Castle – The Blame Game

• Title: Castle – The Blame Game
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After being lured to an abandoned building under false pretenses, Castle (Nathan Fillion) awakes in a closed room with three other victims (Kevin Christy, Cyrus Farmer, and Kai Lennox) all tricked to coming to the same address and all drugged by a mysterious unseen adversary who forces the group to solve twisted games to survive. Tensions only increase when the group learns their voyeur wants them to kill each other off and, to increase their cooperation has trapped the men’s wives (Vedette Lim, Idara Victor) along with Beckett (Stana Katic) in an identical situation.

For a movie obviously based off a horror movie, “The Blame Game” curiously attempts to come up with a real-world reason for the crazy affair. After Hayley (Toks Olagundoye) and Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) discover the disappearance and tie it to Ryan (Seamus Dever) and Esposito‘s (Jon Huertas) investigation involving murder and a secret unorthodox experiment involving children which mirrors the very situation their friends find themselves trapped inside.

Eventually all but one of the captives make it out alive, although the show isn’t as clever at hiding the identity of the killer as in other episodes. Despite the contrived set-up, “The Blame Game” is certainly a memorable episode the ramps up the tension (even if the eventual conclusion is a bit of a let down). I’m also happy to see the show continuing the Alexis and Hayley partnership it teased in earlier episodes. Hopefully we’ll see more of that pairing as the season continues.