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.

Castle 6x01: Valkyrie

When last we left our heroes, Castle had just proposed marriage to Beckett. Then we waited four months to find out her answer. As cliffhangers go, it was no 'Who Shot JR?' but it was better than nothing.

Just like me, Beckett thought Castle invited her to the park to break up with her and is somewhat taken aback when he drops to one knee. Things are complicated by the fact that she got the job with the fancy secret spy agency in DC. But he didn't propose to her just to get her to stay in new York, so she agrees to marry him and he puts a big, fat rock on her finger.

It pays to date a rich guy.

Ten seconds later, we skip forward two months, and Beckett is in DC running training exercises with TV's Lisa Edelstein. Meanwhile, Castle is in New York, having just returned from a 12-city book-signing tour. Alexis is back, too, having returned from Costa Rica a week early. And she brought a little surprise with her.

His name is Pi.

Castle's a little nonplussed, and when Beckett calls him to tell him she's just been put on a priority case and won't be flying to New York for the weekend, he's a little bummed. So he does the only logical thing and flies to DC for sexytimes with his ladyfriend. She still has to work, though, and since now she works for shadowy government types and he doesn't have clearance, he can't help.

But threats of long-term imprisonment and getting his fiancée fired aren't enough to stop Richard Castle, and when Beckett accidentally drops a photo, he begins his snooping. Under the guise of researching his next novel, he calls Ryan and Esposito, and after bribing them with Knicks tickets, he gets them to look up the serial number of a blown transformer. Using the awesome powers of tech lady Tory Ellis, the guys determine exactly where the transformer was. When the gang in New York discovers that the feds are actively investigating the explosion, Castle quickly pretends he's going into a tunnel and hangs up the phone.

Recurring guest star Maya Stojan as the NYPD tech lady who I didn't think would be in more than one episode.

As it turns out, the transformer was destroyed to momentarily kill the power at a cyber security firm that held a super-secret spy satellite access module. The awesome power of millions of dollars worth of government expertise and equipment leads Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein to a golf course, where they think the thief escaped to after leaving the security firm through a drainage tunnel. The awesome power of 15 minutes on the internet led Castle to the exact same conclusion, and TV's Lisa Edelstein is not at all happy to see him interfering with their case.

Not at all happy!

After a thorough dressing down (and not the sexy kind) from both agents, Castle tells Beckett what he knows, then promises to go home and stay out of it. The security guards saw a guy snooping around the day before the explosion, and the video from the golf course leads the government guys to an ex-military dude. They bust down his door, but he's not home... because he's busy kidnapping Castle off the street and forcing him into a car. The two of them go for a little ride and after briefly questioning Castle about 'Valkyrie', the guy says he's going off to Dream World and drops dead. The ensuing car accident attracts federal attention, and Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein are not at all happy to see that Castle was involved.

Not at all happy!

The feds arrest Castle, and Beckett's boss gives him an overly harsh interrogation to make sure he tells them everything he knows and learns once and for all to keep his nose out of federal business. While the rest of the team tracks down the dead guy's girlfriend, Beckett tells her gentleman friend to go back to New York.

Reluctantly, Castle hops the next flight back home and has a heart-to-heart talk with Pi while the young man prepares a fruitarian dinner for the family. It's a short talk, though, since Castle needs advice from more worldly people, namely Ryan and Esposito. Kevin offers up relationship advice, while Javier tells them that Dream World isn't where you go when you're taking a nap, but rather a secret US military base in the Persian Gulf. Beckett's into some serious stuff.

Meanwhile, back in DC, the feds have used magic facial recognition software to track down the girlfriend. They arrest her at Union Station as she's pulling the access module out of a locker. The girlfriend says it was all a setup, and Beckett believes her because the whole thing was just way too sloppy. So, she looks into what other businesses were in the same building as the security firm, and the one occupying the top floor is so classified that even she can't see what it is.

Later, some guys in suits drag Castle out of his apartment and take him back to DC where Beckett tells him that the secret upstairs offices held a chemical laboratory, and that he's been exposed to a super-secret toxin and only has one day to live. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

What I Liked
-Castle's full name is Richard Edgar Alexander Rogers Castle... or REAR Castle. Hehe- butt jokes.
-Nathan Fillion's face acting.

He's the best at what he does.

-The shadowy government computers can't magically enhance a licence plate. I think that's the first time I've ever seen that on TV.
-"It's papaya steak. It's the juiciest steak there is." They really wrote Pi as the ultimate hipster douchebag.

What I hated
-Pi. As a character, he's a weird stereotype that really has no place on this show. Beyond that, I'll admit that I don't keep up to date on the love lives of fictional characters, but didn't Alexis have a boyfriend? And a hipster douche doesn't really seem like her type, anyway. I guess he must give excellent moustache rides.
-The whole 'You have 24 hours to live' thing. The show is called "Castle". They're not going to kill him off. Without Nathan Fillion, the show would lose all cohesion, so unless Richard has a long-lost twin brother, there's no chance of him dying, and everyone knows it. You can't have dramatic tension if every already knows the outcome, so why bother trying?

Final Thoughts
It's been a while since I last saw TV's Lisa Edelstein in anything. It looks like she's mostly been doing occasional TV guest appearances lately. That's a bit of a step down from being the female lead on one of the most popular shows on television, but I suspect that she socked away enough House money that she never needs to work again if she doesn't want to.

They'll probably sort it out in the next episode or two, but I wonder how they're going to keep everyone involved in the show if Beckett's in DC and everyone else is in New York. While Castle's untouchable, they could potentially write out Beckett. The odds on that are pretty slim, but I'm really not sure what else they can do, other than having her get fired from her new job. But that would make me wonder just why the hell they bothered to give it it to her in the first place.

Pi is basically Poochie. I hope he dies on the way back to his home planet.

The first episode back is always a bit of a wash as they resolve cliffhangers and set the tone for the rest of the season. Apparently, this year Castle will make funny faces, and Beckett will be serious business lady. That's not really an improvement over last season.