Castle Goes to the Movies

This week's Castle started out with a kid taking the garbage out from a theater and finding a guy's body out there.  And it was the body of the star of the feature show, Lance DeLorca. Then we cut to Caskett moving Beckett out of her old apartment finally.  I was surprised she still had it.  But Castle makes an offhand remark that he never liked her apartment and Beckett is bothered by that.  Her phone rings before they can discuss it further and they are called to the murder scene.

Of course once Castle sees the body, he realizes who it is and gives the team a little lesson on how DeLorca was with the Spanish CNI (a CIA equivalent), overcame substance abuse, and recently beat leukemia, so he was awesome onscreen and off.  Back at the station Castle is showing the guys one of his favorite scenes from DeLorca's Hard Kill movie and could quote it all of it.  Castle's face was practically beaming as he quoted the lines while the boys watched it on a computer screen.

The team starts investigating the murder and bring in Lance's wife, but they were in the process of divorcing and she didn't have much to add.  They talk to his partner Brock (who was directing a comeback movie for Lance and himself) but he was surprised Lance was still in town since his own driver had driven Lance to the airport.  Espo and Ryan squeeze the driver and he admits that Lance paid him to take him to a seedy hotel and not to tell anyone.  They go down there and find a bunch of weird stuff Lance left behind like blue craft paint and number stickers. They also figure out that Lance made two phone calls---one to his old partner's son Trey and the other to a former CNI agent who is now with Interpol.  (I think his name was Gomez?)  Anyway, MaybeGomez tells Caskett that Lance wasn't really CNI, that only MaybeGomez was and Lance just said that backstory to make himself look more interesting because Lance was really just a goatherder.  Castle is devastated by this information and his little pouting session by the door made me laugh. Hard.  "Why, is she a goatherder too?" Haha. Oh man, Nathan Fillion kills it with stuff like this.

The computer tech, Tori, traces the ear of a suspect and it's revealed that the ear belongs to Lance's soon to be ex-wife, Kat Kingsley.  They drag her off the set for questioning and Castle is in the room behind the mirror watching Kat pace the room in her costume.  Holding his poster of her. Haha.  He asks the boys if they think she'll sign it for him and they're all, when, before she goes to jail?  The ex-wife admits that Lance asked her to meet him, and said that if she gave him $200,000 he'd sign over his half of the eight million dollar house they were fighting over and she takes the deal. He called her for help later, begging her to meet him at the theater, but when she got to the alley, Lance was already dead. Beckett is skeptical, but the story checks out.

With a little more information, the team tracks Lance's movements and get some security footage of him being confronted by four guys in an alley that he takes out on his own.  It looked fake to me and I thought it was part of the movie set or something, but no, it was supposed to be real and make Lance look awesome.  Whatever. I can suspend disbelief on that point.  They track everything to a former co-star (who played El Jefe in Hard Kill) at a club (and he's now a real-life drug dealer that narcotics can't pin anything on, but not for lack of trying).

When Caskett go to visit him, Beckett notices a toy car that matches the numbers and paint the boys found in Lance's seedy hotel room. They then realize that Lance had bugged this office with the car and Beckett wants to go for a warrant.  Castle, however, is invited to go out for drinks by Lance's co-star Brock and he fangirls all over and goes with them.  Only they're not really going for drinks. Lance's "gang" from the movie Hard Kill is going to avenge one of their own and get that blue car in El Jefe's office.  Castle is pointing to the ring on his ring finger and says, "Guys, my wife is a cop and she will kill me."  Which the gang leader promptly makes fun of him for saying, but I melted a little. I love that he can say my wife. Awwww.

That "mission" was probably one of the funniest things I've seen on the show.  Castle is wearing a bandana on his head and they're doing a Mission Impossible sort of thing. So. Funny.  They nearly get caught, but Castle and the gang leader hide under the desk until the fire alarm is pulled.  They beat it out of there and the next scene is of Castle telling Beckett that a concerned citizen just handed him the car.  She's all, yeah, riiiiiight, but they take it over to tech to listen to it.  Beckett has earphones on so Castle doesn't get to hear as his punishment.  From the information they glean on it, they call Trey in (Brock's son who is also a night club promoter working with El Jefe.)  He claims he didn't kill Lance, but that Lance was trying to save him and pay $200,000 to get him out from under the drug dealer's thumb.  The drug dealer didn't go for the deal and in the end ordered Trey to take care of Lance, but Trey couldn't do it. He did call his mom and talk to her about it though.  He also mentions that Lance said he wanted to tell him something when it was all over.  Dun, dun, dun.

It all starts coming together when the gang realizes that Trey was nearly a perfect match to Lance when they were looking for bone marrow donors to help him beat leukemia.  Because Trey is really Lance's son.  The mom didn't want that little tidbit coming out because it would ruin her "family" (since she cheated on her husband with Lance) so she killed him.  Sad, really.

 With the case solved, Beckett goes back to her apartment to say goodbye.  There was a sweet scene with her and Lainey about how much Beckett had grown and accomplished in that apartment---falling in love, solving her mother's murder, etc.  Beckett carves her initial in a wall maybe? (which I thought was a bit weird but whatever) and then without saying a word, looks back and says her own silent goodbye. That scene had quite an impact, actually.

Loved the fun goofiness of this episode (Ryan trying to coin a catchphrase for himself like "it's Ryan time."  "You've got Ryan trouble." The look on Espo's face with each attempt was funny.) But Castle's fangurling was hilarious and Beckett's longsuffering was so THEM, you know?  I loved it.

Did you watch? What did you think?