Castle: Witness for the Prosecution (8x10)

This episode had a rather clever setup! I enjoyed it quite a bit. Let's jump in.

Cons:

The Castle and Beckett sneaking around thing is still a part of the story, unfortunately, and it still drags things down. Luckily, it wasn't as big a part of the plot this week as it has been in the past. But even so, I'm steaming mad for Ryan and Esposito's sake. On top of that, we actually see Vikram this week, and his presence does so very little to advance the LokSat plot that he might as well not have been there at all. It's painful how they're dragging out this whole conspiracy plot so it can all come together for the finale. Really not subtle, guys.

Pros:

But all of that stupid stuff that's been dragging down Season Eight so much was kept to a merciful minimum, and there were a lot of cool things to enjoy.

First of all, the setup was atypical for a show of this type. Instead of starting with a murder to be solved, we start several months later, after the murderer has been apprehended. Castle, as an eye-witness to the crime, is asked to testify to what he saw on the stand. Whenever I watch procedurals and a really interesting villain comes along, I'm always curious to see what happens after they've been caught by the police. I want to see the trial drama as well as the police drama sometimes. And this episode delivered a clever mix of both. Of course, the twist is that the person that Castle believed was the murderer was actually innocent. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. By the end of the episode, the real murderer has been apprehended - it was the husband all along.

I really appreciated that despite all the surprising twists, such as that the supposed murderer and her supposed victim were having an affair, the answer was actually very standard. Often, crimes of passion are between spouses. It's sad and maybe a bit mundane, but it's got to be the answer every once in a while.

Despite my burning frustration that Espo and Ryan are being kept out of the loop on Castle and Beckett's relationship, I did enjoy seeing the team working together once again. They had a lot of fun moments where the four of them really felt like a cohesive unit, working off of one another and each contributing something different to the case. It's been a long time since we've seen that, and I appreciated it.

Also, Caleb Brown was in this episode. He was the public defender assigned to help the supposed murderer find justice. The best scene of the whole episode came near the beginning, when Caleb questioned Castle on the stand. He brought up Castle's memory loss, and how he himself had been accused of murder once and had been innocent all along. He got Castle to admit that there was a chance that he was wrong about what he saw, and from there the case got very messy. It was an intense scene, full of drama and a great buildup. I really felt for Castle in that position, but when I started to listen to what Caleb Brown was saying, I found myself drawn into it too.

I don't care at all about Caleb's connection to LokSat or whatever... I really wish this A-plot wasn't around to ruin genuinely interesting character development. But even so, I liked the idea that one of the people that Beckett is working to take down is also shown as a good person fighting for the justice of an innocent soul. He's obviously not a soulless monster, which is always nice when dealing with TV show villains. It keeps things more interesting.

Another thing I enjoyed about this week's episode was that Castle got to get up to some of his goofy antics from the earlier days of the show. He got to strut around and be proud of himself for being a writer, even promising a key informant that he'd name a character after her in his next book. She declares that she wants to be the villain, and he agrees. Castle also insults the judge working on the case so that he'll be thrown in a holding cell and get a chance to talk to the suspect. All very silly, over the top, and highly unrealistic... but I was reminded of the good ol' days.

So, there you have it! This is probably the best episode we've had in the whole season. It hardly infuriated me at all, because the A-plot developments were kept to such a minimum. What we got instead was a fun and exciting investigation with a victorious ending, and a lot of cute Castle/Beckett moments to boot.

8.5/10