Castle 5x11: Under the Influence

Aging pop singer Regina holds a release party for her newest album, and who should show up but Josie Lange, the latest young pop sensation. Daggers are stared. However, the next day when a corpse turns up in a dumpster it's not either songstress, but rather the DJ who was working the party.

The music industry is a cutthroat business... only she was shot.

A check of the dead girl's history finds that she has a pretty lengthy rap sheet, but cleaned up her act seven years ago. She also had a phone number written on her hand, which leads to a hotshot producer who wanted to take her to the next level, and who, coincidentally, is producing Josie Lange's new album. The producer tells Esposito that DJ Dead was getting an angry earful at the party from one Darius Carson aka MC Thug.

He's not a happy man.

Mr. Thug tells Castle and Beckett that he thought the DJ stole a diamond bracelet from him at a party he threw a week earlier, and he confronted her at the party. He has a pretty solid alibi, though, since he was upstairs getting frisky with a lady during the time of the murder.

Further investigation shows that over the past year, thefts have been reported at seven of the parties where DJ Corpse was spinning the hits. They bring in her assistant, and he tells them that sometimes she used a different guy, and the nights we worked correlate exactly with when the thefts occurred. Fingerprints from the equipment lead to Joey Malone aka Monster.

His nickname's not quite as accurate as MC Thug's.

Beckett questions Monster, but he clams up when she starts asking about the murder. Esposito's from the streets, though, and he knows that a 14-year-old isn't smart enough to run a high-end burglary scam on his own. So, he takes over and tries to get Oliver to give up his Fagin. Monster's not going to peach, though, even after Esposito shows him photos of DJ Deceased.

Joey's caseworker comes in to talk about him, and their options are limited. They can send him to temporary foster car or toss him in juvie, neither of which would engender his trust. Thus, Espo is forced to take him in for the night. Witty banter ensues, and it looks like things might work out until Joey bails out the window while Esposito's getting him a blanket. Javi's swift, though, so the next day the two of them walk into the station wearing matching bracelets.

Part of the 2013 spring collection.

Castle and Beckett pull out Joey's record, and one name sticks out. The same guy who bailed Monster out a while back also bailed out DJ Departed when she was 17. Esposito tracks him down, knees his bodyguard in the groin, then has Fagin cuff himself so he can take him in. Regular interrogation techniques don't work on him, so Espo spends a minute alone with him so he can get him to rat out the kid on video and show it to Joey. Seeing his mentor sell him out is enough to get Monster to start talking.

Oddly enough, he wasn't at the party to steal jewelry. He was there to swipe a cell phone from the record producer. Ryan and Esposito head back to the studio and find DJ Done For's blood all over a wall. The producer doesn't know what happened, though. He didn't even realize that his phone was stolen because it turned up in a bathroom at the party an hour or so after Joey boosted it. The phone wasn't the target, though. The producer uses it as an e-Key to access his studio, which is filled with valuable equipment and even more valuable unreleased audio tracks.

Including something from Joe Mantegna's favourite group, the Lone Believers.

None of the equipment is missing, but someone downloaded Josie Lange's entire album just before DJ Dumpster was killed. And who had the most to gain from Josie's album leaking on the internet? Regina, whose album was coming out on exactly the same day. Castle and Beckett bust her, then Esposito goes to see Fagin and threatens to murder him if he ever goes near Joey again.

Case closed.

What I Liked
-Esposito and Ryan are fans of Regina and Josie, respectively. It's like Tupac vs. Biggie.
-Castle knows what it's like to wake up the morning after a party without any pants. We've all been there, man.
-Joey craps all over Esposito's decor. He's right, there's no way you can get a girl if your apartment looks like that.
-Esposito describes how he caught Monster. Sometimes it's better to leave things to the imagination, and I think telling the story works in this case, while showing it probably wouldn't have had the same effect.

What I Hated
-Monster says something about Esposito not being able to make it past level one in Assassin's Creed III multiplayer. Now, I think that technically makes sense since there's a mode that has character level progression, but that's probably not what the writer meant. Apparently, no one on the writing staff has played a video game in the last decade if they think that all games still have something that can even generally be referred to as 'Level One'. And I guarantee that the kid who played Monster and at least one of the regular male actors could've corrected them, so I don't know why a line like that made it into the episode.

Final Thoughts
No Alexis this week, which is unfortunate because I think she could've provided some insight into the state of modern pop music.

The plot in this episode was a little convoluted because -just like on Hawaii Five-0- the murder was a crime of opportunity rather than a well thought out plan. On Castle it was a little bit worse, though, since the killing was done with the dead person's own gun and may have even been an accident.

What really bugged me was that Regina and Josie's albums were coming out on the same day. No one puts out a major release on the same day a competitor these days. That's why the 'summer' movie season now begins in mid-April.

All in all, I thought it was a poor episode with a killer whose motive was far too complicated.

Hawaii Five-0 3x12: Kapu

A pledge for fictional fraternity Beta Phi Tau at fictional O'ahu State University comes across a body dissolving in a vat of acid. To his credit, he doesn't puke immediately, despite having consumed 64 shots of beer as part of an initiation ritual.

Really, that'd probably make me barf, and I'm sober.

Danny, Steve, and Danny's visiting nephew, Eric are soon on the scene. The dead guy is a professor, and whoever killed him had keycard access to his lab... which narrows it down to about 300 suspects. Dead guy's TA says he'd been acting strange recently, and the chair of his department thinks he might have been offering his female students a little private tutoring, if you know what I mean.

After a little investigative work, they find that the dead professor's been threatened by one of his female students, and Steve and Danno head over to her sorority to check her out. Eric stays behind in the sorority house living room to check out the rest of the ladies.

Eh..... not bad.

When the guys get up to the girl's room, she bolts out the window and jumps on her scooter, and so begins the slowest chase scene this show has ever had. Eventually, they grab her, and when they interrogate her, they find that she ran because she bought some meds off a friend to help her study because half her chem class is buying the test papers in advance.

Eric uses his immense cheating experience to help the guys track down one of the students, and he points them directly to the dead prof's TA.

He's gonna be an internet meme.

The TA swears he didn't do it, and he wasn't worried about getting busted for selling the tests because he was the one writing them in the first place.

A thorough examination of the dead guy's house turns up a hidden grow-op, but it wasn't the sticky icky, but rather a plant that was thought to be extinct. He'd been booking regular hunting trips to the island of Niihau, a privately-owned nature preserve in the north. The locals saw him split off from his hunting parties and smoke coming from somewhere off in the distance. Smoke that is currently emanating from that exact spot, despite the fact that the professor is dead.

Back on Oahu, Danny and Eric go to find Toast to see if he can dig anything up on the dead guy's computer. Unfortunately, Toast is in Baltimore for his sister's Bat Mitzvah, so they have to deal with his roommate, Bullwinkle, who is smoking weed from a bong made out of a pineapple.

It gives the smoke a delightful island flavour.

Out in the jungle, Chin and McGarrett find a botanist played by Jeff Fahey, who was on Lost for a while. His son has a degenerative disorder, but the nearly-extinct plant might hold the key to finding a cure. Dead guy was a chemical genius, and he was helping out before he was murdered. While they're checking out the guy's operation, Steve gets a call from Danny. Bullwinkle has worked his magic, and they know who killed the professor. My money was on Gilligan.

The identity of the killer was decided via Twitter, so depending on where you were, it was either the department chair, the TA, or the random kid they caught cheating. In any case, he's on Niihau and Chin shoots him just before he can take out the botanist and steal all the research data for himself.

Twitter should not decide anything. Anything.

Elsewhere, everyone's favourite recurring prisoner, Sang is in town to testify in exchange for a sentence reduction, and Kono gets to babysit him. He has expensive food delivered to their hotel room and gets Kamekona to bring him a new suit, all at taxpayer expense. He escapes while the prosecutor's helping to prepare his testimony and Kono's out of the room.

However, he didn't bust out so he could get away, he just wanted to see his ex-wife again. When he gets to her house, he finds her having dinner with her new man, and he's so despondent that he can't even bring himself to knock on the door. Kono catches up with him and he lets her take him back in. But, she's not made of stone, and she offers to pull some strings to get him transferred back to a prison on the island. I hope that means we'll be seeing more of him.

What I Liked
-Sang. He's the best recurring guest character they've had, aside from Larisa Oleynik and her butt.

Show Sang some love, girl.

-Eric emails a photo of Danny in the 1998 Newark Police Academy calendar to everyone in Danny's address book. If you want to piss off your uncle, that's a good way to go.
-Eric's solution to the slow speed chase is for Danny to shoot out the girl's tires. This kid's growing on me.
-Bullwinkle has a lot of ranch dressing... Because it's delicious. The man knows what's up.

What I Hated
-Twitter decided the ending.

Final Thoughts
This was a perfectly serviceable episode, except for the ending. That was some Grade A, industrial strength BS. The motive was the same for all three guys, including the student, who they admitted would have no idea what to do with the research data, so the professor was essentially murdered by a random opportunist. Sure, that's how things go in real life sometimes, but it doesn't make for compelling television. Especially since the department chair isn't seen again after the ten-minute mark of the episode, and the student only has about 30 seconds of screen time before the killer is revealed. From a narrative perspective, it makes no sense for either of those guys to be the murderer, but in the version I saw, it turned out it was the chair. I really hope the ratings for this episode were in the toilet so stuff like this doesn't catch on.

Of course, there's no way to tell if the Twitter votes actually influenced the ending in any way. It's perfectly conceivable that CBS just picked one version at random. That'd be a big deal over in the UK, but here in North America, I don't think anyone would actually care.

Leaving all that garbage aside, the episode was decent. Eric turned out to be better than I initially expected, they brought back Sang, and Bullwinkle offered Danny a hit from his pineapple bong. That's the kind of stuff I want to see on Hawaii Five-0, not stupid stunts to try to get publicity and goose the ratings. I like this show, and I want to see it continue, but not like this.

HIMYM 8x13: Band or DJ?

Against all odds and logic, Barney and Robin are engaged. This presents two problems.

Problem the first: Robin is apparently some kind of old-fashioned lady, and she needs Barney to ask her father's permission to marry her. Robin's father started off as a distant millionaire who wished Robin had been a boy, but now he's a scary lunatic played by Ray Wise.

Except he met a younger woman, discovered Facebook, and now he's "fun"

Nevertheless, Barney still has trouble getting his permission. Partly because he's blond, and also because Mr. Scherbatsky's still a deranged lunatic. He tells Barney a story about how he murdered a family of bears as tribute for Robin's grandfather before he proposed to her mom, and he gives Barney a gun and tries to get him to kill a rabbit in his apartment.

Instead of shooting him, Barney names him and gives him a back story.

Robin friends her dad on Facebook and discovers that he's married. So, when she goes to see how Barney's doing, she gets rightfully ticked off and tells him that she and Barney are already engaged, and since she wasn't invited to his wedding, he's not invited to hers.

Because he's awesome, Barney manages to convince her dad to apologize. He goes a bit overboard and says he'll get a divorce and drive his ex-wife to suicide. Her counter offer is for a bit of normalcy and for him to smile and dance with her at her wedding. He agrees, but only if his wife gets to sing "Cheeseburger in Paradise."

"Not too particular, not too precise."

Problem the second: Lily and Ted are having an argument about who should help plan the wedding and whether Barney and Robin should have a band or a DJ. Hence the title. Ted thinks they should get a DJ and he does what he can to ensure that's what happens, even going so far as to pre-book the band Lily wants to get so they're unavailable on the day of the wedding.

When Lily confronts him about it, he goes off on a tangent about how bands are unreliable and they cheat and they've slept with half of New York, and Robin really be married to the idea of having one. It's not really about bands. Lily takes him up to the roof to sort him out. Finding out that Robin and Barney got engaged hurt him more than all the beatings and nut-punchings he's taken in his life, but he's not willing to say anything other than that he's happy for them, because saying how he really felt would make him a bad person. Of course, he's already Grand High Supreme Douche of the Land of Douchetania, so I don't see what it's such a big deal. At any rate, Lily spills her guts about how sometimes she wishes she weren't a mother so Ted won't feel so terrible about saying Robin should be with him instead of Barney. But, he realizes he has to give her up and let her get a band for her wedding.

Unfortunately, the band winds up cancelling a week before the big event. However, as luck should have it, Ted bumps into TV's Rachel Bilson and her wife on the subway.

Apparently, Hayden Christensen has changed up his look a bit.

As it turns out, her ex-roommate is the bass player in the best wedding band in the city. Also, she's the mother. How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.

In a side plot, Marvin is constipated. Until he sprays crap all over Marshall.

Confetti is to Poop as Sandwich is to Marijuana. It's true, I took the SATs.

What I Liked
-"I'm a cut you, bitch!" Lily's at her best when she's angry at one of the guys.
-Mr. Scherbatsky kinda wanted to kill the bear. If you're going to be crazy, you should definitely go all the way.
-Fluffernutter peed all over Barney's pants. It's terrible when things like that happen. It's because animals can sense fear and they want to seem sympathetic.

What I Hated
-Cobie Smulders was sick. That's fine. Actresses get sick, and real life people get sick too, so it makes sense for Robin to be sick at some point. The problem is that at some point, Cobie got better, so Robin goes from sounding like her larynx is made of sandpaper to a perfectly normal voice in the middle of a scene. She could've acted sick for that one little bit.
-Robin wants Barney to ask for her father's permission to marry her. It's not 1820 anymore, that's silly.
-Ray Wise. I liked Robin's old father better.
-They made a joke about The Departed. That movie came out in 2006. Sure, it was good, but nobody should be making jokes about it in 2013.
-They make jokes about their parents being on Facebook. It's like the whole episode went through some kind of time warp.

Final Thoughts
So, at last we have a date for when Ted meets the mother: May 25, 2013. That's a Saturday, so the actual episode will probably air on May 20. Unless they screw around and have Barney and Robin delay their wedding, which honestly wouldn't surprise me. Or, it could turn into some non-linear storytelling thing where Future Ted decides he glossed over a few points and goes back to tell his kids more about that Thanksgiving he spent at a strip club. Because that's an appropriate story to tell your children.

In any case, I'm glad it's going to happen this season. Especially since the show was renewed, and I'm not sure I can watch another year of this crap. Robin's so estranged from her father that she didn't know he was married or that he lived in New York, yet it's important for Barney to get his permission to marry her. Barney and Robin haven't dated in three years and yet their engagement is only going to last five months. Incidentally, that five month engagement is actually a month less than their original relationship lasted. This time will be different, though. Not for any logical reasons, but because the plot demands it.

Lily's whole "Being a mom is rough" thing kinda came out of nowhere. However, it also went nowhere, so I guess that's okay.

Overall, this was yet another in this season's long line of "Man, what?" episodes. Barney must go to extremes to get Robin's father's permission to marry her. Man, what?

Fringe 5x11: The Boy Must Live

Michael has shown Walter a memory of Donald/September that's hidden in his subconscious, and there's only one way to retrieve it: With the sensory deprivation tank. For the first time in the history of the show, someone other than Olivia has to get hopped up on drugs and lie in a tank of water.

Unlike Olivia, Walter goes fully nude so his body and mind can be fully unencumbered.

He only manages to dig out a vague recollection of the location of September's old apartment, and there's no guarantee that he still lives there, but Walter is optimistic. A little too optimistic, in fact. So much so that when they get to the location in New York, Peter asks him what's up. When Michael mind-melded with him, it freed his mind. No longer is he a slave to his hubris, and what's more, he's gaining the memories Walter had in Peter's original timeline.

When they get to the apartment from Walter's memory, whoever lives there has a lot of locks. Peter puts his hand on his weapon, but when the door opens, it's just Donald.

Or Hairy September if you prefer.

After a brief handshake with Michael, Donald brings the team up to speed. As punishment for his continued interference in the timeline, the Observers removed September's implant and experimented on him until he became virtually identical to ordinary humans. He chose the name Donald O'Connor after Walter took him to see Singin' in the Rain. As for the boy, all observer children are cloned and rapidly matured in pods. Michael's brain developed abnormally, and his maturation was halted. Donald hid him in the past because his studies of the past had shown him the love a father can have for a son, and Michael was cloned from his genetic material.

The plan was to send Michael to February 28, 2167, the moment when scientists first began the experimentation that would lead to humanity sacrificing emotions for intelligence. Michael is far more intelligent than the Observers can comprehend and he has emotions. If he goes to the future, then the world will never go down that path, and the Observers will never exist. It's some Terminator stuff.

Meanwhile, Windmark takes a trip to visit his boss... in the future!

It's 2609 or 1974. They both look pretty much the same.

Michael should not exist, and yet he does. Windmark's really ticked off and wants to be allowed to mess with the timeline so he can wipe out the resisters. His commander denies his request; the resisters are inconsequential, and screwing around with the timeline would alter the probability of success. Nevertheless, Windmark's mind is overwhelmed with the desire to exterminate the resistance.

When he returns to 2036, he immediately begins searching for Donald. Since he was detained at the mine in Pennsylvania 20 years ago, Donald has a chip in his head that allows the Observers to track him. Windmark and two flunkies pop into his apartment, but they're too late: Walter and Peter have removed the chip, and they're gone. Instead, they find nothing but knick-knacks and jazz recordings. And a small antimatter device that Donald uses to vapourize his whole apartment.

I don't think he'll be getting back his security deposit.

While the Loyalists begin a search, Donald takes Walter to a storage room where he's hidden some future technology they need to complete the plan. While they're there, they talk about how when September pulled Walter out of Reiden Lake, the boy he said was important wasn't Peter, it was Michael (which is probably some retcon BS), and that in order to complete the plan, Walter will have to sacrifice himself. He's a little afraid, but Donald tells him it was his idea, and that it was his way of making up for all the damage he's caused.

The tech secured, Donald takes his leave while the team and Michael start their trip back to the lab. Unfortunately, Windmark and the Loyalists have set up roadblocks all around Brooklyn, and they're surrounded. Astrid uses the resistance's network to hack the camera feeds and find them an exit, but it gets a bit dicey and they have to split up. Olivia and Michael make it onto the monorail, followed a few minutes later by Walter and Peter. But, just before the train departs, Michael walks out the door and presents himself to the Loyalists, who promptly deliver him to Windmark.

What I Liked
-Walter remembers that Peter never liked taking a dump in a public restroom. That's a good memory to have.
-Windmark's flunky starts tapping his toe to the music. Even emotionless cyborgs from the future can't resist the power of jazz.
-Donald busts Peter's chops when he says "Is that it?" to their boxes of timeline-distorting future technology. He thinks he's so big just because he destroyed a universe once, so he needs to be cut down to size every now and then.

What I Hated
-There's a bit at the beginning where Peter pulls his gun when Walter surprises him while he's lasering out the latest tape. I'm pretty sure that scene was included just to get some intense-looking shots for the preview.

Literally nothing exciting is happening in this scene.

-Olivia recoils at the sight of Walter's junk. She's seen his penis at least twice on screen, so she should be used to it by now.
-The Observers think they have a 99.9999% probability of success. That's a little extreme.

Final Thoughts
The word of the day is GRACE, and honestly, I have no idea what it means.

It's nice that they made so many callbacks to previous episodes, but it seems mighty convenient that Michael was able to restore Walter's memories of the alternate timeline. I think what probably happened is that the writers had an "Oh crap!" moment when they realized that the Walter from the first three seasons doesn't exist anymore and all those references they wanted to make were to things that had never happened.

Which brings up the whole "The Boy Must Live" thing. The line from the second season episode Peter is "The boy is important, he has to live." At the time, everyone thought that meant Peter, but in this episode we found out it really referred to Michael, which makes no sense whatsoever. That line was a response to Walter's question about why September saved them from drowning in the lake, so saying anything about Michael is kind of a non sequitur, particularly since he runs into the two of them like 20 times over the course of the series, and has ample opportunity to explain Michael's importance. Plus, midway through that episode, September has a chat with December and August where he says "Dr. Bishop was on the verge of developing a cure for the boy." Unless he goes around calling everyone under the age of 18 "the boy" it seems like the original plan was for "the boy" to be Peter.

September screwed up and prevented Walternate from discovering the cure for Peter's illness, so he had to rectify his mistake by dragging Walter and Peter out of the lake. It obviously wasn't because they needed Peter to turn on the universe-destroying machine, since the people in the alternate timeline managed to do that without him, and it clearly wasn't because they needed Peter to father Etta or to help save Michael, because last season September built a machine to erase the echoes of Peter from the universe and very nearly turned it on. So, causing Peter's death was a problem, but not because they needed Peter around for any particular reason. The whole thing just stinks of retconning.

This was the third-last episode, so I can't really review it in a vacuum; it has to be seen as a portion of the ending of the show. They're tying up loose ends, but they're doing it in a wholly unsatisfying manner, partially because those loose ends are in another timeline. Nevertheless, they are making an effort, and this episode did have a few nice bits in it. However, it seems to me that they've Lost their way.

TBBT 6x13: The Bakersfield Expedition

The boys are headed to Bakersfield for the Bakersfield Comic Con (The seventh best Comic Con in California!) and because they're neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerds, they're going to go in costume. Which is fortuitous since on the way to Bakersfield, they pass Vasquez Rocks, where a million episodes of TV and several movies have been shot, and they have the opportunity to pose in the very spot where Kirk defeated the Gorn.

I'm not sure if Charlie's Angels ever shot an episode there.

Unfortunately, while they're busy posing, Leonard's car is stolen. When they changed into their TNG outfits, he left his keys in the car, and everybody left their cell phones in their other pants. As such, they're stranded, and forced to walk through the desert to a local diner so they can use the phone. Wolowitz arranges a car rental through his mother; unfortunately, not with Enterprise.

No one appreciated Worf's humour on TNG, either.

While the guys are away, the ladies go to brunch and try to figure out why their men are so obsessed with comics. So, they head over to Stuart's comic book shop to pick something up. They go with an issue of Thor because he's hot. Which, I suppose is as good a reason as any to pick a comic book.

At first, they think the story is really stupid, but then they get bogged down in an argument about who can pick up Thor's hammer. Many a comic book fan has fallen down that rabbit hole, never to be seen again, and the girls get pretty deep into it. They even go so far as to head over to Leonard and Sheldon's apartment so they can find more comics and do further research.

They can get away with it because they're the girlfriends/wife but in general, you shouldn't unfile a dude's comics.

When the guys return, they hear the ladies arguing, including about the worthiness of Red Hulk to wield the hammer. Sheldon thinks they must've crossed into an alternate universe at some point while they were walking in the desert. The guys agree and they head into the apartment, phasers on stun.

What I Liked
-Captain Sweatpants! He's not the hero we want, he's the hero we need. Or something.

I think it's a new actor.

-Jim Parsons makes a fairly convincing Data. Although, the other guys are the tiniest Picard, Borg, and Worf I've ever seen.
-A passing motorist hits Sheldon in the chest with a slushie. Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds!

What I Hated
-I don't know what it was, but it seemed like there was something up with Mayim Bialik's audio.
-They're clearly in the studio and not in front of Vasquez Rocks. Also, it's kinda weird how easily the car thieves are able to steal Leonard's car, considering they're in the middle of nowhere, and the guys would probably notice another car stopping to let some guys out.

Final Thoughts
They went a bit overboard with the OMG NERDS!!! stuff this week. All the male patrons at the comic book store stop to gawk at the ladies when they walk in, despite the fact that all three of them have been there before. In fact, Leonard once picked up a hot chick there, so it's not like it's unheard of for women to walk in.

Plus, funny though it may have been, the slushie Sheldon got hit with was nearly full. No one would waste their beverage on something like that. Not in this economy.

Still, the ladies actually read a few books and found that they and the culture surrounding them weren't all bad. In my eyes, that's enough to redeem the episode somewhat.

Castle 5x10: Significant Others

A high-powered divorce attorney who only represents women takes an icepick to the neck... but that's just a framing device for the real story in this episode. The real story is that Alexis has mono and is convalescing at home during a week when Beckett's staying over because her apartment is being fumigated. That would easily be enough for wacky hijinks to ensue, but wait... Who's that at the door?

*Woooooooo!* It's TV's Darby Stanchfield!

Castle's ex-wife (and Alexis' mother) Meredith is bummed that she and her daughter have to miss their vacation to Paris, so she's here to take care of her baby... and she brought a lot of luggage.

Foolishly, Castle allows his ex to move in so she can look after Alexis. Beckett's not cool with that. Not cool at all! She even gave him a look.

Lanie helped give him one, too.

He tries to fix it, but Meredith is a difficult woman to say 'no' to. She's been a bit of an absentee mother, and now she's incredibly thankful that he's willing to let her be there for Alexis in her hour of need.

Meanwhile, Beckett goes downstairs to talk to Lanie about the case and she gets an earful about how she needs to protect her territory. Castle and his ex hook up whenever she comes to town, and now that Beckett is encroaching on her man booty, Meredith's fighting back.

The case continues with a raucous visit to the lawyer's final client who lost big in her divorce. She and her ex-husband destroy every vase they can get their hands on until Beckett has them both arrested.

Back at the precinct, Ryan and Esposito notice that something's up when Beckett makes a snide remark about Castle's ex and he doesn't say anything. He lets them know what's up, and they tell him that he's on the edge of a very steep cliff and he's about to go over.

Castle's love life is a metaphor for the US economy.

Castle uses his considerable clout and finances to book the Ambassador Suite at the Four Seasons, complete with strawberries and champagne. Beckett's not going to let Meredith chase her away, though, so she heads back to Castle's loft and is up with the sun to make him coffee. But, Meredith's an early riser, too, and she doesn't have to go to work, so she doesn't need to put on pants.

She also makes better coffee than Kate... in her underwear.

Beckett and Castle visit a golf pro who they believe killed his wife and then killed the lawyer when she found proof. He seems ticked off about the whole thing and he's not much help. When they return to the station, Kate gets a phone call from Meredith asking her to dinner. His world's are colliding, and Ryan and Espo tell him that can only mean one thing:

"Boom."

At home, Martha tries to get her son to relax and have a glass of wine, but all he can do is pace. His ex-wife is out with his girlfriend, and there's no way that can go well for him. They actually have a good time together, though, and when they get home, they break Castle's brain.

The next day, the case is solved and Beckett's apartment is habitable again, so she clears out of Castle's place. He tries to get her to stay, though, because he might need to fumigate, too.

His apartment is infested with redheads.

Fortunately, Martha and Alexis have had enough Meredith for one week, and they convince her to go to Paris to finish her vacation. While Castle goes upstairs to grab her bag, she and Kate get to have a little confab. Beckett asks Meredith why it didn't work out between she and Rick. As it turns out, it was a communication thing. She told him everything about herself, but whenever she'd ask him about something meaningful or painful, he'd make a joke and change the subject. The episode ends with Beckett slowly realizing that despite the fact that she's known him for more than four years, she really doesn't know that much about the man who she loves.

That can't be good.

What I Liked
-Castle realizes a second too late that he shouldn't be discussing the manner in which his daughter got 'the kissing disease' with her. The trials and tribulations of a single dad.
-Nathan Fillion plays the confused man whose home is overrun with ladies really well. Just look at that face:

This is the face of a man who has no idea what's going on.

-Dr. Parish goes full gal pal. Lanie's normally very reserved, but when someone tries to steal her friend's man she's ready to throw down.
-TV's Darby Stanchfield in her underwear. I'm a guy. I like it when tall redheads walk around without any pants.
-Ryan and Esposito track down a lawyer who paid a guy who might have been the killer, and he actually acts like a real lawyer. He eats a hot dog and tells them to go screw themselves. None of that 'That's privileged information... I wish I could help you' crap.

What I Hated
-The murder plot was really complicated. During the lawyer's investigation of her client's husband, she discovered that he was a close friend of one of her old clients who was missing and had been presumed murdered by her husband. Further investigation found that the living client's husband's boat had been in close proximity with the dead woman's husband's boat on the night of her disappearance, and furthermore, money had been bouncing around which proved that the dead woman wasn't actually dead. The not-dead woman killed the lawyer after she threatened to expose her because she couldn't live with the injustice.
-Castle and Beckett are pretty blatant about their relationship. Long gone are the days when they were destroying video tape that showed them sharing loving glances. Now he's yelling stuff across the room at her. They should probably deal with the Cap'n at some point; by now, everybody must know they're together.

Final Thoughts
It's been so long since we've seen Meredith that I completely forgot about her. Darby Stanchfield hasn't been on the show since the sixth episode. She was an excellent casting choice back in the day, and I can still totally see how she and Nathan Fillion could have a kid that looks like Molly Quinn.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable episode, even though, or perhaps because the murder case was secondary to what was going on at the Casa de Castle. I also appreciated the fact that they tied the home stuff into the work stuff by having the murder victim be a divorce lawyer.

TBBT 6x12: The Egg Salad Equivalency

Sheldon talks in his sleep, and since everything he says when he's awake is solid gold, he decides to record himself. However, his time is far too valuable to spend on listening to himself talk, so he gets Alex to do it. When she comes over to retrieve the latest recording, Sheldon and Leonard are in the middle of a game of Giant Jenga. While her boss gets the tape, Alex flirts with Leonard and asks him out on a date. He's so surprised that he loses the game.

Women can be very distracting.

At work the next day, Leonard tells the guys what happened. Raj is pissed because he's been working through his months-long plan to get up the nerve to talk to Alex, and Sheldon's upset because he wants his assistant to be focused on his needs and not distracted by tiny men. To help him figure out what to do, Sheldon gathers Amy, Bernadette, and Penny for a meeting of his council of ladies.

With that font, you know it's important.

At first he tries to obfuscate his problem by using the clever codenames Ricardo Shillyshally, Tondelaya de la Ventimiglia, and Dr. Einstein von Brainstorm. He's no good at lying, though, so they see right through it. But the only advice they have for him is that he should talk to Alex, which is so worthless that he makes them give back their commemorative Council of Ladies T-shirts.

The next day, Sheldon tries to approach the problem from a completely clinical perspective, but telling women they're slaves to their hormones and showing them pictures of diseased genitalia are frowned upon by the university's human resources department. Unfortunately, as is his way, Sheldon accidentally throws his friends under the bus when he feels he's being persecuted, and all three of them get hauled in to see the HR manager the next day.

Moe built a sex robot, Shemp called the HR lady 'Brown Sugar' and Larry talked about how the ladies want his junk.

While the guys are about to go into their meeting, Sheldon shows up to request a complaint form so he can file a complaint against the HR lady. Strangely, she's not okay with that. He's forced to apologize to Alex and take an online sexual harassment course. But, he doesn't have time for that crap, so he gets Alex to do it.

What I Liked
-Giant Jenga. All games should be giant-sized.
-Sheldon Cooper's Council of Ladies. They're not the most helpful council in the world, but every man should have one.
-They bring back Raj's dog. I figured they'd forget that he had one immediately after Howard and Bernadette gave her to him. But, they've maintained continuity quite well.

My, how she's grown.

What I Hated
-Leonard's William Shatner impression. Everyone does a better Shatner than that. Everyone.
-How worthless the council of ladies was. They should have known that getting Sheldon to have a frank conversation with someone about sex could only end badly. He was right to take away their shirts.
-Leonard and Penny both think that putting on glasses makes her look smart and hot. They just make her look like a girl wearing glasses.

Albert Einstein did not wear glasses, but Sarah Palin does. Who's smarter?

Final Thoughts
This one started fairly strongly, but didn't end all that well. Episodes of TV shows that focus on sexual harassment never end well. Especially in cases where the offending party wasn't attempting to be offensive and the offended party was just being overly sensitive... which apparently happens a lot in real life.

Also, I don't buy the idea that Alex would try to ask Leonard out when she knows that he's still dating Penny. She's a smart woman, she'd undermine his relationship first and then she'd be his shoulder to cry on girl.

I will say that Regina King played the HR lady as appropriately bitchy. What is it about human resources that turns people into such humourless jerks?