Castle 6x04: Number One Fan

A woman wakes up in her apartment with her boyfriend dead on the floor and the cops at the door. She bails out the window and takes hostages at a local dentist's office.

She asks specifically for Castle to come down to negotiate because she's a big fan of his work and wants him to clear her name.

Beckett's there, so she gets to help, too.

Although the guys don't appreciate being ordered around by someone who's not their boss anymore.

Turns out the lady is crazy and has killed before, so Castle's in trouble.

And the hostages are getting antsy.

But Castle still believes she's innocent.

And has an epiphany after he's accidentally shot: He knows who the real killer is.

This lawyer bribed a clerk to unseal some court records.

Because this, rich, powerful dude is the woman's father, who put her up for adoption when she was born.

The lawyer is also his son-in-law, and didn't want the woman coming after his wife's inheritance, so he framed her.

After the lawyer confesses, the rich guy convinces the Commish to rehire Beckett, and everyone is happy.

What I Liked
-Sully points out that Castle should be happy he didn't get hobbled.

He's a funny guy, that Sully. I hope they kill him last.

-A meaty chunk falls from Sully's desk and Castle thinks it was once a bagel. Hee-hee.
-Esposito and Ryan give Sully the stink eye for laughing at Castle's bad jokes. He still has a lot to learn.

What I Hated
-Beckett doesn't know what to do with herself since she says she hasn't been unemployed since she was 15. That's not true. She turned in her badge at the end of season four. Albeit for like three days. Which iS probably about as long as she was unemployed this time.
-Pi is still on the show.

I would've sworn that his home planet would've needed him by now.

Final Thoughts
Hey, Lanie got some screen time. She's been on the show less than Pi so far this season.

At the beginning of the episode, Beckett no longer has a job, and Castle doesn't work as a consultant for the police anymore (for reasons that haven't been explained) and yet they both get to hang around the station all the time and solve murders anyway. That seems a bit strange. Not that it really matters, since at the end of the episode she gets her job back and he gets to come back and consult, thereby restoring the status quo after a mere four episodes. I'm beginning to wonder what the point of having her take the job in DC was in the first place. Maybe the writers were friends with TV's Lisa Edelstein and she needed some work.

So that's twice now that Beckett has left the NYPD at the end of a season, only to come back at the beginning of the next one. The show's only been on for five seasons, that's not nearly enough for them to be repeating plot points already. Not that there's any undoing it now, but it would've been nice if they'd given Beckett a good six-episode arc in DC before she got fired. There was no doubt in my mind that she'd be back in New York at some point, but I didn't think it would be so quick and so clean. Detective Beckett is fine, but we've seen her. Unemployed Beckett or Consultant Beckett, or back to law school Beckett could've been fun. Or they could've sucked. TV shows don't really take chances these days.

As for this particular episode, it was way too convoluted for my tastes. The killer unsealed the crazy hostage-taking lady's adoption records so he could frame her for murder, so there was no chance she could come after any inheritance from her wealthy father, who also happened to be the killer's father-in-law. That's pretty complex, which makes it all the more strange that they managed to solve the case in one day. The whole #1 Fan thing was a neat idea, but it was a bit underdeveloped because they had a whole lot of stuff to squeeze in to try to semi-explain the plot. After the initial phone conversation, she could've been any run-of-the-mill hostage taker and it wouldn't have made much difference at all.