After the explosive first two episodes of this season, we saw a major conspiracy under way that Beckett was determined to solve and sadly she thinks this means she has to leave Castle.
This episode opens with a man running through the woods in what looks like a prison outfit, of course you first jump to escape prisoner as you see him in paled with a tree branch. After Beckett leaving him we expect Castle to be a mess and it looks like it is going that way, he than shows his childish side at something arriving in the mail and we are reminded of the innocent, kind Castle before he plays with a new home operating that communicates with him and he tells her that his wife has left him. This seems like a simple way for the writers to try and inject some humour into a sad and heart-breaking time in the series.
The scene then cuts to Beckett training with Singh, Beckett tells Singh that they have to move fast before Castle finds out what they are doing. I am not loving this side of Beckett, to some extend I can understand her lust for justice especially after the death of her mother, but she is getting just as deep maybe even more with this mystery than her own mothers and she has told countless high profile people through the series how valuable Castle is and how he sees the ‘big picture’, but now she is more than willing to bench him; yes for his own safety, but he has proved more than once that he can look after himself when they work together.
Although Beckett is working this secret case she is still working other cases on the field despite no other Captain doing this. As Esposito and Ryan try to figure out what is going on with Castle and Beckett, Lanie speaks to Beckett and tells her that Castle knows he loves her. Again, this just doesn’t make sense she loves him yes, she tells him she wants to be with him, but she’s telling everyone she needs space  – and from what? They have been married all of a few weeks and suddenly she is going through some strange ordeal that has something to do with this organisation.
However, as Castle speaks to ‘Lucy’ his new home operating system she asks him how he got her in the first place, so he goes to the morgue to get information from Lanie and the body. This inspires him to win her back by solving crimes with her again, by working the same case by using his Private Investigator license.
Beckett, Esposito and Ryan soon discover that the victim is a colleague student and he was wearing a Halloween costume. As they visit the university, Beckett bumps into Castle as she goes to see the Dean. Beckett asks Castle to give him more time whilst she tells the Dean the news about the student, as the team look for information Ryan and Esposito dress as colleague kids to try and convince a student to talk when they discover this particular student has a fight with the victim, Castle gets Alexis to go undercover to get information from the students as a blonde named ‘Clara’. She gets told by the student that Peter was using an apartment to study so the team go to investigate.
The scene cuts to Singh telling Beckett his thinks he has identified the assistant attorney general’s killer from the last episode. Beckett decides to try to reach out to Mr Smith, the man who helped her keep away from Bracken. Esposito, Ryan, Castle and Alexis visit the apartment the student mentioned to find that it has been modified to be a BDSM dungeon where a threat has been written on a wall, which Alexis is able to identify. The writers are trying extremely hard to show that Alexis and Molly Quinn are now grown up, from the change in hair, clothing style and by telling her father that she reads 50 Shades of Grey.
Alexis was already growing up in the audience’s eyes. So far this season it has been forcefully shoved to the audience that there is a change in Alexis. This is again evidenced in the next scene when Alexis goes to a frat party to try and gather more intel dressed as an angel in a white negligee, meanwhile the writers try to lighten the mood again by making Esposito and Ryan worrying about Alexis being sent in with a house full of drunk boys, Castle goes in to challenge a student to beer pong to gain information to which he finds the victim was having a possible affair with a professor. As Beckett turns up to get Castle to leave Singh calls Beckett to tell her he found Mr Smith, Beckett finds Smith, Smith tries to convince her to let her obsession go and tells her to find the narcotic fingerprint on the drugs Bracken was bringing in.
Castle and Alexis search the professor’s name and discover that she was 4 miles away from where the victim ended up dead, they investigate what seems an abandoned building to discover people in prison jumpsuits and cages. They are discovered by students who are dressed as guards, whom throw Castle and Alexis into an empty cell and Castle realises they are doing a re-enactment of the Stanford Prison Experiment. A student in the cell next to them asks about Peter and tells them that the professor has been experimenting on them.
Castle demands to see the professor where he confronts her about what she is doing and her relationship with the victim, as she denies Castle takes her into custody and demands that no one leaves the site until his return with the NYPD. Castle brings the professor to the precinct for interrogation and takes Esposito and Ryan back to the prison where the entire ‘prison’ has been scrubbed with no evidence.
Castle tells Beckett he screwed up and they have a moment where Beckett shows her love and fondness for Castle. The team find that the army have been contracting with the professor therefore they try to extract a confession from the professor as to why she was conducting the experiment and what information she had. The professor tells Beckett that the victim was having an affair with the Dean of the university, the Dean confesses to the affair and tells Beckett that she is not the murderer.
Castle then takes Beckett to the prison where he locks her into the cell to try and understand how the victim escaped the prison, in addition to his alternative motive for finding out information from Beckett as to why she has left him. Beckett tells him she loves him but she needs to do this alone and they soon discover that the killer helped the victim escape but returned it. This was written and acted in true Beckett and Castle style – they both finished each other sentences as well as figuring out the key at the same time. I love it when they do this, as it is super cute, but with everything that is going on at the moment it is just very sad.
Esposito and Ryan question the girl who was in the cell next to the victim as they figure out she was the one to kill him, she explains that the experiment messed with her head. The scene cuts to Beckett and Singh in a car in the dead of night as Singh is gathering Intel on their leads and connections, he gives Beckett the chance to back out but she doesn’t. Alexis and Castle celebrate over a glass of whiskey as they cheers to a case solved. Â
Nathan Fillion is, in my opinion, the only actor who could have played this part’ he makes Castle silly, fun, adventurous but sincere, kind and so humble this is again evident when he pulls out bubble making cigars for him and Alexis to celebrate the closure of the case.
I can never not love this show more. It is one of my favourites and always will be however, I’m finding the amount of big changes such as Alexis and Beckett hard to swallow. It could be that the writers are trying to identify both characters as strong female leads, however, I would argue that they are creating negative imagery of these fantastic characters and women.
