Castle Review: The Netslayer

This Castle episode was more gruesome to me than normal. We usually watch this show with our older children, and have been including our twelve year old.  Last night, I was wishing we hadn't let him watch it without us previewing it.

We start off with a young woman getting ready to go out to a club and talking on the phone.  Then, as she's taking a selfie, she gets a picture texted to her from another angle---inside her house.  Then we see the back of someone as she's attacked.

Cut to Castle filming a web commercial and messing up, but still looking good.  Martha was there "helping" him and I have to say I love the scenes with those two together. They just have such a great vibe together and this one made me laugh.  But Castle has been assured that he and this web commercial will be going viral and letting social media make him sales.  Which coincides with the case because the murder victim was a queen of social media.  She posts pictures and "reviews" on a site called Snapomatic. Which the killer also uses to post pictures of the victim before she was found. Ew.  Caskett heads over to the company, but they have privacy policies in place so there's not really a way to track down where the killer is posting pictures from.

The team does manage to get a tag off one of the photos the "Netslayer" posted, though, and it leads them to a furniture store.  A retired cop owns it, and he used to work in cyber crime so he fits the profile.  He has awls which would match the murder weapon, a threatening note to the victim had wood varnish on it.  This guy looks good for it.  They bring him in, but his alibi checks out so back to the drawing board.

The killer sends the NYPD a pictogram of three pictures of body parts, sausages, and a date.  Castle figures it out that the killer is after a social media "spoiled brat" and the team goes to put the woman in protective custody. She won't go, but as she opens the car door, she finds her boyfriend's body. Gruesome. Murdered.

But the killer isn't done. He posts pictures of Castle and Beckett tapping coffee cups and makes them look bad in the public eye.  The head honchos over at 1PP aren't happy, but Gates keeps Beckett on the case.  Caskett goes home to clear their heads and Castle starts thinking out loud that most bullies start out as victims.  That gives them some new ideas, and they go back to the former cop who was framed.  He remembers a kid and a case of cyber-bullying where he couldn't help the kid get justice against his bullies. The kid's life was ruined over the incident.  The team manages to get some footage of the guy getting the murder victim's house key, they have a face of the killer to finally go off of.  They go to arrest him, and he's there in a dark little basement, but unfortunately, as they take him into custody, they get pictures of the owners of Snapomatic, abducted and taped to chairs and electrodes, with a countdown clock.  Whomever has the least "likes" will die.  Netslayer strikes again while in custody, which he is proud of.

Ryan and Espo are sent over to Snapomatic's offices to try and figure out the men's location through the streaming pictures, but all the staff is able to do is crash the system.  It's all up to Beckett now. She questions the killer who taunts her until she talks about how his kidnap victims were probably laughing at him and he's a joke. He snaps and gives them clues as to where the men are being held. The old locker room where the murderer's bullying took place. (I totally called that up front).

Ryan and Espo rush over there and save the men just as the clock gets down to one second. And those men looked extremely relieved.

The episode ends with the debut of Castle's web commercial and it's not what Castle is expecting.  It's more of a bumbling music video of all his mistakes while making the video, like mispronouncing his name Hi, I'm Critchard Rassle.  And him knocking over a display of his books. It's sort of a catchy tune and it made me laugh. (Every writer's nightmare, though, probably! haha)  I was glad the episode ended on a lighter note.

But the best part of all, was the previews of Caskett's WEDDING and HONEYMOON.  Woohoo! I can't wait for those episodes in November.

Did you watch last night? What did you think?