Castle

Castle

Episode 18: A Dance with Death

By: Carlos Uribe

Castle is a show about a mystery writer who helps a cop solve murder mysteries.

Spoilers Ahoy!

Dancing with the Stars has now come back, which means that Castle gets a lead-in that is drawing huge numbers again. Castle decided to try and take advantage of that situation by having it's weekly case take place at a dancing competition show. A contestant is the victim. Odette Morton is a rich heiress who was heading down the wrong path until a brush with death made her change her ways. She got on the dance show and was on her way to living her dreams until she is killed. Who killed her? The show puts in many red herrings before revealing the true killer. There's her dance rival, Eddie, who benefits from her death but had an alibi with his manager. There's the assistant who was blackmailing her but who didn't do it. There's the host of the program who believed that she was back on drugs but she was threatening to ruin his career. He didn't do it. It turns out that the reason she died had nothing to do with the show. The show was her dream, her heaven, but it was only the place she died. The person who killed her had nothing to do with the show.

It had everything to do with who Odette really was. It turns out that Odette had actually died a year prior in a train accident. Odette, back when she was in her partying ways, had given a girl some plastic surgery so she could have a look-a-like. This Faux-Odette was hired to do community service for Odette and to do other stuff the real Odette couldn't be bothered to do. When Odette died, Faux-Odette took her chance and took the role of the real Odette. She restored the reputation of Odette and repaired her relationships. The person who was murdered was this Faux-Odette. The real Odette had been in a relationship with her business manager. She convinced the manager to kill the grandfather for her inheritance. The Faux-Olivia didn't have any knowledge of this but she eventually found enough clues to point her in the right direction. She was killed by the business manager because she was getting close to finding out the truth. He had managed to figure out the switch-a-roo when she was asking questions she should have known the answers to. This episode really made the entire cast of Ringer look stupid. It didn't take long for Castle and the other cops to figure out the switch, which means that the FBI on Ringer are plain incompetent.

There were also a couple of sub-plots. The first sub-plot was an entertaining one between Ryan and Javier. Ryan is annoyed that girls have started to completely ignore him and Javier leads him to believe that it's his wedding ring. Ryan decides to lend Javier his wedding ring to try and discover if this theory is true. It turns out to be false, it's that Ryan is exuding a honeymoon attitude and this turns off the females. Javier then has problems taking off the wedding ring but he eventually does at the end of the episode, with the help of Beckett. It was entertaining but it was also nice to see Ryan realize how different his married life now is.

The other sub-plot had to do with Martha. There is this theater critic, Oona Marconi, who wrote a harsh review on Martha's acting skills back in the day. Oona is a respected critic so Martha tries her best to put her school before her ego and get Oona's endorsement for her acting school. Martha isn't able to do this lightly but she does come up with a plan. She promises to have Castle look over Oona's book because Oona has always had a dream of being a novelist. Castle resists at first because he doesn't want to read a chick movie but he doesn't really have much of a choice. This was a funny story that helped fill time and give Martha her required appearance.

This was an excellent return for Castle. It had an extremely interesting case of the week that only improved as the episode went along, but it had some entertaining sub-plots. I guess you could say that Castle was firing on all cylinders. There's not really any complaints that I have about this episode. I must add that the promo for the next episode has gotten me really excited for the next episode. It looks to be a good episode.