Castle - Episode 6.18 - The Way of the Ninja - Review

After the Beckett-Centric episode, it was the boy’s time to shine. ‘The Way of the Ninja’ provided with a lot of seriously WTF moments, but managed to balance itself out with its continuous stream of laugh out loud moments, mostly attributable to the cast facial expressions in the face of all this madness. (I also mostly chuckled at every mention of The Godess, loved it!)



The episode starts with the murder of a Japanese ballet dancer and Perlmutter taking the mickey out of our favorite writer. When the investigation leads Castle and Beckett to an abandoned factory and the murder weapon is stolen out of Castle’s hands by a ninja who disappears in a cloud of smoke, things start to get interesting. The murder investigation was fun to watch unravel mostly because of the ninja aspect of the case, because as for the mystery of Jade’s murderer, not the best one yet. As soon as I saw them at the boyfriend’s house, I could tell the father was involved, and I sure can’t be the only one.

The murder weapon now missing, Castle and Beckett must explain to their Captain what happened, which made for some great moments. Castle’s jumped into the ninja theory 100%, but Beckett, our dear old Beckett, with her discouraged glance is still siding with reason (Wouldn’t we all be?) and stating out the facts. As per usual, both passively bicker trying to prove the other wrong, but Gates (third wheel much?) is not one to waste time on theories, she wants the case to move forward.

After being blatantly told that ninja’s do not exist by a women from the Japanese consulate, (or thought so at the time) Castle finds himself unbroken, still hanging on to his scheme.


Now that Beckett is out of the precinct, catching up with her friend, Castle has the possibility to shadow the boys. As I recall, when they’re together, weird tend to happen. (Remember the Elvis impersonations? Yes, that happened.) Thinking they were going to investigate a Tea Import House, they end up trying to gather up information about their victim in a Geisha House. Ryan singing some ‘What I like about you’ Karaoke, was absolutely my favorite scene of the episode. They really don’t use him enough.

“Was it that bad?”

Of course Castle forgets to call Beckett, and just as he’s about to repair (or attempt to) his misdoings, ninjas attack. Yes, ninjas, plural, there are two ninja fighting it in front of our trio of merry men. Once again, they have hazardous task of informing Gates. And thank you Gates for pointing out the obvious, “This makes no sense.” But seriously, who cares? Right? I sure don’t; I’m just here enjoying the lighter side of this procedural crime solving show.

What would be Castle without our dose of Caskett drama? There was the usual, Beckett freaking out about the wedding. After having to spend the evening with her fabulous friend from high school, (at the first mention of an old friend, I was kind of hoping for the reappearance of Maddie, anyone else?) she realises the married life has rendered her boring. This leads the logician of a detective to worry about her own impending nuptials, taking it out on her fiancé who didn’t get around to calling. I do not know if I am the only one on this but, the promise, the vow to keep the romance alive, to not be boring, felt like it was in more ways a promise from the writers to the audience than from Castle to Beckett. Now that I have learned what the moonlight curse is, I feel I should probably plug it in somewhere, so here it is.

The chase of the ninjas ended with a showdown between good and bad, it was visually captivating.
I will just end with this quote, “And you’re afraid we’re going to become boring?”

You guys afraid they’ll become boring?