Game of Thrones 5x10: Mother's Mercy

It's season finale time. Who will live? Who will die? Who will care?

Stannis
It seems that the sacrifice has worked as things have started to thaw out, but it's not all good news for the sole-surviving Baratheon. Selyse has decided that she actually did care about Shireen, and has hanged herself in the woods. Also, all the sellswords buggered off in the middle of the night and stole all the horses. Then just when he thinks it can't get any worse, Melisandre rides out of camp (apparently the sellswords stole all but one of the horses). "Well, them's the breaks," thinks Stannis, and he decides that a prophecy's a prophecy, so he'll just march his remaining men to take Winterfell without horses, siege weapons, superior numbers, or food. It doesn't go well for him.

Two minutes after they arrive, Stannis' forces are overwhelmed by the Boltons' cavalry and annihilated. Stannis himself manages to limp away to the woods, and even show a little baddassitude by killing two Bolton pursuers at the same time. Unfortunately, he's wounded, alone, and probably won't be able to drag his ass back to Dragonstone. Even more unfortunately, Podrick spotted his army coming in, and Brienne is not at all happy to see him. She's still a little miffed that Stannis killed Renly, so she tracks him to the woods and asks him if he has any last words before she whips out Oathkeeper and takes a swing at his head. All he can think to say is "Go on, do your duty."

"I've had a really bad day."

Sansa
Most of the Bolton soldiers are out slaughtering Stannis' men, so Sansa figures it's the perfect time to escape. She picks the lock on her room and heads up the ruined tower to light the candle Brienne had smuggled in to her. Unfortunately, Brienne is busy likewise engaged in Stannis-related business, so she can't come and save her. Myranda catches her out of her room, tells her of all the horrible things Ramsay has in store for her, and aims an arrow at her chest. That's all Theon can stands, he can't stands no more, so he tosses Myranda over a railing to her death, and leaps with Sansa from the wall of Winterfell into a snow bank and the freedom of season 6. Or to their deaths. Probably freedom, though.

Although, it is a reaaaaaaly long way down.

Arya
Ser Meryn doesn't just like underage prostitutes, he likes beating them. Arya's not cool with that, so she poses as a young whore, stabs his eyes out, then slits his throat. Later, she returns a borrowed face to the hall of the Many-Faced God. Jaqen catches her, and as punishment he forces her to watch him drink poison. Which is an odd punishment, to be sure. As she weeps over his body, the girl who has been taunting her all season turns into Jaqen and tells her that dead Jaqen wasn't Jaqen at all, he was no one. Arya rips faces off dead Jaqen until she reaches one that looks like her, then she goes blind because to a girl who is still someone, the faces are as good as poison. It's very confusing.

A girl has no idea what's going on.

Jaime
It's time to sail back to King's Landing. Ellaria gives Myrcella an obviously poisoned kiss goodbye, Tyene gives Bronn an obviously erotic bite on the ear, then it's sailing time. Two minutes into the trip, while Jaime awkwardly tries to explain his love for his own sister, Myrcella tells her dad that she already knows and that she's glad he's her dad. Then she drops dead. Back on the dock, Ellaria wipes some blood from her nose, cleans the poison from her lips, then downs the antidote. Then, I assume she and the Sand Snakes flip the boat off, Dornish style, before they walk home.

That's two kings, a crown prince, a prince, and three princesses that Jaime's lost during his time in the Kingsguard. It may be time for a new vocation.

Daenerys
Jorah and Daario ride north to look for their queen, while Tyrion, Grey Worm, Missandei, and (surprise!) Varys stay behind to run the city. Daenerys herself is somewhere off in the mountains trying to convince Drogon to take her home. He's a sleepy dragon, though, so she goes for a walk and is quickly surrounded by a... er... whatever the hell they call a group of Dothraki. So, I guess she'll be hanging out with them again next season.

I hope she remembers how to ride a horse.

Cersei
Cersei's tired of getting smacked around, so she confesses some of her sins and is shown the Mother's mercy. Which entails getting her head shaved and then walking home naked while the townspeople wave their genitals in her direction and throw what appears to be barbecue sauce at her. When she gets back to the Red Keep, she's met by her uncle Kevan, Qyburn, and the latest member of the Kingsguard.

Ser Frankenmountain

Jon
With Aemon dead, the castle needs a new maester, so Sam asks Jon if he can take Gilly and Little Sam to Oldtown so he can train at the Citadel. Reluctantly, Jon agrees. Later, Ser Davos begs for whatever Jon can spare, but the Night's Watch is low on just about everything, so there's nothing to send. Melisandre shows up (because apparently Stannis' camp was a 20-minute horse ride from Castle Black), and looks sad while Jon and Davos ask her what happened to Stannis and Shireen, respectively. Still later, Olly bursts into the Lord Commander's office to tell him of a wildling who has news of his uncle Benjen. Instead, he finds Ser Alliser and about fifteen other brothers standing around a sign that reads "TRAITOR". Then the actual traitors pull out their daggers and one-by-one, stab Jon to death. Yes, he's really, super dead and he's not coming back. For serious.

I mean, that's not chocolate syrup beside him.

What I Liked
-Wounded, and alone, Stannis still manages to kill two dudes before he goes down. He hasn't really had the chance to whip out his sword since season two.
-Myranda's head makes a satisfying splat when it hits the ground. She was boring, and I'm glad she's gone.
-When he dies, Jon's pupils dilate. I'll assume it was a special effect and not just incredible facial acting by Kit Harington.

What I Hated
-Literally a minute after he says the sellswords left with all the horses, Stannis' commander tells him that Melisandre was seen riding out of camp. It's like the writers never went back over the script after they wrote it.
-Brienne looks away from the broken tower five seconds before Sansa lights the candle. A watched pot never boils, I guess.
-The kiss of death could not have been more obvious.

I guess they don't have Sicilians in Westeros.

-"You want a good girl, but you need a bad pussy." That's a line so bad it hurts me to read it.
-Everything with Cersei. There was nothing good about her scenes at all.
-"Shame... shame... shame... *ding*" I'm not sure what they were going for with that bit, but it really just made me laugh.

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

-The weird body-double/cgi thing they did with naked Cersei. It made her head and neck look quite odd. Also, the merkin the body double was wearing was ridiculous.

Lena Headey and Lena Headonsomeoneelsesbodyey

-The walk of shame takes forever. It takes 4 minutes 45 seconds from the time she's stripped naked until the time the door closes behind her at the Red Keep. For comparison, it only takes 5:35 for the Boltons to wipe out Stannis' army, and that includes Brienne taking a swing at Stannis' head and Ramsay executing an injured soldier on the battlefield. It would be fine if it were at all interesting, but it's boring as all hell. To me, she got her comeuppance when she was arrested.
-When she's finished walking, she looks like Bruce Willis at the end of Die Hard. Is the ground in King's Landing made of glass or something?

Final Thoughts
Little Sam is clearly still a tiny baby, and Gilly had him in the middle of season three. Which means that everything that's happened since then has taken place over the course of about a year. It seems like an awful lot has happened in that time.

Poor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. He's still going to be on the show from time to time, but he's not going to be doing much in the way of acting if his character can't talk and you can't see his face.

They couldn't have telegraphed the fact that Olly was going to stab Jon more if they'd had him hold up a sign that said "I'm going to stab Jon". Seriously, anyone who was surprised by that wasn't paying attention. Of course, now we're left with the question of just who the hell would want to be the new Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. The last two were murdered by their own men, and by now there can't be more than 600 total brothers left to defend the wall against an army of tens of thousands of wights and walkers. The wildlings would've easily overwhelmed Castle Black without Stannis' intervention and they were no match for the army of the dead. At this point, they might as well seal all the tunnels and disband. Which would be fine by me, because if Jon really is permadead, there's no one left at Castle Black to give a crap about. Seriously, the men mutinied because Jon saved a bunch of wildlings who would've otherwise wound up as members of an enormous zombie army. Winter is coming, and the only people with any sense of what that actually means are dead. I'm rooting for the Others. At least they're not stupid.

Speaking of stupid, I'm not a Stannis the Mannis fan or whatever they're called, but I've gotta wonder how he went from greatest military general of his generation to getting completely wiped out in the space of a single season. Apparently, he went deaf as well, because half his army deserted in the middle of the night and took all the horses, and he didn't hear a thing. Which brings up something else that's sure to be ignored: There's now a substantial army of sellswords out there, riding around the North with no food and no way to get back home. They ought to begin pillaging the countryside fairly soon.

What the hell is Petyr going to do now? I know he's got the whole wheels within wheels thing going on, but Sansa's no longer at Winterfell and Stannis is no longer in any condition to capture it. Sure, he's Lord of Harrenhal and protector of the Vale, but that's not really worth too much. Even his brothel's been destroyed, so if he's got some grand plan in mind, it seems like it's probably not going that well.

Since Brienne doesn't know that Sansa escaped, when she goes back to look for the candle again, she'll see it's still lit and will break into Winterfell to try to save her. Or they'll coincidentally run into each other on the street. It's happened before.

Apparently Loras, Margaery and Tommen have gone off to live with Gendry, Osha, Rickon, Edmure Tully, the Greyjoys, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and Salladhor Saan in the land of forgotten characters.

I figure Myrcella's dead, Stannis is alive, Jon's dead but not for long, Theon and Sansa are just fine, Arya will be blind for three episodes, and Cersei will take the opportunity to grow out her bangs.

Overall, I didn't much care for this episode. Stannis, Jaime, and the brothers of the Night's Watch were stupid, Daenerys and company didn't do much of anything, and Cersei was incredibly boring. I had such high hopes for this season, but the writers didn't fare too well. When they straight up adapted the books, they did fine. But when they tried to merge plots and make up their own stuff, they failed miserably. With very little left in the (published) books for them to draw on, I'm not optimistic about what they'll do next year.

Game of Thrones 5x09: The Dance of Dragons

After a long hiatus, I have returned.

We're following five stories this week.

Stannis' Camp
Ramsay and his twenty good men manage to sneak into Stannis' camp and set fire to damn near everything, destroying tents, killing horses, and burning much of the food. Now lacking the resources to properly lay siege to Winterfell or to return to Castle Black, Stannis sends Ser Davos back to Jon Snow to ask for supplies, then reluctantly burns Shireen as an offering to the Lord of Light.

Her mom's not too happy about it.

The Wall
Jon returns from beyond the wall with what remains of the wildlings. After a brief moment of hesitation, Ser Alliser opens the gate for them, then tells Jon that his compassion will get everyone killed.

Olly's not too happy about it, either.

Dorne
Doran allows Jaime to take Myrcella back to King's Landing, so long as Trystane accompanies them so their engagement may continue and he can take a seat on the Small Council. Bronn is also set free, with one condition: Areo gets to elbow him in the face.

Bronn's not too happy about it.

Later, the Sand Snakes are freed, and Ellaria tearfully pledges her allegiance to Doran and ends the rebellion... such as it was.

Braavos
A girl is just about ready to kill the thin man, when the ship carrying Mace Tyrell and Meryn Trant arrives. So, instead of doing her duty, Arya decides to stalk Meryn to a brothel, where she witnesses him buying the services of a young prostitute.

The prostitute's not too happy about it. Neither is Meryn, for some reason.

Meereen
It's fight night! The great pit is open, and it's time for blood! Jorah fights in a small mêlée, and miraculously pulls out a win. Daenerys isn't overly happy to see him down in the pit until he picks up a spear and fires it into the chest of an assassin. Apparently the Sons of the Harpy are big fight fans, too, and after the second fight, several dozen of them pop out of the crowd and start killing everyone, including Hizdahr. Eventually, all the named characters and a handful of Unsullied are surrounded by about 100 assassins. Even though they attack one at a time, kung-fu movie style, it doesn't look good for our heroes. But, when all seems lost, Drogon flies out of nowhere and starts kicking ass.

Also, burning it. See, 'cause their butts are on fire.

The vast majority of the Sons are either killed or frightened off, but the few who remain start to launch spears at Drogon, who is tough, but not invincible, so Daenerys climbs onto his back, and the two of them fly off into episode 10.

What I Liked
-Either the guards at the camp were incompetent, or in league with Ramsay, either way, Stannis wants them hanged. Tough, but fair.
-After Areo busts him in the chops, Doran offers Bronn some soup. I like a leader who has a sense of humour.
-Daario says you should always bet on the little guy. Then this happens:

Heh... now he's even littler.

-Just before the battle starts, a bug crawls across Iain Glen's upper lip. He didn't flinch or brush it away or anything, though. That's the sign of a real actor.

What I Hated
-Regardless of whether Stannis' guards were on his side or not, Ramsay apparently has supernatural fire-lighting powers. There's no one around, and fires just start popping out of nowhere.

Seriously, who lit all those fires?

-Selyse, who despised her daughter and had the utmost devotion to the Lord of Light, suddenly can't stand to see the former sacrificed to the latter. Riiiiiiight.
-Arya very obviously takes the poison out of her cart and puts it into a pouch on her waist. It's done entirely for the benefit of the viewer, in case we've forgotten that she was going to poison the crooked insurance agent, but it was just so clunky and obvious. When you're going to assassinate someone, you need to be inconspicuous. You don't wave the murder weapon around for all to see. She also quite obviously follows Meryn around, to the point that he'd have to be blind not to see her.
-They make Meryn into a creepy dude who likes underage prostitutes. There was already a perfectly good reason to kill him. Not everyone who Arya kills has to be a complete monster, it'd be fine if some of them were just kinda dickish.
-The Unsullied continue to suck. Apparently being trained from birth doesn't give you the skills to take down a bunch of pampered noblemen with short daggers and no armour. Seriously, for a renowned and feared fighting force, they're pretty worthless.

Final Thoughts
Where the hell is Arya getting all her oysters, clams, and cockles? Is the House of Black and White furnishing her with a new cartful every day?

The Sons of the Harpy must've bought those masks in bulk.

Hizdahr's dead. Does anyone care? He didn't really do much of anything, and the actor playing him wasn't exactly compelling. I'm not sure what the point of the including him was if they were just going to unceremoniously kill him off.

Ser Alliser takes his oath to the Night's Watch seriously, but he's a complete moron. If Jon hadn't gone to Hardhome, there'd be a few thousand more walking dead making their way down to the wall. Apparently, Alliser and Olly simply don't understand that. To the point that I think they both must've been kicked in the head by mules when they were younger.

Killing Shireen makes absolutely no sense. Stannis hasn't had the best luck fathering heirs, and she was his sole surviving child. Without her to succeed him, what's the point? And don't give me any of that Warrior of Light nonsense. If that's all he cared about, he could've stayed at Castle Black and waited for the White Walkers there. He wants to be King. Apparently, he wants to be King, rule for 30-40 years, then die of old age, leaving the throne to some distant cousin.

Honestly, it doesn't seem like there's anyone who's really capable of holding back the long night. Cersei's too paranoid and Tommen's too weak, Daenerys is too inept, Jon's surrounded by morons who hate him, and Stannis is too unlucky. Unless there are some drastic changes next season, season seven is liable to be the story of how the White Walkers rolled over Westeros and conquered the world. Which might be good.

As for this particular episode, it had some enjoyable moments, but those were outweighed by the moments that made me want to punch stupid characters in the face.

Castle 5x24: Watershed

After a night of partying, a girl hops in a shower, and does a decent impression of Drew Barrymore in the 1993 movie Doppelganger. When the building superintendent goes up to the roof to check the water tank, he finds a dead girl floating in it. The investigation is slightly delayed because Beckett is in Washington interviewing for a job with the Attorney General's office, and Castle is at home, trying to pick a cover for his upcoming novel, Deadly Heat.

Available Sept. 13 in book stores that still exist.

They both arrive a little bit tardy, but it doesn't much matter, since the girl is still dead. The building's a low-rent flop house, and the residents say she was a prostitute, who moved in ten days earlier. Except that when the cops run her prints, it turns out that she was an honours student at Harvard. Her parents thought that she was backpacking through Europe with her friends, and personally dropped her off at the airport the day she moved into the building. Lanie's post-mortem doesn't turn up any evidence that she was hooking, either. The residents all swear she was entertaining clients, though, and a search of her room finds out why.

Unfortunately, this CD is not available in stores.

One of the girl's neighbours was adamant that she wasn't a hooker, and when Beckett questions him, he tells her there's a hole in the wall that let him see into her room. She wasn't getting it on, she was just sitting at her laptop all night. A laptop that was not found when the cops searched the place.

A conversation with one of dead girl's friends from Harvard reveals that she was computer science major, so Castle and Beckett figure she must have been doing a little hacking on the side, and that whoever she hacked had her killed. But surprisingly, she was killed by blunt force trauma and not hacked to death.

Meanwhile, Beckett's having a bit of a crisis. Her interview went really well, and the Cap'n gave her a glowing recommendation, so she goes to see Lanie for some sassy black woman advice.

Mmm-hmm, child, etc.

The apparently recurring tech lady checks out the internet logs of the dead girl's building's wifi network, and after excluding all the porn sites, she narrows things down to a fancy law firm. Some further investigation reveals that dead girl made a couple phone calls to a former attorney at the firm. But when the team goes to see him, he's not talking.

He's hanging from the rafters by an extension cord.

Lanie rules out suicide, and a check of the guy's instant messages shows that someone posed as him and set up a meeting with the dead girl after he died. Seeking a common thread, Ryan discovers that the dead girl's best friend worked as an intern at the law firm the previous summer and was killed in a car crash on the way home from a company party.

Ryan and Esposito finally get around to searching for the missing laptop, and they find it hidden in the building's laundry room. While at Beckett's apartment, Kate and Richard are making dinner when he discovers a boarding pass in her jacket pocket. She tells him that she went to DC for an interview and didn't tell him about it. He's not happy.

Pictured: Richard Castle's not happy face.

They have a fight, he storms out, and doesn't come in to the precinct the next day. Which is unfortunate, because the guys and the tech girl discover that the dead lawyer got a phone call from a young member of a major political family a few minutes after the dead girl's friend died. When Beckett interviews him, his mouth says he didn't know the girl, but his face his 'oh crap', and his attorney says "This meeting is over."

Meanwhile, Martha counsels Castle, and Beckett gets the job and disappears, leaving Ryan and Esposito alone to do the actual police work. They arrest the illegitimate black sheep of the family, and then manage to call Beckett back in to get him to roll on his half brother. Then she calls Castle and gets him to meet her at the playground, where he tells her that he thinks they both deserve more than what their relationship is giving them. It looks like they're going to break up, but the show pulls the most obvious swerve in the history of television, and he proposes instead.

To find out her answer, tune in next time...

On the home front, Alexis wants to take a trip to Costa Rica to study the rainforest, but her dad's a little hesitant to write the cheque. He's been a tad overprotective ever since she was kidnapped and taken to Paris. Also, toucans are extremely aggressive this time of year. Eventually, though, he realizes that she needs to spread her wings and fly, and he gives her the money.

The smile of a young woman who's just received a big, fat cheque.

What I Liked
-Esposito busts Castle's balls over his new book. Only one novel a year? What's up with that?
-Castle makes a too soon joke about their investigation being dead in the water, just like the girl. Hee-hee.

What I Hated
-Bad green screen work at the beginning.

It's like this episode was directed by George Lucas or something.

-Beckett's speech to the killer. It was interminable and self-important. They might has well just have had her give a Stallone-esque 'I AM THE LAW' speech. It would've been more believable.

Final Thoughts
It was nice to see both Alexis and Martha in an episode. They haven't been around that much lately.

The rest of the episode was kinda cruddy, though. They did that thing where the killer showed up for thirty seconds at the beginning, then disappeared... again. I suppose it's somewhat realistic for the murderer to occasionally be J. Random Guy, Esq. but doing things that way over and over and over doesn't make for particularly compelling television.

Beyond that, the Castle-Beckett relationship stuff seemed a little bit forced. They've been suggesting turmoil between the two of them for more than half the season, but usually in short two-minute bursts at the end of an episode that seemed to be ignored when the next one rolled around. Nevertheless, I could've bought it if they broke up. That was never going to happen, though, as this show is far too popular to do anything to create major conflict between the main characters.

What I want to know is how they're going to deal with the two of them being engaged next season, since even though the Cap'n knows they're in a relationship, they're still not allowed to be partners if it's out in the open. Well, I guess I'll find out in the fall. Lacklustre finale or not, this season had enough good episodes to keep me watching.

Castle 5x23: The Human Factor

A man with a bad haircut climbs into his car, which promptly explodes. At home, Castle is playing with a remote controlled tank, complete with wireless camera and a main gun that really fires when they get the call. There's nothing particularly routine about a car bomb, but when Beckett and Castle get to the scene, the car's being hauled off by homeland security, there are shadowy men in black suits hanging around, and Tony Almeida's milling about.

Technically it's just another government dude played by Carlos Bernard, but I'm gonna call him Tony.

They don't have access to much of the evidence, but Esposito manages to scrounge up the dead guy's wallet before the DHS can get their hands on it. The guy's wife and son say he was a Julian Assange type whose been being followed and harassed by various government agencies for almost a decade.

With the various three-letter agencies stonewalling them, the team doesn't have much to go on. But they do know that the bomb was planted well before it blew up, and his neighbours saw an unfamiliar motorcycle race out of the parking garage the night before he died. A traffic camera gets them a plate number, and it leads to a security contractor for a corporation the guy blew the whistle on a while ago.

A very smug security contractor.

She says that her job was to get close to the guy to find out who was leaking him damaging information. To that end, she was pretending to date him, and tells the team that his wife had just found out and threatened to kill him. Under questioning, the wife admits to the threats, but she didn't have the capacity to place a bomb in her husband's car, nor the finances to hire someone else to do it. So the team has no idea who or what was behind the bombing until the tech guys report back on the little bit of evidence they were able to collect before the feds got there: The guy wasn't killed by a bomb, he was killed by a missile. A drone missile.

A cheaply-animated drone missile.

Beckett secures a meeting with the head of the drone program at Ft. Drummond, but when she and Castle get there, Tony's standing around looking all shadowy, and the only answer they can get to any of their questions is "That's classified." On the drive home they get a call from Espo, who tells them that the feds just showed up and seized all their evidence; they agreed to the meeting so they could see what the cops knew and find out what they needed to take from them.

With no evidence left, the team starts looking into the dead guy's associates. They talk to his son, who manages to arrange a meeting with his dad's business partner, Omar. When Beckett goes to meet him, he's freaked out because people have been following him around. Fortunately, Tony's not terribly discreet, so Beckett manages to get the drop on him and takes him into custody.

Omar's a little surprised by that development.

Back at the precinct, Beckett grills Tony in the interrogation room, but he's not interested in talking because he knows his freedom is imminent. After less than three minutes of questioning, Beckett gets a phone call from the Attorney General asking her to release Tony. She does a little bargaining first, though, and gets the AG to get his man to help her with the investigation. His real name is Gerald Stack and he's a special investigator for the Attorney General's office (I'm going to keep calling him Tony, though). The dead guy was under scrutiny by so many government agencies that they needed an objective observer to look into his death. He was indeed killed by a drone, and a few minutes later, Tony gets a video feed from one of his colleagues that shows that someone hacked into the drone's software. The homeland suddenly seems considerably less secure.

Castle suspects Skynet, but Tony tells them the signal came a human being in the southern half of New York State and drops the name Warburg before taking off. A quick internet search tells the team that Simon Warburg was the chief designer of military drone software before deciding to sabotage it and go off grid. They find a video of him warning of the coming drone-based police state, and Beckett thinks he took control of the drone in order to frame the government and prove that the future is now!

Conspiracy theorists always need better lighting.

Using the video and Castle's encyclopedic knowledge of books, they manage to trace Warburg to a farm near Woodstock. When they get there, a black drone flies out of nowhere and opens fire on them. The first pass misses them, but they don't have time to find cover, so when it comes back around, they try to shoot it down. While there's some disagreement over who exactly fired the kill shot, the end result is the same, and the drone crash lands in the bushes behind them. As Castle is revelling in their victory, Beckett notices that the bullet casings on the ground were for blanks. Warburg comes out of hiding and tells them it was only meant to scare away trespassers and he's mighty pissed off that they shot down his favourite drone.

He takes them inside and tells them a story of how two years ago a drone pilot was ordered to fire upon a car that was thought to be carrying militants, but when he got a good look at it, he saw that it was covered with roses because there were no militants inside, but rather a young couple who had just gotten married. After that, Warburg couldn't bring himself to work on the drone program anymore because the next generation we'll be AI controlled and won't be able to make the decision to abort when something seems off. In fact, he wanted to shut down the entire drone program, so he wrote software that would let him hack into and remotely control any drone in the country, and then released it to the guy who got blown up. Except exploded guy didn't want to leak the software to the world because he didn't want any nutjob on the planet able to take control of a drone. But when he returned the software, Warburg noticed that someone had made a copy. Castle and Beckett suspect Omar, so Tony uses fancy facial-recognition software to track him down.

There he is!

Omar hopped on a plane to Lebanon, but thanks to the awesome power of the Office of the Attorney General, Tony gets the plane to turn right back around. Beckett puts the screws to him, but he says he ran because he was freaked out because people were following him and his boss exploded, and he has no idea what's going on. He does, however, know one other person who might have had access to the drone software. Castle and Beckett pay a visit to the dead guy's son. He was pissed off that his father's work was ruining his life and that he left his mom for another woman. People have been blown up for far less. The kid goes down, and Tony is so impressed with Beckett's work that he offers her a chance to interview with his organization. She doesn't tell Castle.

What I Liked
-Castle's official battlefield nickname is Field Marshal Pervert. That seems about right.
-Tony tells Castle that he's wearing a Mission Impossible style mask. Most shadowy agent types don't have much of a sense of humour.
-Beckett attacks Castle in the middle of the night with his remote controlled toy army. Where's tiny Arnold Schwarzenegger when you need him?

What I Hated
-Beckett didn't take any backup to her meeting with Omar. How convenient that the one time she does anything alone is the time when it would've been really useful to have an extra body around.

Final Thoughts
Does Carlos Bernard ever not play some kind of federal agent? He played one on two episodes of Hawaii Five-0 earlier this season. I guess he has one of those federal agent faces.

It's not often that Castle gets topical. Drones are big news in the US these days, but they haven't actually been used to blow people up on American soil yet. If and when that does happen, I somehow doubt that the local police force will be allowed to do nearly as much actual investigating as the TV cops did in this episode.

Honestly, I wasn't feeling this one. The stuff with Castle goofing around playing with toys was fun, but a lot of the rest was equally nonsensical while trying to be serious. Even though there was a lot of intrigue and some spy stuff, the killer was a kid who was pissed off at his dad. That's not novel or even all that interesting, really, so it really felt like a wasted opportunity to me. Plus, no Alexis or Martha this week. The killer was a family member and Castle's family wasn't even in the episode. That just seems wrong.

Castle 5x22: Still

The team is tracking the evil midnight bomber what bombs at midnight. They bust down his door, but he's already gone down the fire escape and is trying to flee. Esposito and Ryan catch him, but before they can get him into custody, he pulls out a transmitter and arms a bomb. Castle and Beckett immediately start to leave the apartment, but she steps on a pressure plate and they're stuck.

That's not good.

The techs clear the floor under Castle, but Beckett is most definitely standing on a very large explosive device and they can't move her without blowing up the whole building. So, to keep her mind of her impending doom, Castle decides they should talk about their relationship... clip show style.

Back at the station, Esposito and Ryan put the squeeze on the bomber, but he's not talking. He immediately asks for a lawyer, and since he's not a rich dude, he gets a public defender who just finished law school a few months ago, and he can't convince him that a deal for full amnesty just isn't in the cards. So, Javi has Ryan keep the junior lawyer busy while he goes to beat the code out of the guy. Unfortunately, when he gets there, he's lying on the floor with a fatal, self-inflicted wound to the neck.

It's really hard to talk when there's blood pouring out of your mouth.

Meanwhile, Castle and Beckett are still talking about their relationship, even going so far as to call the guys so they can find out who was into whom first. Which is good, because it helps keep their minds off things when the bomb squad tells them that the bomb has a timer and they can't stop it. As the timer slowly ticks down, eventually it gets to the point where Castle has to leave. He doesn't want to, but Beckett makes him go. She tells him she loves him and then bows her head to await the inevitable.

Standing on a bomb is lonely business.

Of course, a couple minutes later, he comes back with coffee and the arming device so they can make a stab at disarming the bomb. She tries to make him leave again, but he's not going anywhere. Instead, they wonder why the bomb is where it is. If it were meant for the cops, it would've been by the door, but it was in the middle of the kitchen. Sort of. It was an open concept apartment. Anyway, they discover that the dead bomber's girlfriend gave birth while he was in prison, and he's been trying to track down the son he never met. Castle enters the kid's name as the disarming code, and all is well.

Case closed.

What I Liked
-Beckett's dizzying array of hairstyles. They really have mixed it up over the years. You can tell which season it is based on the length and colour of Stana Katic's hair.
-"I can't help it if you get off by putting things in my mouth." Inyourendo.
-The Cap'n finally reveals that she's known all along that Castle and Beckett are a couple, and she's only been ignoring it to maintain plausible deniability. I'm glad she's just a stereotypical angry Captain, and not an idiot, too.

What I Hated
-They can't swap in some weights for Beckett because of plot necessity. Yes, I understand that there wouldn't have been much of a show if they could've employed some real-world solutions to disarm the bomb or get Beckett out of there, but that doesn't make the whole thing any less idiotic.
-Diego Jimenez.

It's like when I go to bars and run tabs under the name 'Carlos Rodriguez'

Final Thoughts
You don't see clip shows much these days. At least I don't see them very often. It's possible that a great many series I don't watch are running clip shows every single week.

Anyway, since this was a clip show, it was really more like half an episode, so it's not particularly fair to give it any kind of rating. As clip shows go, it was a pretty good effort; it framed things with a bit of a story, and most of the clips followed a general theme ie. Castle and Beckett's relationship.

I've seen every episode of this show, and it's surprising how much stuff I've forgotten (I totally forgot about Meredith until they brought her back this year). The writers have probably forgotten a fair chunk of it, too. They've remembered the charm and the goofiness, though, and that's what matters. It's what sets Castle apart from the CSIs and NCISs; it's rarely serious, and the characters seem like they're having fun. As long as they keep that up, I'll be happy to take a clip show every now and then. Maybe the next one can be about Ryan and Esposito's bromance.

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.