Castle Review: The Invisible Man

All right, last night had me fooled.  I had watched the sneak peeks and was thinking this show was going to be a little edgy. As in, for my scaredy-cat heart, maybe a little scary.  It wasn't. It was funny and awesome.

We start out with this guy playing pool in his apartment when he hears a knock at the door. He looks out the peephole and there's no one there. So, he opens it.  Doesn't he know you should never do that? All of the sudden he says, nooo and runs back into his apartment.  Next thing we know, Caskett is getting a phone call (interrupting their romantic, yes, I'm ready moment) to head down to the crime scene.  The pool player was killed with a pool cue. (What a terrible way to go!)

The place is trashed, but Castle notes that the glass is all left to right, like this guy was trying to defend himself and trashed his own apartment.  So weird. Ryan finds $20,000 in the guy's sock drawer and it isn't long before they figure out that the murder victim, Will, was a pool hustler.  He usually hustled in uptown joints, but the proprietor of one tells them that he asked Will one time where he got his talent and he says he made a deal with the devil.  And that his time was up and the devil was coming after him. Spooky.  Especially when you see the security footage of Will's door opening and closing after the murder, but no one was there.  The devil? Maybe.

The team finds a couple of leads.  Will's girlfriend from MIT mentions that Will used to go there until he had a breakdown. They'd recently reconnected, but she hadn't heard from him for a couple of days and had been worried.  He'd been acting paranoid, but maybe he'd been right all along, she said. Maybe someone had been following him. Ya think?

Ryan tracks down the guy that Will hustled the $20,000 from--Jiggy.  Now that's an awesome nickname. They bring Jiggy in for questioning and he tells them that Will offered to give the money back for information on how to break into someone's house. (Because Jiggy has a history of B&E and is known as The Ghost.)  When they look closer, our team finds out that there was, in fact, a break in at Tom Talmadge's house where he was beaten, but refused to provide a description or press charges. Caskett goes to visit him and he doesn't want to tell them anything because it will sound crazy, and Castle is all, "you won't believe the stuff we've heard." Haha. Isn't that the truth?  They get him to admit that an unseen force attacked him.  Another clue pointing to the invisible man as the murderer!

Caskett goes back to Will's apartment to get his work keycard and while there, Castle gooses Beckett and is all, "did the invisible man goose you? How gauche."  So. Funny. They find the card, but before they can leave, Beckett is attacked by the unseen force. Castle thinks she's kidding at first, but then realizes it's not an act and rushes in to help her.  He shouts, whatever it was, I touched it! Haha and then gets punched to the floor and is struggling himself with the invisible man.  Beckett is standing there awkwardly with her gun. It was so realistic and well-done. I mean, what would you do if the invisible man was attacking your partner?  The invisible man gets away and Beckett thinks he got the keycard, but Castle managed to hang onto that. The guy got Castle's credit card instead.

They start investigating where that keycard came from and after a few brick walls, it leads them to a secret government facility. Where they are inventing an invisibility suit! It is so cool! Castle is having a heyday and the techy stuff really was awesome.  Will didn't have a breakdown, that was a cover. He was really a talented quantum scientist recruited by the government. Unfortunately, his death sets the project back years, especially since there was also a virus downloaded to their files.  They think it comes from the Chinese, but Castle figures out that Will's neighbor downloaded that virus.

They track the neighbor down through an online game like Clash of Clans and Castle gets to battle with him in virtual reality and then in, well, real reality. I love it when Castle gets those moments. He just looks so little boy happy.  The neighbor, Henry, confesses that Will asked him to help on the project and they figured out the last equations needed to make the invisibility suit work.  Then they used it to break into Tom's house to get revenge. Apparently Tom stole some info for an app that cost Henry billions, but he couldn't prove it. So, he just beat the guy up, instead.  But he swears up and down he didn't kill Will.  They just worked on the research.  He makes a comment about how who knew cuttle fish had the key. Oh wait, the girlfriend had cuttle fish.  Uh oh.

Caskett heads to the girlfriend's office, where they've put the pieces together. She was mad because Will used her.  Oh, and they found Castle's credit card in her office. She runs away and gets the suit on, then tries to kill Caskett in her lab.  They get the fire extinguishers out and realize they can see her, even in the invisibility suit because of the "smoke" from the extinguishers (or whatever that stuff is called) so then they are able to take her down. It. Was. Awesome.

The government people come and take the suit away.  And Espo gives Ryan a gift for his new second job as security for a strip club, protecting male strippers.  When he finally admitted what he was doing to Espo, his comment that those women acted like the male strippers were the last men on earth made me laugh.  But Espo's gift of a little bikini bottom with security across it made me laugh harder.

Caskett has been trying to get back to where they were in their relationship (even going so far as to wonder if they were being watched in their bedroom, so Castle set up a bunch of pots and pans on strings. His zombie apocalypse preparation weekend wasn't for nothing after all! It was hilarious, especially when they caught Martha.)  Anyway, they finally get their alone time.  I love them. They are so sweet together.

This episode was full of laughs and charm.  Caskett is back on their groove with all the one liners. Castle says he missed their connection when they both figured something out at the same time, and I thought, me too! It was a really fun episode.

Did you watch? What did you think?