- Title: Castle – Under the Influence
- tv.com: link
Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Beckett (Stana Katic) investigate the death of a young DJ with a troubled past at a pop star’s (Taylor Cole) album release party. Esposito (Jon Huertas) discovers the young woman got into a fight, with a rapper (James Black) who had previously threatened her, before leaving the party shortly before her death.
The rapper alibis out of the murder, but talking to him Beckett discovers why he, and several other party hosts, were angry at the victim and her 14 year-old part-time tech assistant (Nadji Jeter) who had a tendency to leave parties with expensive items that didn’t always belong to them. Knowing the kid isn’t responsible for the murder, Esposito tries to coax the truth out of Joey beginning with trying to get the name of the mastermind behind the robberies.
After a talk with the kid’s case worker (Ursula Burton), Espisito volunteers to take Joey into his apartment until the case is solved rather than throw him into juvenile detention. Despite his best intentions, things don’t go exactly as planned. However, a little look into the criminal careers of both the victim and Joey comes up with the name of a man (Michael Irby) who just happens to own the exact model of car which was used to dump the DJ’s body at the construction site.
Esposito is able to bring in the suspect, but he’s already torched his car destroying any evidence he transported the body leaving the police no hard evidence to tie him to the murder. The investigation takes Ryan (Seamus Dever) and Esposito full circle, returning to the recording studio and finally discovering the true motive for the murder and catch a killer. The late twist works well, even if you’d like Joey’s scumbag pal to be the killer. It will be interesting to see whether or not Joey becomes a recurring character on the show and if Esposito’s threat to Joey’s “friend” keeps the man out of his life for the foreseeable future.
