- Title: Castle – A Dance with Death
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Beckett (Stana Katic) and Castle (Nathan Fillion) are called into investigate the death of a reality TV-star who was murdered minutes before her live appearance on the show. Suspects include a recently released contestant (Neil Brown Jr.) with an ax to grind, a young woman (Arlene Santana) who was blackmailing the victim, and the host (Adam Harrington) who threatened the victim’s life a couple week’s before her death.
However, investigation into Odette’s past and leads Esposito (Jon Huertas) to take a closer look into near death experience in a trainwreck that put the bad girl onto the straight and narrow. It turns out the victim whose death they are investigating has been dead for a year. The woman who was killed in the studio was actually hired years before to be the actress’ stand-in for her court appointed community service work and drug tests and later assumed her identity after only one of them survived the trainwreck.
With now two victims to investigate, and unsure as to whether the killer knew he was killing the real Odette or not, Beckett and Castle have to reconstruct both woman’s lives. They also discover the victim was investigating the death of the original Odette’s grandfather who she discovered may not have died of natural causes.
The episode’s B-stories involve Martha’s (Susan Sullivan) attempts to woo a theater critic (Millicent Martin) for a little good publicity for her acting studio and Ryan’s (Seamus Dever) discovering his wedded bliss is causing him to get the cold shoulder from female witnesses and suspects.
A good episode all around with a fun unexpected twist that Castle was quick to sink his teeth in. There are also a couple of nice moments as Lanie (Tamala Jones) admits to her childhood dreams of being a dancer and Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) shows her very proud father how much she has learned in her internship.
