TV Review: CASTLE – Season 5 – “Murder He Wrote”

By ANNE LOUISE BANNON / Contributing Writer

Posted: October 17th, 2012 / 09:08 AM

David Bruke and Stana Katic in CASTLE - Season 5 - "Murder, He Wrote" | ©2012 ABC/Eric McCandless

Stars: Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic, Susan Sullivan, Molly Quinn, Tamala Jones, Seamus Deaver, Jon Huertas, Penny Johnson Jerald
Writer: David Grae
Director: Rob Brown
Network: ABC, Monday nights, 10 p.m.
Original Telecast: October 15, 2012

We’re still in light and fluffy mode on CASTLE, with “Murder He Wrote” not really involving any writing – that’s just what author and dilettante detective Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) told his NYPD buddies he was going to be doing on his weekend at his place in the Hamptons.

The real reason he told Detectives Ryan (Seamus Driver) and Esposito (Jon Huertas) he was going to the Hamptons to write was that Castle is really taking Det. Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) out to his place out there for a romantic weekend together. But Beckett still doesn’t want her colleagues to know about her and Castle because she’s worried about getting into trouble for dating a co-worker, even if Castle isn’t really on the police payroll. Problem is, Ryan and Esposito know that Beckett is going away with her new boyfriend. They just don’t know who that guy is. And Esposito is determined to find out. Ryan, less so, but willing.

So, naturally, this being CASTLE, the big romantic weekend gets a nasty shaking up when a bloodied man stumbles into Castle’s yard and swimming pool. Turns out he’s a former businessman named Franklin, who walked when he ratted out several of his colleagues. There is definitely something weird going down, but the cops are less than enthusiastic about checking it out, even though Castle can’t stop trying to figure it out. Surprise, surprise, Kate’s not thrilled about that part, but goes along with it.

So Castle enlists the aid of Ryan and Esposito, who are already trying to get Lanie Parish (Tamala Jones) to cough up the mystery guy’s name. Worse yet, they start doing it during Castle’s call with them and Beckett is freaking out. Fortunately, Lanie – she says – doesn’t know who the guy is and tells Esposito that it’s Beckett’s business and not his. Yeah, right. Espo’s going to buy that one.

With a tidbit from the guys indentifying a woman that Franklin was arguing with at a party, Castle and Beckett head off to confront her. Bad idea. Chief Brady (David Burke) doesn’t cotton to the two of them making waves in his community and arrests the two of them for interfering, except that he does go far enough to google Beckett and all of a sudden is thrilled to find that she’s a real homicide detective. Brady doesn’t get a lot of crime in the Hamptons and has never handled one.

So now that Castle and Beckett are in the saddle again, so to speak, it’s just a matter of weeding out all the different suspects, per usual, including the victim’s former partner Aaron Lerner (Brian Howe), who gets questioned once as one of Franklin’s former colleagues, now out of jail, and then again by Ryan when it’s discovered he was riding along on some suspicious helicopter flights of Franklin’s. You know, drug flights, since Ryan and Esposito find several meth labs in buildings that Franklin owned.

No surprise here – Lerner lets it slip that he was questioned by Castle and his girlfriend, who just happens to be named… Uh… Kate!

So thanks to some planted evidence, it looks like a local dock supervisor was the killer, but then Castle realizes that the dock supe wasn’t him because he can tie knots and the killer can’t (yeah, that was a weak one). Castle starts to accuse Brady, but then out of nowhere it turns out to be one of Brady’s deputies.

Now, let’s talk about some basic conventions of the mystery genre. Granted, CASTLE is a blend of the police procedural and your classic whodunnit (aka cozy – the term comes from the sort of gentle novel Agatha Christie was known for). And in the procedural, it’s perfectly okay to not to have seen the bad guy at the beginning or prior to the big reveal because the whole point of the procedural is the chase. In the classic whodunnit, that very same thing is way bad form, and given that the reveals on this show at least have some connection to prior suspects, I have to call a foul on the writers, at least a 15-yard penalty.

Otherwise, the episode is delightfully funny. As for Ryan knowing Beckett’s big secret, I love that he’s being cool about it, never mind that Esposito is getting just as dogged about finding out as ever. I also like how it’s slowly but surely slipping out, person by person. Because you know it’s going to be a lot of fun when it all blows up. Or maybe not. The big tease for next week has Castle being set up as a suspect and Beckett in tears. I do hope I’m not going to have to slap the producers again.