Castle 6x02: Dreamworld

Castle's been poisoned with a toxin that'll kill him in 10-12 hours, but thanks to a solid dose of pralidoxime and atropine he won't be feeling any ill effects until just before he drops dead. So he's both available and highly motivated to help the secret AG team find out just what exactly Dreamworld is. Beckett's boss agrees to let him help, but only from within the HQ, which means it's up to Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein to save the day.

They start by tracking down a reporter who tried to publish an article on Dreamworld that was quashed by the government over national security issues. Bronson (the guy who dropped dead in the previous episode, not the actor) was one of his sources. He didn't give out a lot of information, but the reporter says that just after he talked to Bronson, the Secretary of Defense called his editor personally, to kill the story. Since they're already in DC, the agents take a quick jaunt down to the Pentagon to talk to the man himself.

And he is in no mood!

According to the Secretary, Dreamworld is a myth, but if such a place did exist, then allowing an article to be published about it would damage national security. The Secretary's a reasonable guy, though, and he admits off the record that Bronson ran one mission out of Dreamworld: Killing Al Qaeda's number two man, Anwar Zawahri. There was talk about a possible response, but it never materialized, unless of course they're about to kill a bunch of people with the stolen toxin. While everyone else searches for Al Qaeda associates who may be in the area, Castle has what may be his final conversation with his mother and daughter.

And Pi, who really should be on his way. His planet needs him!

The attack killed five of Zawahri's cousins, and another one, Waqas Rasheed, was both in Jalalabad at the time and was caught on camera following Bronson out of a café. The agents quickly find him and arrest him, but he doesn't have the toxin or the antidote on him. So it's interrogation time. Rasheed swears that he has no idea what's going on and has nothing to do with it, then he tells a story of how on the night of the air strike, he saw Bronson carry a dead woman's body away from the rubble and had to swear on the lives of his family that he wouldn't tell anyone what he had seen. He wasn't following Bronson. Bronson was following him.

The DoD sends over the documents related to the mission, but they're so heavily redacted that they're almost useless. Castle manages to find a way to determine that the documents contained the word 'Valkyrie' but that doesn't help since there's not enough context. Fortunately, the tech agent, Richmond, did a year of work as the CTO at Bagram air base, and he thinks he can get the data from the audio recorder from the F-16 that performed the actual air strike.

He's a resourceful guy, that Richmond. I hope nothing bad happens to him.

When they listen to the audio, they find that 'Valkyrie' wasn't the codename for the mission or even for Zawahri, but for an American intelligence asset who was killed in the strike when she couldn't get out in time. The Secretary of Defense had Bronson cover it up. Beckett's boss won't let her go after the SecDef without concrete evidence, but she goes straight to his house, anyway. He's not talking, and when he calls up the AG to try to get Beckett fired, they know he's not involved, either.

Things look pretty bleak until they get a photo from Rasheed that shows 'Valkyrie' and they determine that she was the reporter's fiancée.

It's a real shame. They were a cute couple.

They can't track the guy down, but they can sure bust through his apartment door, looking for the antidote. Since Castle's damn near dead, he gets to go along. They find blueprints for the office where the toxin was stored as well as press credentials for an event where the Secretary of Defense is giving a speech. At first, they think that's he's going there to kill the Secretary, but when they find out he hasn't checked in at the press desk yet, they realize that he's going to kill the Secretary's wife.

Castle collapses on the Secretary's lawn, but Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein manage to capture the reporter and get the antidote in time to save him and the Secretary's wife. Beckett's happy that everything turned out all right, but when she finds out that the Secretary's going to get off scot free, even though he withheld information to cover his own ass, she starts having qualms about the job.

This is her qualms face.

What I Liked
-TV's Lisa Edelstein refers to Castle's impending death as an acceptable loss right in front of him. That was funny, if a bit harsh.
-Castle's ringtone for his mother is the opening of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The song itself is not necessarily evil, but it's been used in horror movies, which is what makes it a good choice. I, too, am horrified whenever my mother calls.
-Martha knows something's wrong because Richard didn't make any smart-ass quips when they spoke on the phone. The key with lying is to act naturally.
-Castle does the whole Dorothy waking up thing in the hospital. Beckett was there and Alexis was there and Martha was there...

Pi was there, too, but one picture of him per review is enough.

What I Hated
-The little info box on Rasheed identifies him as a dual US-Afghan citizen in the country on a student visa. US citizens don't need student visas to study in the US.
-The whole ticking clock, Oh My God, Castle's Gonna Die! thing. We all knew he wasn't going to die. Having him collapse at the end was just pointless. Admittedly, the characters didn't know that he wasn't going to die, but aside from Beckett and Castle, none of the main characters even knew he was sick. There was very little drama to be squeezed out of that particular trope, and they didn't really do a good job of it.

Final Thoughts
They've been really reaching to get Esposito and Ryan into the show. It looks like Castle will be back in New York next week, and Beckett will probably quit her job before the end of the sixth episode. Nevertheless, I really hope they find a better way of getting those guys some screen time. Heck, the Cap'n hasn't been on the show at all yet this season.

I still hate Pi. He's a caricature, and the show already had plenty of comic relief. There's a tiny chance he could grow on me, but I really hope he's killed in a horrible manner soon and Castle and the team have to investigate his murder. I mean, what happens to him when Alexis goes back to school? Is he going to move into Castle's garage with Fonzie and Boner?

The episode itself was pretty standard fare -beyond the Castle only has 24-hours to live thing, of course- and was far less of a departure than I was expecting after Beckett took the job in DC. Aside from a change of scenery, the show is essentially the same. Not that I'm saying I disapprove. I've quite enjoyed Castle for the past five years, and I'm quite happy to keep watching them do what they do best for a couple more. But they have an opportunity for them to break out of the mould for a few episodes, and they just don't seem to be taking it.