Reviews & Ratings for
"Castle" 3XK (2010)

3 out of 27 people found the following review useful:
Weak, 28 October 2010

Author: Trevor Mcinsley from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Like a handful of other Castle episodes this one seems to have simply thrown the established characters out the window and gone off on some bizarre tangent.

Given some of the startling revelations Castle and Beckett usually come up with based on hunches it should have been obvious that the poor quality CCTV footage could have been someone simply dressed as the suspect. I had assumed this was the case right away as it frankly seemed like a transparent idea, that it took them some time to come to this conclusion seemed to go completely against their usual intuition.

Starting the episode prior to the murder and showing the suspect was obviously meant to drill it into the audiences mind that he was the killer, however it pretty well goes against the usual episode formula. It would be a like starting an episode of a medical drama with the patient walking out of the hospital alive and well and ending on the accident that put them there.

All of this, however can be overlooked for the major non sequitur that was the real killer leaving Castle alive in order to 'punish him.' Apart from the obvious fact that killing him would make catching him harder, if truly his motive was one of making people suffer by way of a punishment then it seems illogical. Killing him then and there would have punished his family, the other detectives and highlighted their failure in catching him to a greater degree. That seems like the truly diabolical plan of a sociopathic killer to me and the fact that this did not happen stinks of the writer writing himself into a corner and being unable to think of a better way out.

If the killer truly was the mastermind he was painted to be he would have also realised that the 'I love you' line was likely a signal, due to its delivery this should have been clear even without knowing Castle's character. The fact that Castle seemed cool and collected enough to start analysing the psyche of the killer when he had a gun pointed at him again seems far fetched and goes completely against his well established character.

All in all it is somewhat disappointing to know that this episode will have to be followed up with a sequel and another 40 minutes of viewing will be mostly wasted.

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