Castle and the Immigration Ep Recap and Review

Last night's Castle had some good moments, but also was more than a little confusing!

It starts out with a guy feeding reptiles *shiver* when one of them gets out. He puts the lizard back in and gets bludgeoned to death by a shadowy figure. The killer then puts the body IN THE SNAKE cage. (Do they call it a cage? A pit? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't want my body in one whatever it's called!)

Cut to Castle yelling at Mr. Cursor. Oh man, I laughed at that because, as a writer, Mr. Cursor has mocked me many times. Very realistic and funny. Beckett gets called to a murder, but says she can't take Castle because, you know, LokSat might be watching. But if he was watching, wouldn't he see her in the loft, pretty much back with Castle anyway? Well, we'll just hope no LokSat people were looking.

The team figures out that the guy in the snake pit (cage?) is Eddie and he's a former El Salvadoran cop. He also went to an ESL class, but when Espo and Ryan go to question the class, no one will talk to them. Well, guess who they call in to go undercover? Yep, you guessed it! Castle. Um, why would you call in a famous author who has been on the news and talk shows to go undercover? And is LokSat just not watching anymore while they work together and live together? What's the point of pretending anymore?

Anyway, the students in the ESL class open up a bit to Castle and his French Canadian chef persona and the team is able to figure out that Eddie was protecting and helping them. He helped the lady from Senegal get the money back that had been extorted from her. (And he beat up the extortionists and trashed their place, too.) He was helping Achmed track down a missing neighbor named Anita when things got dicey, though. Ryan and Espo start to investigate Anita's disappearance as well and fingerprints lead them to a guy named Marco. He shoots at them, but our fearless duo bring him in! He has a key on him and when Ryan and Espo find the locker it goes to, they are thrown on the floor and cuffed by the FBI. Of course the FBI team leader is a jerk (quel surprise! No stereotypes here) and won't cooperate with Beckett. She tries to reach out to her FBI contacts but gets nothing. My question, sometimes Beckett acts like a captain and sometimes she's still a detective. I wish they would figure it out and make her one or the other because it seems odd when Beckett is fulfilling dual roles. I miss Montgomery.

Of course our other new person has to have a cameo somewhere, so Vikram pops up to save the day when he tracks Anita to a detention center in Texas. Surprisingly, all leads are pointing to a Judge Caldwell. He signs the deportation orders and gets paid for every bed he fills in the Texas detention center. Marco is his helper in finding the undocumented immigrants, making them pay until there's no more money, and then getting them to the deportation center.

Castle and his ESL friends distract the judge as he's heading to work and it was cute, but when the final confrontation comes to a head, the judge figures out it's a setup and doesn't confess, merely gives a clue. And this is where it gets confusing.  The judge flew in Eddie's old enemy from El Salvador. Apparently Eddie had a hand in the guy's brother's murder. But the guy's brother wasn't really murdered and Eddie was protecting him. So, the guy went to the zoo, but didn't kill Eddie. Um, why did he come then? Just to chat? It made no sense to me except to have the red herring.

The team starts to wonder how the judge knew about Eddie being enemies with the guy, though, and of course Castle figures it all out and finally gets to say "j'accuse." (His French accent for his undercover gig wasn't bad, really! Nathan Fillion is amazing as always.) They go back to the ESL class and arrest the teacher. I totally called that one. The teacher helps figure out who is undocumented in the class and of course a lot of his students have ended up in the Texas detention center once he give their info to the judge and his cronies. Sad, really.

Castle throws a party for the ESL class and Martha waxes poetic about the country being founded on immigrants. Alexis stands up to say she will finish teaching their ESL class.

So, all's well that end's well. The show is still trying to find a spot for Hayley and had her come in to help with questioning a suspect who was a Geordie so the guys couldn't understand a word he said. She's also helping to run Castle's PI business. But really, there's not a lot for her to do.

This episode also had Castle remembering some things from his "missing time" and he figured out he was in Korea Town in L.A. Of course he's going to go there and investigate. Part of me was hoping they'd let that missing time thing go because it hasn't made a lot of sense from the get-go, but hey, when the missing time storyline is better than the LokSat mess, well, we'll just go with it.

Best part of the episode was Ryan saying they'd had an exciting day and he hoped they didn't have anything else happen that shift and right after they were thrown to the ground and handcuffed. Second best part was Castle's French accent and attempt to waylay the judge with his new ESL friends. Third best was Perlmutter trying to set up Beckett with his twin brother. Ha!

So, a cute episode with an immigration message and a case that was so twisty that sometimes it didn't make sense with the plot holes. Did you watch? What did you think?