's what I've got. It's not often that the "cons" section is easily three times as large as the "pros" in one of my reviews. This season of Castle has been really troubling, unfortunately. But maybe they can still pull it back from the ruins!

4.5/10