Castle Is Back!

After what seemed like an eternity, Castle is finally back! Yay!

The episode opens with Martha rehearsing, singing on a stage with three ladies to back her up. The stage hand is supposed to have fake snow flutter down on them, but when he tugs on the rope, a lot of blood comes down mixed with the snow. Ick.

Martha calls Castle who is reconnecting with Beckett on the sly. He rushes down to the crime scene where the team has assembled. Poor Martha is shaken up and Alexis offers to take her home. The team uncovers that the victim's name is Robin and she's an ex-con. Her boss said he heard her arguing with someone she called Mama, but he didn't stick around. The boys track down Mama who is a drug-runner, and she tells them that Robin had hooked up with a new family. The team also interviews two lawyers who helped Robin and other ex-cons with their foundation, but they seem to have no idea about anything.  Castle gets a lead on that with a set of emojis off the victim's phone and Alexis decodes it to mean Shepherd Torres Mall in Spanish Harlem.

Castle and Alexis head to the abandoned mall and it's tense when they go in alone. I hate when he does that! It looks like a dark and dirty empty warehouse, but they're being watched. Castle sends out a 911 to Espo and Ryan, but then find out it's only an underground a capella get together. Castle and Alexis find some girls that have the same bracelet as Robin and then the police break up the party. Once they question Robin's friends, however, they find a whole new angle to Robin's life. She was going to be competing in a national a capella show with her ex-con friends. They'd recently kicked Agnes out of their group, however, and she was very upset about it.

The boys track down Agnes at her ex-boyfriend's apartment, but before they go in, they accuse Castle of cheating on Beckett since she randomly slapped Castle across the face at the precinct earlier. Surprisingly, he goes along with it and says his new girlfriend's name is Svetlana. It was so out of character and I know the writers were going for laughs, but Espo and Ryan have been front and center for the Caskett love story and this seems so ridiculous that they would believe something like that. Sigh. They're mean to him for the rest of the show over it.

Anyway, they go into the apartment and Castle is once again our NYPD bumbling helper. It was a fairly funny scene however. They take her in and Agnes says Robin asked her to come to the theater to be a bodyguard, but didn't say why.

The team turns to the a capella competition itself and question some of the contestants. Corbin Bleu is guest-starring and he has a singing showdown with Espo. Who knew Espo was so awesome at singing? That was great until Castle ruins the moment by trying to beat box and spitting on everyone. Corbin runs, however, when they question his whereabouts. Beckett takes him down and he admits that he was trying to bribe the head guy over the contest to make sure Robin's team didn't win. The head guy says he didn't kill Robin because as soon as she saw her pre-performance video package she took off.  The team tracks her movements the day of her murder to the rich guy's house who claims to have saved Robin's life the day she stole a car and got arrested. He admits to Beckett that he didn't really save her, that she was already safe with a scarf wrapped around her injury.

After some awesome detective work, the team figures out the scarf is missing from evidence, and they track down the detective who handled the case and he admits that he was paid $50,000 to make it disappear. Alexis cracks the picture account of the girl who had the party and the scarf's owner is finally revealed--it was the woman lawyer who was running a foundation to help girls like Robin. She admits it was really her that stole and crashed the car and she let Robin take the fall and go to prison. She didn't kill her, though, she was out of town. Yep, it was the husband. He's arrested for Robin's murder.

Cut to Martha inspiring the rest of the girls on Robin's a capella team and Beckett and Castle keeping up the lie that they are seeing other people while meeting each other secretly.

I thought the mystery was really great this week with lots of funny moments and twists and turns. The Caskett thing is still unrealistic and out of character, but at least they're back together I guess. All in all, I'm glad the show is back on and we get two episodes next week, one on Sunday and one on Monday! Yay!

Did you watch? What did you think?