Double Eps of Castle--Oh Yeah!

We had back to back episodes of Castle this week and that makes me really happy. And I was even more happy to see Caskett working together.

Sunday's episode starts out with Castle at a party and he needs to use the restroom, only the one on the main floor is occupied. He goes upstairs and sees a woman in a wait staff uniform with a fireplace poker stabbing another woman. He shouts and she immediately runs away.

Fast forward five months and Castle is about to testify in the woman's trial (her name is Nina). It should be a slam dunk case until the new defense attorney comes in--Caleb Brown who, as you might recall, Beckett and Vikram are looking into because of Caleb's connection to Loksat. Caleb absolutely destroys Castle's testimony on the stand, telling the jury about Castle's memory loss, falsely accusing someone, and of course being framed by 3XK for something he didn't do. Castle crumbles under the pressure and says maybe Nina didn't kill Sadie after all.  (My thoughts when I was watching this was, why didn't the prosecutor object to anything? Badgering the witness, leading the witness, and he didn't even redirect after Castle was humiliated. It was a glaring mistake and made Marcus the prosecutor look incompetent.)

Castle and Beckett and the boys start looking more closely into the murder to find more evidence on Nina. They find footage outside a bar of the night before the murder and Nina was there with the murder victim---kissing. They also looked like they were arguing which gave Nina a great motive to kill. But then, when Castle and Ryan are at the murder scene, they notice the basketball standard was moved (Nina used it to escape from the second story window the night of the murder.) That went to premeditation, but Castle isn't so sure. My question, why didn't they try to get some fingerprints off that basketball standard?

Castle decides he needs to question Nina, but the defense won't let him anywhere near her, so he goes to the judge's chambers and insults her alma mater. The judge is tolerant for a while, but after a phone call that her home has been broken into and Castle's claim he can find out who did it if she'll just give him a list of anyone who went to the same university as the judge in the area, and the judge throws him in holding for contempt. (It was pretty funny. Castle always delivers on the comedy side.)

Nina is also in holding and tells Castle her side of the story. She found Sadie like that, she loved her, she would never hurt her. Sadie had asked Nina to get the champagne glass of Mr. Masters, the host. So, once the boys bail him out, he goes to talk to Mr. Masters. If Sadie wanted DNA maybe she'd had an affair and needed to check paternity on her daughter? But Mr. Masters is infertile, so, no go on that. But he does have a secret safe that you need a fingerprint to open and his wife forces him to open it after Castle offers to name a villain in his book after her. (I named a villain after my neighbor once. She also thought it was cool!)

Apparently, Sadie and Mr. Masters had come across five million dollars in CIA money when they were reporting in Iraq. Sadie took it and Mr. Masters was blackmailing her for more money to be thrown his way. He had a tape as evidence and she wanted it. But he didn't kill her.

Castle remembers that the person in the occupied bathroom downstairs was Sadie's husband and it all comes unraveled from there. Sadie had been known for her affairs. Her husband saw her go upstairs and used the basketball standard to peek in and see what she was doing. One thing led to another and he killed her. Nina is free and mouths a grateful "thank you" to Castle. Awww.

I loved that the team was back together. It didn't even seem as if last week happened with their ridiculous claims of seeing other people and not working together and slaps etc. This episode showcased what made me love Castle. *le sigh*

Then we got another episode last night! This one also hit all the right notes. It starts out with a guy in an abandoned building at night, looking for something. The door slams shut and when he opens it again, he gets his throat cut. Ewww!

Cut to Castle coming into the office with a lot of shopping bags, needing Martha and Alexis's opinion on the perfect baby gift. He had baby Kevlar! Oh man. Baby light sabers, scary lullabies. So funny. But Alexis already has the perfect gift and he takes that. Martha does notice he doesn't seem too upset about Beckett these days.

At the crime scene Espo tries using howdy instead of yo, but it doesn't go over well. Beckett notices some ink on the victim and Lainey estimates his time of death. Apparently some homeless guy heard a car peel out of there so they're going to talk to him some more. Meanwhile, the victim's father is a Russian diplomat so Beckett goes to question him. The dad tells Beckett his son was distraught over his mother's death and hung out with diplobrats who do outrageous things because they have diplomatic immunity. Of course the Russians would like Beckett to work with one of their security men, Vasily, and she agrees.

Vasily is a character. He loves Castle's books and he also loves hugs. He can't believe Castle and Beckett aren't together and makes a call to the higher-ups who ask them to work together on the case. Now that part didn't make any sense since Beckett is trying to "protect" Castle, and is sneaking around to be with him, but he's at the precinct all the time anyway and apparently they can be ordered to work together. But I won't let this ridiculousness ruin it for me.

The guys figure out the peeling out car belonged to one of the diplobrats. They bring him in for questioning, but he mocks them, knowing they can't touch him because of his diplomatic immunity. Beckett is doing all she can to keep Vasily away from the case and Castle takes the guy out to lunch to hear his story ideas. The diplobrat also happens to be there and Vasily and Castle go over to question him. Vasily threatens to cut his feet off and the diplobrat admits he dropped the victim off and left. It was actually a really funny scene. Vasily plays a hitman/funny man so well!

With the ink on the victim's body turning out to be his mother's accident case file number, the team knows he was looking into that. They retrace his steps, find out the mom was actually having an affair with a sleeper agent and was a Russian sleeper agent herself! Vasily actually finds and kidnaps the sleeper agent and is going to torture him but Castle says no way, let me show you that you don't have to do that. Vasily gives him one minute and Castle does figure out that there's going to be an assassination attempt. The team goes to the Russian consulate and Beckett saves one guy's life, but the murder victim's father is shot. It's a through and through, though, and he'll live.

Castle also meets his stepmother when Kate calls her in to consult. She does admit that she's been working with his stepmother and Castle gets upset. I wish he'd get mad and lay it on the table. Kate's dumb Locksat secret has cost them a lot of trust in their marriage (not to mention character development, but I digress). Castle does get a nice convo with his stepmother, though, about his dad, and she tells Castle his dad is proud of him, which Castle needed to hear, so that was good.

Anyway, they look at the sniper weapon being so old, figure out it's from an old Russian cache and get footage of the woman who hauled it off. It was the murder victim's mother! She's not dead. They bring her in and she tells them her husband has been passing Russian secrets and is the leak in the consulate. He killed her son (he wasn't the guy's real dad) but she couldn't do anything against him because he's too powerful. Beckett and Castle go to see him at the consulate and he is heading back to Russia. They are disappointed justice won't be served until Vasily tells them the guy is going to the coldest outpost in Russia. Russian justice is complicated.

Caskett share a sweet moment together in the Russian consulate and it ends on a happy note. All is right as I bask in the Castle loveliness. I hope the rest of the season is just like this!

Did you watch the double feature? What did you think?