- Title: Castle – Cops & Robbers
- tv.com: link
“Even as a hostage I help you solve murders.”
A trip the bank to help his mother (Susan Sullivan) secure a loan for her acting studio starts out boring Castle (Nathan Fillion) out of his mind, but things soon heat up when four robbers dressed in hospital scrubs (Darren Pettie, Jonah Wharton, Ty Upshaw, Noa Dori) start robbing the bank and taking hostages.
Police response to the robbery is hastened thanks to the fact Castle was on the phone to Beckett (Stana Katic) the moment the robbers to control of the bank, but what appears initially to be a simple bank robbery turns out to be a much deeper mystery involving a safe deposit box in the name of a dead elderly couple.
Beckett is chosen by the lead kidnapper to negotiate but things quickly deteriorate into mutual threats and the detonation of C4. Things look bleak, but when the cops storm the bank the find all the hostages safe and the robbers apparently killed in their own explosion. However, Castle isn’t buying that as the ending to the story.
Further investigation leads to the identity of another member of the team (Ian Kahn) and allows Beckett and Castle to make the connection to the dead elderly woman’s safety deposit box and discover what the entire robbery was really about.
Aside from the main story, which is one of the show’s best, the episode has some terrific individual moments including Beckett’s reaction shots to both seeing the bomb go off and finding Castle alive (both queued up in the video), some nice mother/son moments inside the bank, and a great final family sequence involving Castle, Martha, Alexis (Molly C. Quinn), and Beckett sharing a meal together. It’s going to be hard to top this one, but I can’t wait to see what the Castle writers come up with next week to try.
