Beckett is back in New York, but only to oversee the NY detectives’ investigation into the murder of a former actor.
Recap:
There’s a body hanging from a crane.
Castle and Beckett share their morning miles apart via Skype. This long-distance engagement is a killer.
Castle wakes up to find the murder of a former actor, Charlie Reynolds, on the news. The day’s looking up! He calls Esposito, hoping to charm his way onto the case, but watches Esposito ignore his call, live on television.
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So he makes his way to the crime scene and is stopped by Detective Grant Sullivan, Beckett’s new replacement. He’s no longer welcome here. Castle gets Esposito’s attention and reminds him that Gates is gone for the week and she won’t have to know that he’s helping. Under the caution tape he goes!
Charlie is found hanging from a crane. The medical examiner determines that he was killed between 10pm and 2am last night. (Where’s Lanie?) Charlie has several angry voice mails from a Geraldine Powers, threatening, of course, to kill him.
Her apartment is filled with posters of Charlie’s canceled TV show, “2 Cool 4 School.” But she’s no fangirl. She was Charlie’s agent. She accidentally received some of Charlie’s mail, including a bank statement. Charlie recently deposited $125,000, and Geraldine assumed that he’d booked a backdoor mystery gig.
Back at the precinct, Gates has returned and is not too happy to see that Castle is here.
Beckett is back too…with McCord, and they’re taking over the case without explanation.
Esposito and Ryan force Castle to choose between his fiancé and his hombres. Ooooh, tough one.
Castle, Esposito, and Ryan see the M.E.-that-is-not-Lanie, and he tells them the exciting news that chicken poop was found on the victim’s shoes.
Next, they seek out Charlie’s former costar, Ramon Rousseau (Antonio Sabato Jr.). They interrupt his acting class; Ramon thinks they’re fans. Ha. Only Ryan.
Ramon shared a cab ride with Charlie the night before his death. They were working on a reunion movie for “2 Cool 4 School,” but something was up with Charlie; he was forgetting all of his lines. Ramon has an alibi for the night of the murder: he was at home all night with his girlfriend.
The team next looks to Hank Harper, a crew member on the new reunion movie, who has priors for embezzling from other productions.
On their visit to the set, they’re inundated with clones of Charlie! Not really… They’re just recasting the part to finish the movie.
But Harper was on the up and up. Charlie’s biggest fans are from Russia, and they’re footing the bill for the movie.
Castle tries to bribe Beckett for information with a latte, but it doesn’t work.
They took the ledger from set and find a series of numbers that match the numbers found on Charlie’s body. They match a shipment of cameras sent to a warehouse in Brooklyn, next to a chicken factory.
They find the camera gear, and underneath, they find illegal weaponry. But they’re not the only ones after the case. Beckett and McCord are right behind them, as is Ethan Wright of the CIA.
According to Wright, Charlie was working with the CIA against the Russian mob. Anton Reyknov was using the movie as a front to smuggle the weapons into the U.S.
Wright wants to leave the weapons in the warehouse and plant a GPS tracker.
Beckett and McCord, still leads on the investigation, order the detectives to put the murder investigation on hold so as not to ruin the investigation into the Russian mafia.
No one’s happy about this, including Beckett. She hands Castle a flash drive with the results of her and McCord’s investigation.
On it, they find satellite imaging of Charlie walking in the warehouse, and he’s being followed by someone wearing a crew hat. It’s Anton’s niece, Svetlana Renko, an actress from the movie. But they’ve been warned to stay away from the mob. So they bring her in and just ask about Charlie. She knew that he was investigating her family. They were in love and were going to run away together. Charlie was giving up everything—the movie, his new apartment—to get away from it all.
That new apartment… He gave it to his dear friend Ramon. His girlfriend lied. Ramon wasn’t home that night. In fact, he was struggling financially; the movie was going to be his big break back into show business. And he couldn’t handle watching Charlie walk away from all of it and screw it up.
After Ramon is arrested, Ethan Wright capitalizes on Svetlana’s betrayal to her family and forces her to become the CIA’s new informant. Again, Beckett disagrees with this tactic, and McCord tells her to let it go.
That evening, the news picks up the story about Charlie’s murderer and an investigation into Svetlana’s ties to the Russian mob. With that news, she’s no longer of any use to the CIA. Apparently, an anonymous source tipped them off. Maybe not so anonymous. McCord knows it was Beckett and fires her.
Review:
Finally!! No more Washington, D.C.! So much for that nice, new apartment. That’s good news, but where is Tamara Taylor? She’s in the credits, but there’s no mention of her. Somebody needs to fix that. ASAP.
– Lindsay
