I totally paused!

Internets, I’m just going to start this one off by once again proclaiming my love for this show.  I have a hard time just sitting and watching TV without getting distracted, but I watch every moment of Castle every time I see it.  So for those of you who aren’t watching, why not!

This episode opens up with a family coming home from vacation and finding a guy dead in the daughters bed, who I’m going to call Goldilocks.  Traumatic much?

If I came home to a dead body in my bed, I think I would move.  So I guess if my neighbors hate me, which they probably do because I have one very loud dog, all they need do is plant a dead body in my bed.  Although…if it got me the chance to meet a hottie like Richard Castle, I guess I might let it happen.

The family has no idea who the guy is, but we soon find out that he’s a travel agent.  So natch, it seems like he’s booking trips for people and then breaking into their houses while they’re gone.  Honestly, that seems like a pretty decent way to save money…just squat in empty houses!

Just fyi, nothing is missing in the house, but there *is* a digital camera with photos of the whole place.  Pretty smart!  Taking photos to arrange things exactly the right way before the family returns…cept it doesn’t work as well if you die in the house.

After not too long, we figure out Goldilocks is not actually the squatter.  Turns out the squatter is a guy who works at the newspaper, and knows where to stay because he sees the vacation hold requests.  Again, still pretty smart.  He’s the prime suspect, until more info comes up and…another dead body!

The dead bodies are obvs related, and they were actually breaking into a completely different place so they could use the dumbwaiter to steal some shit in the place below it.  They’re stealing snakes, and if that’s not gross enough for you, it’s because the snakes are being used to smuggle diamonds into the country from South Africa.

As a side note, as soon as they started chatting about why they would be getting these snakes from South Africa, I knew it was really about diamonds.  Cuz I watched Blood Diamond, y’all, so I knew they have diamonds in South Africa.  Who says movies and TV aren’t educational!

Anyway, two of the dudes in the snake stealing operation are dead, so that leaves number three as the prime suspect.  And they figure out it was someone at the airport, because it’s someone who knows about the snakes to begin with.

We get to the very end of the episode and it turns out to be Goldilocks brother-in-law who is the third man!  What a jerkface!  But no worries, he didn’t mean to kill anyone.  I know that I have “accidentally” killed two people in separate locations several times.  Or not.

A side plot is that Castle is named one of the ten most eligible bachelors in New York, and the article kind of says he’s dating Beckett.  Which prompts both of them to go on dates with other people, because NO WAY can people think they are dating.  But they both end up talking about nothing but work the whole time, leaving their dates early, and deciding the people they went out with were boring.

This explains why I’m not dating – I’d rather be seeing Richard Castle too.

Holy intense episode batman!  I realized, just now in fact, that originally this was going to be the season finale because ABC only ordered 13 episodes at the start of the season.  So of course the episode would be tense and covering important stuff!

Anyway, the episode opens with a guy painting walls and blood starts dripping down from the ceiling.  It takes a lot of blood to drip through the floor!  The guy was stabbed a ton, like thirty something times…ouch!

Through the course of the investigation, we find out that whoever murdered the victim is the same person who killed Beckett’s mother.  And it becomes extra important to Beckett that they find the killer.  They also find out that this killer isn’t killing for himself, he’s a contract killer, which means someone paid him to kill Beckett’s mother!!!

One of the people who gets interviewed as a witness is a guy who runs one of those late night infomercial schemes, and Detective Ryan gets way into it.  I only bring this up because Esposito is super funny when they go to interview the guy.  At the speaking engagement, Johnny Vong walks over hot coals with the attendees, and Ryan clearly starts to think about doing it too, so Esposito says:

Don’t even think about taking them off.  If you do, I will pepper spray you.

I totally would have loved to see that!

It turns out that the brother of the dead guy is the one who killed him, aka the brother is the high priced hit man that killed Beckett’s mother and at least four others.  And they’re in some ways going to let him get away with it so that they can find out who put the hit on Beckett’s mom, but the dude is going to shoot Castle, so Beckett shoots him first.  Then tries to save his life.

It doesn’t work, and Beckett closes asking Castle to help her figure out who ordered the hit.  Which I think is pretty interesting considering it’s not like Beckett was a cop back then, so it wasn’t someone potentially out to hurt her because she arrested them or something.  I think the coming episode are going to be very interesting as we learn more about the life of Kate Beckett!

I was super tired when I watched this episode, so I’ll cross my fingers that I remember it at all. It didn’t occur to me to save it and watch it again, and you know how I feel about watching things online, so I’ll just go with my maybe spotty memory.

There’s a wedding and one of the bridesmaids is missing, so the bridal party goes looking for her and…she’s dead! Someone stuffed her in her wardrobe! That is a wardrobe malfunction if I ever heard of one.

Naturally, tons of people at the wedding are suspects, from the groom, bride, relatives, friends. The possibilities are endless! Bridesmaid was meeting with a known drug dealer, and it comes out that she bought rufies from him, which adds some confusion to the whole thing. She drugged one of the groomsmen and stuffed him in a closet, which prompts both the groomsman and Castle to say,

Who rufies a guy?  All you have to do is ask…

The bride, coincidentally, is an old girlfriend of Castle’s, so there are also some flames flying around.  There are also several references to the chemistry between Castle and Beckett, which was pretty funny.  Usually it’s just a little more on the obvious side from Castle, and Beckett just seems irritated with him.  I dunno what’s going on with her, he’s totally on my Would Marry list!

I don’t remember the context, but Ryan and Esposito are talking about something wedding related and Beckett says,

When I’m not here, do you guys braid each others hair and debate who’s the coolest Jonas brother?

They think it’s Nick.  I disagree, it’s Joe.  He’s the hottest, at the very least.

So even though the almost husband seems pretty suspicious to me, it turns out that his uncle is the one who killed the girl.  See, the groom is supposed to get a big trust fund when he gets married, and the uncle has bled it dry…so he pays the bridesmaid to try and break up the wedding.  It doesn’t work, so he kills her.  Because that’s exactly what I do when my plans get messed up.

This episode is called “The Fifth Bullet”, so if you are a guessing person, you’d guess there’s something about bullets.  Maybe even five of them.

So this art gallery owner is murdered, and they find five bullet casings (or whatever they’re called, I’m so not a gun person), but only four bullets.  This means one is missing.  See how I can do math?

As we’re all wondering where the fifth bullet is, we’re introduced to Riley Finn some dude who can’t remember his name, played by Marc Blucas.  Who played Riley Finn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Since this character doesn’t remember much of anything, including who he is, we spend much of the episode not knowing his name.  I can’t remember what it is, it starts with a J, so I’m going to just call him Riley Finn.  Cuz honestly, Marc Blucas isn’t the best actor ever, so really he was like an amnesiac Riley Finn.  I don’t remember what part of the show this happens in, but we’re going with now because it’s time for a great quote from Richard Castle:

Missing bullets are cool, amnesia is even cooler

Anyway, Riley can’t remember anything because he apparently hit his head, but we learn he likes to read because he has Russian literature in his jacket pocket.  I think it’s Anna Karenina, but I don’t fully remember.  If it was, I might start carrying my copy around in my pocket too.  That might get me to finish it!

So Detective Ryan discovers that Riley’s book saved his life, because our missing fifth bullet is embedded in the book!  And now everyone is wondering why the hell was Riley in the art gallery to be the recipient of this bullet.  Riley also has no idea where he lives, so they let him just hang around the police station.  Castle was pretty awesome and there’s another funny exchange…

Has he really got amnesia?

Yeah, but apparently my hearing’s fine.

Even though Marc Blucas isn’t a fantastic actor, he can be funny.  Well, I know he didn’t write the episode, but his line delivery was funny.  And do you like how I have these quotes but basically no placement in the episode?  Yeah, I like it too.

So after a little bit, they decide to put Riley’s picture on the TV to find someone who knows him.  Some crazy lady comes and turns out she’s, well, a crazy lady.  She is not, in fact, engaged to him as she claims, she really is crazy.  But then later on, Riley’s ex wife shows up, and there are all kinds of sparks between the two of them.  Riley obvs can’t remember what happened in their relationship to make them get divorced, and she’s all “Hey, Riley, you’re kind of hot when you can’t remember anything.”

Riley’s ex takes them to his apartment, and they see this painting in the house.  Ex wife is all “OMG, he totally kept it!”  Turns out they had to buy this painting cuz Riley put a big old finger print in it, and the painter became more famous after that.  And guess what?  The art gallery guy (you know, the murder victim)…he also dealt in fakes.  He had his assistants paint reproductions and then sells them to rich people.

But it turns out that the painting in Riley’s house is not the original, which upsets the ex because she was all touched that he had kept the original as a memento of their life together.  And now Riley is the suspect for the murder.

It’s pretty sad that this guy who has no idea what happens turns out to be the one that killed the art dealer.  Or did he?!  Murdered art gallery guy has that assistant…who in my opinion was far too helpful from the start.  And we find out why.  Because he’s a big fat liar.  He stole his roommate’s name cuz he wanted to make fake art and sell it off as originals.  Art gallery dude got pissed, got killed, and Riley almost got blamed!

Maybe it’s because I like everything Buffy, but I’d like to see what happens to Riley.  This show is pretty single episode minded, so I’m sure he won’t be back, but it would sure be fun if we find out down the road that Riley is doing well and got back together with his ex.  Or maybe I just didn’t want to see Riley Finn married in season 7 of Buffy…

Man it sucks to find a dead body when you’re in your underwear!  I mean, this girl is just throwing away some garbage, no need to get dressed for that, and bam! guy shows up in the garbage chute.

Turns out the guy has both a wife in Connecticut, where he lives, and a fiance in New York, where he works.  Sounds like some pretty good murder suspects to me, cuz I’m guessing at least one of them knew that something weird was going on.

While Castle and Beckett are investigating this whole thing, Alexis is interning at the police station for a few days.  Her task?  Organize the lost possessions room!  This ultimately sends her on a quest to find the living relatives of someone who had a photo album in the room, which is very sweet of her.

We follow the crew to the company the dead guy worked for, which is run by Principal Wood from season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer!  I never really caught his actual name, so we’re sticking with Principal Wood and wow, has he come a long way from running Sunnydale High!

Through Principal Wood, we kind of eventually learn that dead guy was helping the company find better ways of recycling old batteries, which are wicked bad for the environment.  Cept then through the investigation of his old work, we find out he’s *actually* a corporate spy for the old company, sent to figure out the secrets of the new one.

The fiance is not actually so innocent herself, and it turns out she was hired by the new company to spy on dead guy, since they figured out he was a spy but wanted to drain his old company of all their funds.  Pretty clever of Principal Wood!  Anyway, it turns out that dead guy found out the real secret – new company doesn’t have a special way of disposing of everything, they just sneak it out into a ship and have it dumped in the water.  Principal Wood finds out that dead guy knows the truth and, well, we have a murder.  Just FYI, if you ever kill someone, don’t throw the weapon away in the garbage outside your own house.

So in the end, dead guy is not actually a total jerk, and was faking the engagement to get the secret formula thingie.  Everyone was playing each other in this one.  And we can’t leave without a good quote from someone on the show…

Never underestimate the fragility of the male ego

Definitely so true!

A respected prosecutor is murdered, which naturally means there are a lot of suspects since he’s responsible for putting tons of people in jail.  It’s another convoluted plot that I absolutely loved, with plenty of questions about who the victim really was and how he became involved in all the crazy things he was doing.

At first the guy seems squeaky clean, but as we see more and more, we find out he was using a call girl service and was way more involved in that than you would ever think!  In fact, one of the detectives asks why a respected prosecutor would become a pimp, and Castle says “The outfits.“  I mean, who doesn’t want to wear a fedora around the town!

So it turns out that the victim was actually running the call girl ring, because he had managed to put the original owner away and took over the business.  Some of his employees decided to pull one over on him and take the business, and ultimately he ended up dead over it.

One of the call girls befriends Castle and even shows up at his house!  I was wondering at first how she managed to find out where he lived, but she apparently has a client in the publishing world.  She’s a really sad case, a girl who goes to New York to try and make her way in the lawyering world, but ends up down on her luck and becomes a call girl.  I know that’s certainly what I considered when I was unemployed, because who wouldn’t!  You know, who would work at a nice restaurant or something when you can be an escort?

Anyway, she turns out to be a great con artist and ultimately they figure out she was responsible for the murder.  She thought she could run the business herself, and the victim didn’t want to give the business up, so she took matters into her own hands.  All of us, including Castle and Beckett, were played by this girl.  But amusingly enough, when Castle calls her on the call girl line, she asks how he got the number and he said he had a friend in the publishing world.  Way to use a source both ways!

I think for the first time ever, we actually witness the murder!  A bike messenger is intentionally slammed into by some dude in a mysterious black car.  His messenger package is stolen and the driver takes off.  Weird!

Beckett naturally calls Castle about the murder, and he says:

Either there’s a dead body, or you just want to hear my sultry voice

I’m sure she answered dead body, but don’t you just want to say it’s the sultry voice!  Remember, Nathan Fillion is on the Would Marry List…

Each week, the murders and investigations on this show are pretty intricate and I love it, it keeps me engaged and dying to watch the next episode.  We will forget about the fact that I am at least a week behind on every show I watch.

Anyway, this one quickly leads to one of the richest most well known families in New York.  Possibly fictional.  I’ve never heard of the Wellsley’s, other than it was a prep school to teach women how to become perfect wives.

There are actually three separate murders in this episode, one of which is from ten years earlier, and each linked to the Wellsley family.  Pretty much any time there is a rich family involved, there are rich skeletons as well, so that makes for some fun.  And this episode made me wonder what you get charged with if you just say “take care of it” and don’t actually do anything yourself.  I know this is criminal, I’m just curious what the official crime is.

One thing I am curious about is that all the people questioned for the murder from a decade ago seem to recall the details pretty easily.  Am I the only person who is totally astonished?  I can barely remember the first names of people I went to three years of school with, let alone one incident one night.  Honestly, there are things I remember that may have just been dreams, I can’t promise they were actual events I experienced!  I would be a terrible murder witness, apparently.

Also, do all rich people talk like the Wellsley family in this episode?  They’re so…stiff!

Hayley Blue, of the Bluepills, is found murdered at a scene that is staged to be like one of her videos.  Oh, and the episode actually opens with Castle playing Guitar Hero by himself, which was hilarious.

Alexis is really upset by the Hayley Blue death, she’s a big fan of Hayley and the Bluepills, and she is actually helpful in solving the crime.  While I love this show, I find it difficult to believe that the police would really work that closely with the public, but whatever.

There are some good suspects in this show – the former manager, former guitarist, even a stalker.  But it turns out to be someone completely different, and they are able to arrest the true culprit by listening to the lyrics in Hayley’s last song.  There are two songs of hers featured in this episode, and luckily both of them provide clues.  Do all artists really put this much overt personal stuff in their music?  I mean, I know people sing about real life, and their lives in particular, but it just seemed too convenient.

Despite the convenience, I have found myself humming one of the songs even after the show is over.  I was sad to discover these songs are not on youtube, because that would also be a clever marketing technique on the part of the show.  Plus if I’m going to have a song stuck in my head, it might as well be readily available to me.

I also found it a little weird that several people did their hair and makeup like Hayley Blue.  Not weird as in the show is stretching, weird like I know people really do this and it’s strange to me.  I guess I am maybe too entrenched in my own lazy style to make the effort to dress like someone else.

Since this episode was more on the sad side, with Alexis having a personalish tie to the victim, there weren’t as many funny moments or fantastic lines.  Which is disappointing, but I’m sure the next one will be much better!

Ah, the Halloween episode!  I actually like when shows tie in their episodes with the holidays like this.  Buffy used to do it with Halloween and I adored it.

Speaking of Buffy, the show opens with Castle coming into the living room dressed as…a space cowboy!  Alexis asks him what he is, then tells him there are no cows in space, and asks “Didn’t you do that like five years ago?”  For those who didn’t see Firefly, he was dressed as Captain Malcolm Reynolds, the character he played on the show.  Also, get thee to the DVD rental place and watch Firefly!  Or watch it on hulu.com

The murder this time is in a graveyard.  The victim is a vampire.  Castle says that Buffy must have been visiting Manhattan.  Love that there are two Whedon references in minutes!

Obvs the victim is not actually a vampire, just a guy who dresses like one and had fancy veneers made to form vampire teeth.  They were made by the fang master, of course.  We’re able to learn the victims real name, instead of his vampire name of Crow, and this sends everyone looking into the creatures of the night.  But even though some of the scenarios on this show are far fetched, there isn’t anything supernatural, so it’s really more of an exploration into the world of the weird.

Crow is a wicked awesome artist, and is making a graphic novel about this local vampire called Morlock.  Personally, I think Morlock looks like Charles Mansen.  Who has the “vampire’s disease” where he’s allergic to the sun, and he bites Castle.  This is startling, but also funny cuz Castle says:

You wanna bite me – you buy me dinner!

Totally going to start using that line too.  For those of you who know me in person, reading this blog probably lowers your opinion of my wittiness, cuz you’re learning that I get all my best phrases from TV.  Blue skies

Ultimately, it turns out that Crow witnessed the murder of his bio mom, but he didn’t know it because he was about two.  The killer?  Take three guesses.  It’s not actually the husband this time.  His second wife, however…she’s the one!  Turns out she wanted Crow’s dad all to herself, so she killed his wife, and then his son when he was about to find out the truth.

Castle is also hosting a Halloween party, costumes mandatory, and he goes as Edgar Allen Poe.  He has a stuffed raven.  Love it!

A woman is found dead and thrown down a man hole.  Weird.  But I guess this is New York, anything can happen here.

Castle is late to the crime scene because just as he’s waking up for the day, his literary agent shows up to tell him that he is maybe going to get the chance to write three books about a certain British Secret Agent.  Shut the front door!

Heat Wave is also about to be released, so Castle is intermittently plugging the book release party for it.  As I mentioned previously, there is an actual Heat Wave by Richard Castle that you can buy here, if you would like to.  Or honestly, just go read about it if nothing else.  I still love this merging marketing plan, and I am admittedly going to read that book.

Many people are questioned in the murder of this woman, who turns out to be an illegal immigrant from the former Soviet Union.  I’m not positive if they actually confirm that she’s from the Czech Republic, but that location is mentioned at some point.  If you watch Dollhouse, you’ll recognize one of the people they question as Lawrence Dominik.  If you don’t watch Dollhouse, why not?

Ultimately it comes out that Aleshka was murdered because she was trying to find out the truth about her own child, who was ultimately switched at birth with another little boy.  How she figured that the kid she raised, who subsequently died, was not her actual child, is never explained, and I wish it was.  But anyway, the not father of her actual child kills her because he is afraid she’s going to rip his family apart with the news.  Which he ends up doing anyway.

Castle and Beckett are all sad because they think they’re going to be parting ways, due to the maybe offer to write about a certain British Secret Agent.  But then it turns out that Heat Wave is selling really well, people love Richard Castle, and he gets offered even MORE money to write three more Nikki Heat novels.  And just like that, we get to see Castle and Beckett working together indefinitely!

Kind of separate from that, I learned this week that ABC has actually signed on for the back 9 of this show, meaning it’s going to have a full second season.  I actually didn’t even know that it originally just had 13, but I’m glad to hear it’s been picked up for the rest.  Now if only Fox would do that with Dollhouse…