Castle: Hell to Pay (8x21)

It's hard for me to review this episode knowing that next week may be the last of this show ever, and even if we do get a Season Nine, it will be sans Beckett. This entire season of Castle has felt pretty joyless to me, which is a shame because this show used to really brighten my day. Let's take a look.

Cons:

I felt like the humor in this episode was in very poor taste a lot of the time. For the most part, this show can toe the line between offensive and funny, and it avoids making too many jokes at the expense of dead people and their loved ones. This week, we had this weird sort of thing where Alexis and Hayley were set upon by a scary dude with an axe, and then Castle got freaked out that somebody wanted to kill him... and Beckett kept pulling pranks on everyone. She got Castle and then later she got Alexis and Hayley with Castle's assistance. It felt a little cruel for Beckett to take such obvious pleasure in scaring people. I get that it was supposed to be a prank, but let's think about this for a second. People are dead. Even though Beckett obviously doesn't believe in the supernatural explanation that Castle has come up with, it doesn't change the fact that people have died and other people's lives might be in real danger. That doesn't seem like something you should joke about.

The main plot here involves a man escaped from a mental health facility. This guy apparently believes that the antichrist is this 29-year-old business man in the area. He wants to kill this guy before he turns thirty and ushers in the apocalypse. Castle quickly buys in to the theory that the guy really is the antichrist. This doesn't bother me on principal. I don't mind Castle's silly theories and everybody else's logical denials. What bothers me is that antichrist or not, there was no exploration of the supposedly demonic guy's true motives. He certainly came across as a creepy slimy business man. Was there anything to that? Or was he really a stand-up guy? We'll never know. Instead, the solution to the whole mystery was just that the guy was crazy, and his craziness ruined lives.

Alexis and Hayley have this strong bond that I could, in theory, enjoy. If they're going for the romance angle, that is. Is the age difference prohibitive? How old is Hayley supposed to be, anyway? Regardless, I doubt that Alexis and Hayley are going to fall in love in the next season. If not that, then the bond between them just sort of bothers me. I think I've mentioned this before, but it just reminds me of the bond we don't get to see between Alexis and Beckett. That would have been much more interesting. Hayley still doesn't seem to have a place in the story. I remain perplexed by her presence.

One last thing - was this episode supposed to be scary? I couldn't tell if they were going for an ironic not-scary horror themed episode, or if I was actually supposed to be spooked by anything that was going on here. In either case, the fact that I couldn't tell the intent does not exactly bode well.

Pros:

Despite finding the humor in this episode a little off-putting, I did enjoy Castle's belief in crazy theories. At the end, Castle asks the guy point-blank if he's the antichrist, and the guy just kind of chuckles and doesn't answer. I always get a kick out of it when this show suggests something supernatural might actually be real. As Castle shakes his hand at the end, he wonders: "did I just literally make a deal with the devil?!" Also, I know it's stupid that there's a secret safe in Castle's PI office that leads to a whole secret room that nobody knew about for some dumb reason. But even though I know it's stupid, I admit that I rather liked that plot twist. The idea that there could be more secrets hidden in that office is actually kind of fun to consider.

Kevin Ryan is probably my pick for MVP this week, even though he didn't have much going on. He was just really killing it with the quippy comments, promising Castle that he would run down the list of suspects against the list of fallen angels, rolling his eyes at Castle's latest theory... and then, surprise, he knows Latin! There's this one scene where somebody is recounting what the murder victim had said in Latin before dying, and Castle and Ryan both translate it as: "the end is upon us." I loved the fact that Ryan knew what it meant. He's such a smart cookie.

I like Alexis being around more, even if the Hayley thing doesn't quite make sense to me. If we do get a Season Nine, maybe we can flesh out Alexis' character even more, and develop a stronger relationship between Alexis and Hayley. I think there might be something valuable hidden there, but whatever it is, it just hasn't been tapped into yet.

Unfortunately, this is all I really have to say in the "pros" section of this one. If this is indeed the penultimate episode of Castle, it does not bode well for my final impressions of the show. Still, I do hope that ABC throws in the towel and lets the show die with some dignity.

5/10