- Title: Castle – Death Gone Crazy
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“She kicks ass, she’s a corporate spy, man, she is perfect. Why did she have to be the bad guy?”
Suspects aren’t an issue when Beckett (Stana Katic) and Castle (Nathan Fillion) investigate the murder of the troubled founder (Jordan Belfi) of “College Girls Gone Crazy” who was strangled with bra in the woman’s bathroom during a club event in Manhattan. There were plenty who wanted the man dead including former college girls used in his videos, angry boyfriends and fathers, moral crusaders and picketers, and his ex-girlfriend – softcore porn actress Tiffany Shaw (Vail Bloom).
Heading to the business offices with the COO (Anthony Starke) of the company to get a list of the death threats made to the victim in the last six months, Beckett discovers the man’s bodyguard (Kelly Hu) used the victim’s keycard to enter the building after his death to retrieve a sex tape involving a friend of hers from the company’s servers. Much to Esposito’s (Jon Huertas) pleasure, she turns out not to be their killer. His joy, and their date, are short-lived however when Beckett and Ryan discover she wasn’t after a sex tape on the company’s servers.
Castle and Beckett also talk to the leader of the protesters (Conor O’Farrell), a Conservative moral crusaders with no problem with protests turning violent, and a potential business partner (Lex Medlin) who showed up on the video footage of the club the night of the murder after being hospitalized by the victim’s bodyguard a days earlier. However, both turn out to be dead ends.
After Esposito’s date comes clean and admits she’s a corporate spy after dirt on the porn magnate, Beckett and Castle talk with the head (Spencer Garrett) of a family programming conglomerate who the victim was trying to buyout at the time of his death. Although he’s not he killer he does hand over the mysterious SD card containing a sex tape of the victim and a young kindergarten teacher (Gillian Alexy) which finally leads them to the real motive for murder, although it’s not what they expect.
The episode has quite a few red herrings and twists, even more than usual. I don’t know if we’ll see any more of Hu as a potential love interest for Esposito, but that subplot (and his coworkers reaction to it) all works really well. The final twist is a nice touch in delivering the murderer (Chad Donella) of a victim far more complicated than he appeared, even to those closest to him. The episode also provides a couple of Castle and Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) father/daughter moments over his concern on discovering her rather personal video blog.
