ABC's Castle turned to Shakespeare for the inspiration for tonight's episode. Though Alexis, Hayley, and, more surprisingly, Lanie were absent, that failed to put a damper on the theatrics coming from the rest of the regular cast - leading the way on that front was Detective Ryan. Christine Roum wrote "Much Ado About Murder" which was directed by Hanelle Culpepper.
While someone tried three times in last week's episode to create a murder victim, in this episode the deal was done much more rapidly. Zane Cannon, a stage actor, was rehearsing on stage on his own when, after investigating a noise he heard, he came stumbling back out onto the stage with a large quill pen embedded in his neck.
It's not all bad news, Beckett,
How?
That's a great photo of me.
The crime fighting team haven't garnered as much media attention as they used to in previous seasons, but that tide turned tonight, with a lone wolf paparazzi impersonator making his way into the crime scene and filming the team at work, with the footage making it onto the news. Esposito sorted him out pretty quickly, but the guy turned up later on as well, this time offering up useful evidence while filming Ryan and Esposito.
The investigation led the team to a hotel room rented by Zane, which was occupied by none other than Martha Rogers. That caused an entertaining minute or two of awkwardness as it was established that Martha wasn't in a relationship with Zane, but was his acting and life coach instead. Though the scene portrayed Martha in a slightly different light than normal, it was clever use of the character, with Susan Sullivan doing a superb job in the role.
Step away from the laptop.
Meanwhile, Ryan was becoming rather obsessive over an upcoming play at his daughter's preschool that he was charged with organizing. That reached a head when he skyped the frustrated preschool teacher in one of the interrogation rooms but got caught out by a bemused Esposito who was watching through the one way glass.
The episode took a much darker turn when Rick was kidnapped by a Mexican cartel boss who was connected to the murder. This came out of the blue, and I'm sure there were viewers other than myself concerned about the outcome considering the series' track record when it comes to kidnappings and disappearances isn't all that good. Surprisingly, things were rather rosy for Rick, with the boss more preoccupied with indulging in his love for Shakespeare and his aspirations for his own film. In the most un-DEA-like raid I've ever seen on television (anyone else notice that there wasn't a single police siren?), Rick was freed, with nothing but a bump on the head and a good story to tell.
While the episode's case was watchable enough, yet again the killer was given away in the first few minutes. The director of the play Zane the murder victim was starring in was the first to provide information to the detectives, and was comfortable around the dead body as well as showing no emotion. From then on, there was a 95% chance everyone else the team interviewed served no purpose but to fill in time. It was a bit of a shame really.
With the Caskett content being given more screen time in the back half of this season, tonight's instalment saw Rick worshipping a new YOLO credit card, which had more bells and whistles than a normal card, as well as being one of only 10,000 in existence. Rick and Kate bickered about the upcoming date night, in which it was Kate's turn to arrange something more ridiculous and outlandish than Rick's attempt the week prior. While this was nice, the continuity made all this fall flat on its face from my perspective. Why couldn't this have been a regular thing that began in Season 5, even if it was only mentioned three or four times in a season? It's all a bit "too little, too late". It was obvious from the first minute that Kate would never be able to come up with anything, with the couple settling for takeout food that evening instead. To sweeten the deal I'd have rather seen the pair go out somewhere, dressed to the nines because that's always worth watching.
Two other stupid things that irked me were Rick's YOLO credit card having special abilities for location tracking, which was how he was found after being kidnapped. Man, there were many other ways that should have happened. The second instance was when Kate mentioned Alexis had installed tracking software on her work computer which she used to ping Rick's phone when he was missing. I'm sure a college student wouldn't be allowed to tamper with that sort of thing, so why not just say the department got this new tracking tool recently? I'm sure it was just an opportunity for a name drop, but it undermines the credibility of what is a reasonably accurate crime drama for the most part.
Nitpicking aside, this was a pretty standard episode of Castle. The Shakespearean content and subsequent humor was good fun, as was Ryan's obsession with the preschool play. It was nice to see Juliana Dever return as Ryan's wife, Jenny, too. Hopefully the season's final two episodes lift the game a bit. Next week's press release and episode promo look rather promising.
Thanks as always for reading! The opinion poll is below for you to vote on how good tonight's episode was, and don't forget to share your thoughts and theories in the comments section.
