Castle 5x24: Watershed

After a night of partying, a girl hops in a shower, and does a decent impression of Drew Barrymore in the 1993 movie Doppelganger. When the building superintendent goes up to the roof to check the water tank, he finds a dead girl floating in it. The investigation is slightly delayed because Beckett is in Washington interviewing for a job with the Attorney General's office, and Castle is at home, trying to pick a cover for his upcoming novel, Deadly Heat.

Available Sept. 13 in book stores that still exist.

They both arrive a little bit tardy, but it doesn't much matter, since the girl is still dead. The building's a low-rent flop house, and the residents say she was a prostitute, who moved in ten days earlier. Except that when the cops run her prints, it turns out that she was an honours student at Harvard. Her parents thought that she was backpacking through Europe with her friends, and personally dropped her off at the airport the day she moved into the building. Lanie's post-mortem doesn't turn up any evidence that she was hooking, either. The residents all swear she was entertaining clients, though, and a search of her room finds out why.

Unfortunately, this CD is not available in stores.

One of the girl's neighbours was adamant that she wasn't a hooker, and when Beckett questions him, he tells her there's a hole in the wall that let him see into her room. She wasn't getting it on, she was just sitting at her laptop all night. A laptop that was not found when the cops searched the place.

A conversation with one of dead girl's friends from Harvard reveals that she was computer science major, so Castle and Beckett figure she must have been doing a little hacking on the side, and that whoever she hacked had her killed. But surprisingly, she was killed by blunt force trauma and not hacked to death.

Meanwhile, Beckett's having a bit of a crisis. Her interview went really well, and the Cap'n gave her a glowing recommendation, so she goes to see Lanie for some sassy black woman advice.

Mmm-hmm, child, etc.

The apparently recurring tech lady checks out the internet logs of the dead girl's building's wifi network, and after excluding all the porn sites, she narrows things down to a fancy law firm. Some further investigation reveals that dead girl made a couple phone calls to a former attorney at the firm. But when the team goes to see him, he's not talking.

He's hanging from the rafters by an extension cord.

Lanie rules out suicide, and a check of the guy's instant messages shows that someone posed as him and set up a meeting with the dead girl after he died. Seeking a common thread, Ryan discovers that the dead girl's best friend worked as an intern at the law firm the previous summer and was killed in a car crash on the way home from a company party.

Ryan and Esposito finally get around to searching for the missing laptop, and they find it hidden in the building's laundry room. While at Beckett's apartment, Kate and Richard are making dinner when he discovers a boarding pass in her jacket pocket. She tells him that she went to DC for an interview and didn't tell him about it. He's not happy.

Pictured: Richard Castle's not happy face.

They have a fight, he storms out, and doesn't come in to the precinct the next day. Which is unfortunate, because the guys and the tech girl discover that the dead lawyer got a phone call from a young member of a major political family a few minutes after the dead girl's friend died. When Beckett interviews him, his mouth says he didn't know the girl, but his face his 'oh crap', and his attorney says "This meeting is over."

Meanwhile, Martha counsels Castle, and Beckett gets the job and disappears, leaving Ryan and Esposito alone to do the actual police work. They arrest the illegitimate black sheep of the family, and then manage to call Beckett back in to get him to roll on his half brother. Then she calls Castle and gets him to meet her at the playground, where he tells her that he thinks they both deserve more than what their relationship is giving them. It looks like they're going to break up, but the show pulls the most obvious swerve in the history of television, and he proposes instead.

To find out her answer, tune in next time...

On the home front, Alexis wants to take a trip to Costa Rica to study the rainforest, but her dad's a little hesitant to write the cheque. He's been a tad overprotective ever since she was kidnapped and taken to Paris. Also, toucans are extremely aggressive this time of year. Eventually, though, he realizes that she needs to spread her wings and fly, and he gives her the money.

The smile of a young woman who's just received a big, fat cheque.

What I Liked
-Esposito busts Castle's balls over his new book. Only one novel a year? What's up with that?
-Castle makes a too soon joke about their investigation being dead in the water, just like the girl. Hee-hee.

What I Hated
-Bad green screen work at the beginning.

It's like this episode was directed by George Lucas or something.

-Beckett's speech to the killer. It was interminable and self-important. They might has well just have had her give a Stallone-esque 'I AM THE LAW' speech. It would've been more believable.

Final Thoughts
It was nice to see both Alexis and Martha in an episode. They haven't been around that much lately.

The rest of the episode was kinda cruddy, though. They did that thing where the killer showed up for thirty seconds at the beginning, then disappeared... again. I suppose it's somewhat realistic for the murderer to occasionally be J. Random Guy, Esq. but doing things that way over and over and over doesn't make for particularly compelling television.

Beyond that, the Castle-Beckett relationship stuff seemed a little bit forced. They've been suggesting turmoil between the two of them for more than half the season, but usually in short two-minute bursts at the end of an episode that seemed to be ignored when the next one rolled around. Nevertheless, I could've bought it if they broke up. That was never going to happen, though, as this show is far too popular to do anything to create major conflict between the main characters.

What I want to know is how they're going to deal with the two of them being engaged next season, since even though the Cap'n knows they're in a relationship, they're still not allowed to be partners if it's out in the open. Well, I guess I'll find out in the fall. Lacklustre finale or not, this season had enough good episodes to keep me watching.