Castle 5x17: Scared to Death

A girl makes a frantic 911 call and tells the operator that something is coming to kill her. Seconds later, the lights go out and she screams. When the gang arrives a few hours later to investigate, she's lying on the floor, apparently scared to death.

She died the way she lived: Wearing a shirt.

The dead girl's roommate, Amanda, comes home and tells Beckett that dead girl had been acting strangely for the past three days. A check of her financial records also shows that she had just recently bought lucky horseshoes and a book on urban legends recently, and a talk with her ex-boyfriend reveals that she got a mysterious package in the mail and she thought something supernatural was coming to get her. Castle and Beckett search the apartment more thoroughly, and discover that the package contained a DVD. He presses 'Play' on the girl's DVD player and is treated to a lovely Ring-style montage that finishes with the phrase "You saw. Midnight on the third day: You die!"

That can't be good.

Back at the station, Castle's very concerned that the spirit of the DVD is going to kill him in three days. Beckett thinks it's absurd, and asks Ryan to watch the video to see if he can find anything useful on it. He won't do it, though, because he and Jenny are trying to have a baby and they don't want to jinx it. Espo won't watch it either, because doing so would make his partner look like a wimp. That leaves Beckett to do the dirty work.

Upon a second viewing, Castle notices it contains symbols representing rebirth and resurrection, and he thinks it means that the video heralds the rebirth of a demonic spirit. His fears are not assuaged when Perlmutter admits that he has no idea what killed the girl.

Esposito and Ryan manage to trace the package, and it leads them to an old man in Hoboken. Only, when they bust down his door, they find that he actually received a similar DVD in the mail, and he's been dead for two days.

He's not quite as freaky looking as the dead girl.

After seeing what happened to the other people who watched the DVD, Castle can't sleep. So, he gives his good buddy Wes Craven a call for some advice on what to do to stop evil spirits. Wes thinks he's being a bit weird, but Castle lies and says he's writing a horror screenplay. Anyway, since the DVD is the portal for the spirit into the human realm, it should contain clues to its origin.

Through the power of Twitter, Castle tracks one of the images to an old inn. A quick search shows that both the dead girl and dead old guy stayed there five years ago, so Beckett and Esposito go to check it out. The creepy innkeeper tells them that based on their room numbers, the two dead people must have been witnesses in a serial killer's murder trial that was held in the nearby courthouse. Beckett thinks that the killer must somehow be getting revenge on the people who put him away, except there's one problem with that theory: He's been dead for three years.

That can't be good.

Though the serial killer may be dead, his younger brother/accomplice is still alive and being held in a creepy mental hospital in Connecticut. Castle and Beckett drive up for a visit and find him to be a very cordial, extremely creepy dude. He doesn't offer them any new information, but he slips up and lets them know that he's aware of the deaths of two witnesses even though they only told him about one.

On the way home, they get a call from Ryan who tells them that the serial killer's body was dug up and has gone missing. He and Esposito also track down a third witness who also got a DVD and then fled the city for his family's cabin in the woods. Castle's a little hesitant, but Beckett insists on going, so he tags along after making a quick stop to pick up his bag of demon-fighting tools.

Featuring incense, ba gua mirror, and holy water. Proton pack not included.

When they get to the cabin, the final witness is drunk and in full-on Bill Paxton 'Game over' mode. Castle tries to convince him to talk things over out in the car where it's safe, but they guy's all freaked out that the killer's back from the grave and before he can get him outside, the power goes out.

Beckett heads outside to see what's happening, while Castle stays in the cabin to guard the witness. She sees someone lurking in the bushes, she tackles the shadowy figure, and it turns out to be the nurse from the mental hospital. She's in love with the brother and was trying to prove he wasn't involved in the killings so his appeal would be granted and he could be let go. She even went so far as to dig up his brother's grave to prove he wasn't a zombie, but the body was already gone.

Meanwhile, the remaining witness tells Castle that he and the other two witnesses were almost killed by guilt because they fingered the wrong guy in a police line-up and that man committed suicide due to the stress of being accused of murder. He also says that the guy had a daughter named Amanda, and wouldn't you know it, but that's the dead girl's roommate's name.

Amanda bursts into the cabin and temporarily blinds Castle with a flash from a specially-modified stun gun. She waits a moment for the capacitor to recharge, and just as she's about to zap the witness to death, Beckett gets the lights back on, which distracts her just long enough for Castle to club her over the head with his bottle of holy water.

Thus saving the day and cleansing her sins at the same time.

That wraps everything up, but still leaves the question as to what happened to the dead serial killers body. As it happens, the guy's corpse went missing from the prison morgue just after he died and the police buried an empty coffin. While he's still out there somewhere, possibly zombified, Castle and Beckett are both happy to have survived seeing the DVD, and when their midnight deadline passes, they celebrate with a little survivor sex.

Aw, yeah.

What I Liked
-Nathan Fillion does some more good face acting in this episode.

His years of training on One Life to Live really paid off.

-Esposito wonders how much Castle values their friendship. Like, would he leave him his Ferrari in his will? That's an excellent question, and it's not like dead people can drive.
-Castle wants Beckett to outlive him so someone will be around to tell his tale of sacrifice and selflessness.

What I Hated
-Castle makes a big show of shutting the blinds when Beckett goes to watch the DVD, but he doesn't shut the ones that face the TV. Sure, the detectives are protected, but the lowly desk sergeant deserves to die? Bad form, Castle.
-They made specific mention of the fact that there were no signs of forced entry in the dead girl's apartment. That makes sense since the killer was her roommate. However, they also mentioned that the door was locked and the couch was shoved up against it, which is not something you can do from the outside.
-The killer showed up for thirty seconds at the beginning of the episode, wasn't even a suspect, then disappeared until the end of the episode. I really hate when that happens.

Final Thoughts
I really wasn't feeling this one. Nathan did some excellent face work, but the plot itself was a bit odd and had at least one gaping hole in it.

I also didn't really see the point of having Wes Craven on. He provided some useful advice, but I think Castle could've probably figured it out on his own if he gave it 30 seconds of thought. They need to go back to having poker games with famous authors. Maybe get George R. R. Martin in and give him some crap for taking so long to write the Song of Ice and Fire books.

TBBT 6x17: The Monster Isolation

Raj went on a date with Kate Micucci last week. It did not go well. They went to get coffee, and while he waited at a table, she went to the bathroom and jumped out the window. When he found out she was gone, he became despondent, locked himself in his apartment and stopped answering his phone. So, his friends go to check up on him.

He's not in good shape.

After being humiliated by yet another woman, Raj has decided to retreat into seclusion. The guys don't think he can live like that forever, but he shows them that, thanks to Amazon, he can have anything he wants delivered, including live lobsters. They try to cheer him up, but it's not happening and he shuts himself in his room. With nothing else to do, his friends go out for Surf & Turf.

Elsewhere, Penny helps Sheldon with his latest episode of 'Sheldon Cooper Presents: Fun with Flags'. She's there to demonstrate that the show isn't just for flag aficionados, but also for flag virgins. While they work, she notices that Sheldon's a bit wooden and his delivery is a tad robotic. She uses her training as an actress to show him how to open up his body and invite the audience in.

He takes her a bit too literally.

Later, via video chat from her nicotine-addicted monkey study lab, Amy tells Sheldon that he should thank Penny for all her help. Since he tries his best to conform to social mores, he goes across the hall right away and tells her. Emboldened by his praise, she invites him to a performance her acting class is giving, but that sounds terrible, so he says no. Amy explains that was rude and that he should apologize. Slightly frustrated, he goes back across the hall and says he's sorry. He still doesn't want to go, but he will if it'll make her happy. She's still a bit miffed and doesn't want him to go unless he wants to, but they get bogged down in semantics and eventually she just orders him to go.

She's not sure how or why it worked, though.

That evening, at the comic book shop, the guys are browsing the stacks when Kate walks in. Howard tells her how devastated Raj is, but all she can do is apologize and ask him to give him her number. He takes it to him, but Raj is a proud man, and he has decided to renounce all worldly pleasures and live the life of a monk. He returns the number and tells Howard to take it away so he won't be tempted to stray from his true path: The study of the universe.

Like many monks before him, he strays rather quickly.

He calls Kate and she comes to his apartment to apologize for ditching him. When he asks her why she did it, she explains that she has difficulty being around people she doesn't know. She's a broken person and she doesn't think he should be around her. He's broken too, though, so he convinces her to go out on a date with him.

What I Liked
-Sheldon did an accurate, but wildly racist portrayal of George Washington Carver that will never see the light of day. The man's always trying to keep a physicist down.
-Flags taught Sheldon to go where the wind takes him... as long as he remains firmly attached to a rigid pole. I'm not sure if that's a gay joke or not.
-Raj wins Kate over by explaining that he has diagnosable psychological problems. That works on more women than you'd think.

What I Hated
-Penny's performance in A Streetcar Named Desire. Amy, Sheldon, and Leonard all fawn over how good she is, but her acting is just awful.

Her co-star played the silent, brooding guy pretty well, though.

Final Thoughts
They're finally admitting that the guys work at CalTech rather than a random university in California. I'm not sure what prompted the change, but it's a bit odd that it's come up in consecutive episodes after being ignored for six and a half seasons.

Kate Micucci's character still doesn't have an on-screen name. They call her 'Lucy' in the credits, but until someone actually says her name out loud, I shall refer to her as Kate. If her character lasts more than a few episodes, maybe it'll become a running gag that no one ever says her name.

As for their relationship, I have no idea how Raj and Kate will work as a couple. He has to be drunk to even speak to her, and she's apparently a super-awkward person. Having them sit around and not talk to each other might work for a single episode, but after that it'll get old really fast. I think at this point Raj needs to be able to talk to women without being drunk. Of course, if they do that then he'll lose one of his major character traits. They get around it pretty well by just having him hold random beers, but there are situations where it just wouldn't make sense or would be downright silly. Perhaps Kate can be the one who gets him to come out of his shell. Otherwise it's going to be really hard for them to interact in any meaningful way.

At any rate, this was an okay episode. It was more of a set-up for the future than anything else, I think.

Hawaii Five-0 3x17: Paʻani

A guy at a tactical ops fantasy camp takes a real bullet to the brain. Obviously, that wasn't in the brochure, so it's up to the Five-0 team to figure out if the guy deserves a refund.

100% Satisfaction Guaranteed, or your funeral's on us!

Duke finds a 9mm handgun ditched in some nearby bushes, but since every single person at the camp was firing a weapon, testing for GSR is useless. Fortunately, everyone was wearing a head-mounted camera, so they have video of everything. When they play it back, they spot an extra guy running around.

The first suspect is one of the guy's co-workers who decided to skip the morning's team-building exercise and who left an angry message on his voicemail the night before. But, the CEO shows up and tells McGarrett that the guy didn't have the balls to kill someone, plus he has an alibi, so they cut him loose.

Max's examination shows that the guy was given a heavy dose of a prescription sedative 12 hours before he died. The co-worker says they were at a bar together the night before, so Steve and Danny go there to check it out. When they get there, they run into Steve's old buddy, Nicky "The Kid" DiMarco.

He opened for Sinatra once. Then hung out with a guy with an awesome moustache for seven years.

The Kid recognizes the dead guy and mentions that he was hanging out with a blonde woman named Holly who's good friends with the bouncer. When McGarrett takes a look at him, the guy bolts and Nicky has to bust him in the chops to stop him. The bouncer's been skimming from the cover charge and helping Holly find rich guys to scam, but he doesn't even know her real name and didn't turn her on to the dead guy because he was buying drinks with his credit card instead of cash.

Kono tracks Holly to the Marriott, but she ran out an hour earlier and left her phone behind. The creepy security guard shows Kono video of an altercation between Holly and an unknown man that ends when he tries to rough her up and Arian Foster of the Houston Texans decks him.

He's dreamy.

Adrian's a good football player, but not the best witness in the world. He doesn't have much info for the guys, but he was wearing a big fat ring on the hand he used to punch the guy, so Steve and Danny borrow it so they can check it for DNA. It comes back as a former army special forces guy who fits the height and build of their unknown suspect. They pick him up pretty quickly and he makes the mistake of telling them he knew who the guy was. He's a corporate espionage guy and he hired Holly to get some data off the future dead guy's hard drive, but she freaked out when she heard the guy was dead and bolted before he could get it from her.

However, when the HPD searched the guy's room, they didn't find a computer. Somebody broke into his room and stole it. Danny and Steve bust down Holly's door and interrogate her sister. Holly found another buyer for the data and she's off making the deal right now. As it turns out, the new chip the dead guy's company was working on was worthless and if the market found out, their stock would tank. Everything now points to the CEO as the killer, which is good because he's the guy who did it. Danny and Steve track him down right before he gets a chance to kill Holly.

It's also Pro Bowl weekend, and Steve and Danny have tickets one row from the AFC sideline, but the NFL hooked Catherine's unit up with some freebies, so she also has tickets to the game, and she wanted Steve to go with her. He makes the mistake of saying he wants to go with his friend rather than his girlfriend because the seats are better. Unfortunately, Danny and Steve wind up missing the game when McGarrett separates his shoulder when he drop kicks the CEO. Catherine picks up a signed ball for Danno, though.

Which is nice.

What I Liked
-Kamekona gets the tickets for Danny and throws in a third one for himself as a convenience fee. It's still probably cheaper than going through TicketMaster.
-McGarrett throws a pass to Danny after separating his shoulder.

What I Hated
-Adrian Foster's acting. He's no OJ. That whole scene was just painful to watch, especially Danny grilling him about how he fumbled the ball in week 11. He's got a decent look, though. Maybe with a few acting classes he could do some light comedy work.
-The CEO did his own killing. That's just stupid. They have guys for that.

Final Thoughts
I'm not sure if CBS had the Pro Bowl this year, but they certainly played up how awesome it is. It might have been a good idea to air this episode before the game, though.

I hate episodes like this because it's so hard for me to say anything about them. I can't say much about what I liked or hated because it didn't evoke any strong feelings in me at all. I guess I can say that this was an okay episode. They did that thing where the killer is a dude who showed up at the beginning and then wasn't seen again until they figured out he was the bad guy, but at least they gave him a decent motive. There wasn't a whole heck of a lot else to the episode, though. No car chases, no real gunfights, and not even that many bikini girls. Maybe if I were a football fan it would've been more exciting for me, but I'm not, so it wasn't.

HIMYM 8x17: The Ashtray

Ted gets a message from The Captain, which leads to he, Robin, and Lily telling the story of what happened the last time they met him, like a crappy sitcom version of Rashomon.

The Douchebag's Story
Ted recalls that at the time of the meeting, he had recently taken back up with Robin's co-host on "Come On, Get Up New York!", Becky.

If this scene isn't a gif already, I'll be very surprised.

Lily had invited Ted and Robin to an art gallery opening, and who should they run into, but The Captain himself. Ted recalls that The Captain was incredibly rude to them in the gallery, but invited them all up to his apartment to show off a new painting he had just acquired. While they're up there, The Captain calls a picture of something in a frame on his desk his "one true love", and then pulls a harpoon gun on Ted when he wants to clear the air about Zoey. Ted talks him down, and in truth, The Captain is in love with someone else, so all is forgiven. But, Ted wonders who that someone else might be, so when everyone else is out of the room, he snatches the frame from the desk to see who's in the picture: It's a magazine cover, featuring Becky!

The girl really loves boats.

Ted thinks that The Captain wants to kill him for stealing yet another woman from him. However, when he calls Ted again, all he wants is Robin's phone number. The guys debate giving it to him for a moment, but then decide that she won't mind, and it might help Marshall get a ride on his boat. Robin minds.

The Anchor's Story
Things were much the way Ted described them, except Ted had smoked a fat sandwich with Becky before the art gallery opening and was making an ass of himself. Rather than being angry and rude to Ted, The Captain was merely trying to help him finish his sentences as the sandwich smoke had turned his brain to pudding. In actuality, The Captain was hitting on Robin the whole time they were together. The harpoon gun was really the remote control for his DVR, and his "one true love" wasn't Becky... It was Robin!

Hey, Sailor!

Robin told him that since he was on the rebound, he should take some time to get his head together and give her a call in 18 months. Which would be right about now. However, when she calls him back, she finds that she had their names confused, and he really wanted to talk to Lily. The gang debates whether or not they should give him her number, but Marshall thinks she won't mind, and it might get him four million dollars in a kind of Indecent Proposal thing. She minds.

The Wife's Story
The story went more or less the way Robin told it, except she was drunk off her ass, and she was hitting on The Captain, not the other way around. Also, his "one true love" was the yacht on the cover of the magazine, not Becky, who was actually in a small, inset photo. And, while he was showing Lily his new painting, he insulted her by saying she was just a kindergarten teacher and no one cares what she thinks about art. So, later, she stole an expensive crystal ashtray while Robin was passed out on top of him.

You do something bad, she takes away one of your toys.

Climax
Marshall and Lily fight about returning the ashtray. He hopes The Captain will take it back without pressing charges, but she's really upset and doesn't want to do it. What he said to her really cut deeply: She is just a kindergarten teacher, and even though she has a degree in art history, she never got around to doing anything with it, and now it's probably too late. Marshall tries to reassure her that she still has time and her best days are ahead of her, but she doesn't believe him.

When she returns the ashtray the next day, she finds out that it wasn't what The Captain wanted to talk to her about because he didn't even realize it was gone. Instead, he takes her to his room to show her something. After she, Robin, and Ted left that night, he slipped back down to the art gallery to buy a painting she said she liked. In the year and a half since then, the artist has become a major phenom in the art world, and no one saw it coming, except Lily. The Captain is selling the painting for $4 million, and he wants to get back into the art game, so he offers her a job as his new art consultant. She accepts.

Also, there was a thing about how Barney wanted to be a part of the wacky story because that's his thing, and if he doesn't make their lives crazy, then he doesn't know who he is. It wasn't important, though.

Although, it did give us this image of Barney playing the guitar with some bikini girls.

What I Liked
-Single-barrelled, no-scope harpoon gun. I'm pretty sure that's a kill type in one of the Modern Warfare games.
-Marshall's happy that Boats Boats Boats girl and The Captain got together, but he thinks Ted sucks for stealing her from him. Yeah, Ted does suck.
-In Barney's mind, "Nothing happened" means hand stuff. If I were the kind of guy who messed around on my lady friends, I would totally use that in the future. If I were that kind of guy. IF.

What I Hated
-Lily is upset that she's just a kindergarten teacher. Back in the season two episode 'Aldrin Justice' (which was the episode where Lily stole something from Ted's boss to punish him for being mean), she realized that being a teacher was her true calling. It was a whole big thing.
-The Royal Archduke of Grand Fenwick. I thought and hoped we had seen the last of The Playbook.

I was wrong.

Final Thoughts
This was a really lazy episode. How I Met Your Mother likes to do episodes where they retell part of the story from a different perspective. While that sort of thing *can* be done well, I don't think HIMYM has ever done it. Not that the execution would matter anyway, because it plain doesn't make sense narratively. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but it comes up a lot: The conceit of the show is that Future Ted is telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, hence the name of the show. Now, it's been established that Ted is the worst, most meandering storyteller in the world, but even he shouldn't be telling the story of how he and two of his friends told three different versions of the story of how they went to an art show one time and ran into The Captain. It's a structural nightmare.

As for the aforementioned laziness, multiple perspectives can be good, but the variations in this episode were pretty minor and were based on drug and alcohol jokes, which can be funny, but are often incredibly lazy. In this case, weed made Ted slow and turned Robin into the female equivalent of a horndog. That seems pretty lazy to me.

Which is weird, because they often work hard in a few other areas. They brought back The Captain, and even got Laura Bell Bundy for like 30 seconds of screen time, despite the fact that neither of them has been on the show in two years. And they at least partially stuck to the established continuity vis-a-vis Lily taking things away when people misbehave, which hasn't come up in more than six years. Maybe all of that other stuff burns them out and they don't have the energy for writing. I can understand that.

Ultimately, this episode wasn't terribly funny, but nor was it offensively awful, and it had some good bits.