Castle: Once Upon a Crime (S4.17)

February 28, 2012

Hmmm. Mixed feelings about this episode. Lots of charming parts to the episode which had nothing to do with the mystery at all. The actual mystery was pretty hard for me to swallow even given that this is Castle.

·         I loved the whole one-woman play on Martha’s life with its exaggerations and how she made Castle out to have ruined her life only for her to realize how great it was to be a mother. Awww…. Until she said he could be a much better son which was hilarious
·         Loved the bit about Ryan being afraid of dolls ever since Chucky
·         Yes, there is such a thing as fairytale fetish, sad to say. Google, some things are better left unknown

·         Now to the mystery itself. As soon as Castle said its “I Know What You Did Last Summer” I knew one of the girls was the killer. It’s never a good idea to reference another fictional plot because it can only go one of two ways: an identical plot or the exact reverse
·         Now Castle always has whacked out murders and mysteries, but I’ve never had a hard time swallowing any of them until now. I get that evil Charlotte was trying to save herself by killing her friends so nobody could tell what really happened the night Owen died, but there were two fatal flaws to her plan: If she kills off her friends, only she is left to pay the blackmail which is more of a burden on her but even more importantly if the blackmailer were caught everything comes completely undone. So why would she work so hard to set up the blackmailer and thus speed up her own undoing?

This was really the only time a Castle mystery made me go “Huh?” The killer’s motive made sense but her actions didn’t. In comparison, when the drug dealer killed the junkie to set up the cop that was a real life superhero, that made sense because even if she were caught, she wouldn’t be able to bring about his downfall. In this week’s case, the actions and motives were similar but the blackmail angle kind of messes it up.

Oh well. Out of this sweeps batch, I have to say the episode I enjoyed most was the dog trainer murder episode. And FYI, ratings-wise Castle is more than holding its own against Hawaii Five-0 and Smash and the horrid Alcatraz.