Castle 5x15: Target

A guy empties his mag into a white van moments before it hits him so hard he flies right out of his shoes. When the cops ID him as a Saudi national and find his expensive, customized handgun, Esposito thinks he might have been a terrorist. When they search his apartment they find pricey gym equipment, state of the art surveillance gear, and a big closet full of guns.

Which, for some reason, he's had professionally lit.

The guns point to terrorism, but the surveillance gear doesn't. When they check it out, the techs find out he was using it to monitor an active bug in the apartment of a Columbia student named Sara El-Masri. Ryan gets some traffic camera footage of the van and it shows Sara jumping out and trying to flee before a guy grabs her and pulls her back in. She's been kidnapped, and the dead guy died trying to save her.

When they call in Sara's parents, they find out that her dad is a super-rich Egyptian dude who hired the dead dude to look after his daughter. He was friendly with the old regime back in Egypt and there are a few people out there who aren't terribly happy with him. Since it's a kidnapping, the Cap'n calls in the FBI and they take the lead on the case.

Through Sara's roommate, they find out she attended a "science thing" the night before. A quick search of local science things leads them to the Beaumont Hotel where the concierge recognizes Sara and remembers that she was chatting with a pretty redhead with pale skin. While that could be any number of young ladies of Irish descent, Castle checks out the guest list and it was, indeed, Alexis. He gives her a call to see if she knows anything, but he hears her ringtone coming from the Hotel's lost and found box.

That can't be good.

The FBI dude checks out the GPS on Alexis phone and finds out that it was left outside the Hotel shortly after the science thing ended, and since no one has seen or heard from her since, they're pretty sure she was taken, too. They still think the target was Sara, but since Alexis was with her at the time, it was easier to take her than to leave her.

Fortunately, they have a few leads. The FBI matches a screen grab from the traffic cam footage to a mid-level drug smuggler, Esposito and Ryan use the traffic camera network to trace the van to a neighbourhood in Queens, and Castle discovers that the kidnappers knew Sara would be at the science thing by watching Alexis' video blog.

When they find the van, the floor is covered in blood and Castle rightly freaks the hell out. Lanie performs a quick test and determines that the blood belongs to neither Alexis nor Sara. There's a blood trail leading away from the van, so Beckett thinks the girls were transferred to another vehicle; the parents are still upset, but relieved that their daughters are probably still alive.

They're fine. They were just taking a nap.

Elsewhere, Alexis and Sara awaken in a dimly-lit cell. There's an en suite bathroom filled with fresh clothes and towels, and a cot with pillows and blankets. They're going to be there for a while, but at least they're still have their clothes on, so whoever has them wants them alive and unspoiled.

Back at the precinct, the techs discover that the van was heavily modified to turn it from a slow, lumbering delivery vehicle to a high-performance getaway car. They search their database and find a suspect with the appropriate MO and blood type, and it just so happens that his sister is a nurse who called in sick for her shift.

Pausing just long enough to get a warrant, the team barges through the door and finds the guy wounded, but patched up, on the sister's bed. Beckett interrogates him, but he's not talking. Even the threat of going down for everything and spending upwards of a century in prison isn't enough to loosen his tongue. So, Castle goes in for a little quality time.

And he's not as patient as Kate.

After some persuasion, the driver tells them that the girls were transferred to another vehicle and taken to a farm upstate. Much like everyone's childhood pets. The FBI are on the scene with a tactical team before Castle and Beckett even get back to the precinct. When they break down the door of the farmhouse, they find the girls' jackets, the tortured corpse of the other kidnapper, and a wireless webcam with an untraceable IP address. Now they're out of leads and they have no idea what to do.

Luckily, Alexis had a bit of an unorthodox upbringing and her father taught her to pick locks when she was ten. It takes her a while, but with the help of Sara's hairpins, she manages to get the door open. They escape into what looks like an empty office building and split up to double their chances. Alexis quickly finds an unattended cell phone and tries to call 911, but it doesn't go through, so she tries the next best thing.

This escape attempt is brought to you by Microsoft. That's right, they own Skype.

She gets through to her dad and the FBI guys in his apartment start tracing the call. They use their fancy TV tracing equipment, which is actually less effective than real tracing software, so the kidnappers notice Alexis is gone and she has to bail before the good guys know where she is, but she has the presence of mind to leave the phone on so they can keep tracing. She runs up an emergency staircase, then freaks out when she sees the view from the roof.

How about a little fire, Scarecrow?

Before she recovers enough to scream for help, one of the kidnappers grabs her from behind, and we'll see you next week, thankyougoodnight!

What I Liked
-After the dude gets squashed flat at the beginning of the episode, the show cuts immediately to a shot of pancakes. Not very subtle, but still funny.
-Castle re-enacts the end scene from Se7en when they find the van full of blood. I smell a remake!
-When the guy shoves their food through the door, it makes a loud sound that surprises the girls, so Alexis uses Sara as a human shield. It's what I would do.

I'd probably duck a bit more, though.

-Nathan Fillion makes the best face when Castle resigns himself to the fact that he's going to have to torture the getaway driver. Seriously, aside from what I like to call 'Nathan Fillion's sex face', the man has the best expressions.

What I Hated
-Magic traffic cameras. Apparently they're all over the city, and you can get the video from them instantaneously.
-The getaway driver's sister says she hasn't seen her brother in weeks after the cops barge through her door. He was in the spare bedroom, did she think they wouldn't look there or something? Some criminals are stupid, but they're not that stupid.

Final Thoughts
It's nice that Alexis finally got to go to Paris. She had mono a few episodes back and her mom had to go by herself. However, I question the ability to transport someone across the Atlantic without them knowing it or anyone else finding out. It's not like they let you put college girls in your carry-on. The way I see it, they had to drive to a small airport in northern New York state, fly the girls to a small airport outside Paris, drive to Paris, then unload the girls on what appeared to be a relatively busy street, all without anyone seeing. Seems like a bit much. They probably should've just kept them in the van and driven to Mexico.

Even though the kidnappers were speaking Arabic, I wonder if Alexis was the real target and not Sara. Sure, Castle doesn't have $300 million, but he's still a pretty rich guy, and he has some enemies, too. It's also a good way to get her a major part on the show. It was kinda weird for her to keep coming back to the Castle house for no real reason.

I really liked this episode. Nathan Fillion goes to a pretty dark place, and we get to meet the real Richard Castle. He's shown hints of it in the past by shooting people who threatened his friends and dive-tackling a guy and just pounding his face in once, but this is the first time he's actually been malicious. He tortured an injured man to help save his daughter. He's not just a goofy writer.

It was also nice to see them get away from just investigating murders. Sure, a guy got killed, but they wrapped that up pretty quickly. Maybe after they get Alexis back they'll do a robbery. That'd be neat.