Castle 5x21: The Squab and The Quail

As Castle and Beckett get into a tiff over him not immediately dropping what he was doing to have sex with her when she wanted, across town, a billionaire drops dead at a fancy restaurant. Also at the table was Eric Vaughan, billionaire inventor, Castle's idol, and Mr. Fantastic.

Hey kids, it's Ioan Gruffudd!

Vaughan has no idea who might have wanted the other billionaire dead, but that's immaterial as the investigation turns up something interesting: The waiter screwed up the orders. The dead guy ordered the squab, but was given Vaughan's quail by mistake. So that means Vaughan was the real target. He has no idea who might want him dead, either.

Beckett suggests police protection, and Vaughan agrees. Only, rather than having a couple of burly, uniformed cops, he specifically requests Beckett, and the commissioner agrees for some reason. Castle doesn't want her spending too much time alone with an attractive rich dude, so he puts extra pressure on Ryan and Esposito to solve this one quickly.

Lanie calls Beckett to tell her that the billionaire was killed by a synthetic neurotoxin, and it just so happens that Vaughan owns a lab where it's manufactured. The lead researcher there had a crush on him, and when he didn't reciprocate, she got a bit crazy.

I dunno what his problem was. I'd let her boil my bunny any day.

However, she has an alibi, and a drunk homeless guy the cops picked up in the alley behind the restaurant IDs one of the busboys as someone who was up to no good around the time of the murder. When Ryan and Esposito go to pick him up, they find him lying in bed with a bullet in his brain. They also find the vial of poison that was meant for Vaughan.

With a serious-business killer on the loose, Vaughan decides it's a good idea to stay off the street, so he books himself and Beckett into the Presidential Suite at the Fairwick Hotel(a TV version of the Warwick Hotel). He orders room service, but since the other guy was killed by poisoned food, Beckett won't let him bring anything in other than the Champagne. She tries to resist his charms, but he still manages to convince her to have a glass, even though she's on duty.

Well, half a glass.

Castle and Beckett have another disagreement when he sees the two glasses on the table, but he agrees to let it go because she says 'please'. Meanwhile, the guys find a video of someone handing the busboy the poison, and figure that the killer was threatening his daughter to get him to cooperate.

At home, Alexis tries to calm her father down with some soothing tea, but he will not relax as long as Kate is in a hotel suite with a billionaire. While his daughter says Beckett is totally committed to the relationship, his mother points out quite rightly that there ain't no ring on her finger.

And Martha knows a thing or two about not having a wedding ring.

As it happens, Castle's right to be jealous because while he's drinking tea, a billionaire is trying to kiss his girlfriend. Fortunately, she's not totally into it, and she shoves him away just as a sniper is trying to put a bullet in his brain.

The cops check with the hotel across the street and discover that the killer was staying there under an assumed name, and he made several phone calls to the disgruntled scientist. They bring her back in and she says she thought she was giving the poison to a rival lab so they could file the patent first. With her help, they track the wire transfer from her payoff, and a whole web of lies is unravelled. The payment came from Vaughan himself, and the company that he was getting the dead billionaire to invest in doesn't exist. Castle posits that Vaughan's entire empire is built on lies, Madoff-style and he had the other guy whacked to keep from being exposed.

However, when Beckett confronts him, he tells her that he doesn't oversee the day-to-day operations of his company, his lawyer does. The lawyer made some bad investments with other peoples' money, and when he tried to buy his way out of it, he just kept digging the hole deeper and deeper. Eventually, all he could do was kill some people to keep from being exposed. He goes to prison, the feds catch the hired gun as he tries to escape over the Canadian border, and Beckett says goodbye to the fantastic billionaire.

Castle apologizes for taking her for granted and offers Kate a romantic, full-body massage. But when she asks him where they're going, all he can say is "To the bedroom."

"That's not what I meant!"

What I Liked
-Castle can't believe that the department is forcing Beckett to hang out with a womanizing rich guy against her will. Oh, cruel irony!

What I Hated
-Castle somehow memorized the menu after seeing it briefly at the restaurant. Even the waiter couldn't recognize the items properly, and he worked there.
-Unnecessary tech talk. The fact that the killer was left-handed didn't matter one iota.

Final Thoughts
Geez, Beckett's really not all that great a girlfriend. She gets pissy when Castle tries to have a hobby that doesn't involve her, she's concerned that their relationship isn't going anywhere, even though they've been dating less than a year, and she kissed another dude just because he was cute and rich.

Women are good at dodging unwanted kisses, and this is not a woman who's dodging.

In fact, that was primarily what the episode was about, since the case was mainly in the background and they didn't even actually catch the guy who tried to shoot Vaughan. I guess that's why I hated it so much. Half of the episode was devoted to Beckett being a stereotypical "Where's this relationship going" girlfriend, which seemed really out of character for her. Plus, she spent four years running around with Castle before she was willing to go out with him, including an entire year where she knew he was in love with her, and now she thinks they might be moving too slowly? For a while there, she was pretty sane compared to most women on TV. Now apparently she's become a cliche.

There's not much more to say about it. Everything that wasn't Beckett and Vaughan fawning over each other was kind of superfluous and incredibly underdeveloped.