Before Kate and Rick got to play dress up out west, though, they had to deal with Laney, Ryan, and Esposito’s hurt feelings over last week’s surprise nuptials – something that Laney quickly lets go of, but which Ryan and Esposito obsess over in the brief moments when the focus is on them. Remember when these two used to carry a little bit more water on this show? Once in Arizona, Kate and Rick try to blend in as best as they can, taking up residence in the bunk of the dead woman who, it turns out, shared a Jack and Jill bathroom with a chatty fellow traveler who dishes on the room’s previous inhabitant and her scandalous affair with one of the hands at the ranch, who just so happens to be married. Through further super secretive investigating, Rick finds out who the hand is and he is able to get info from him that leads Kate and Rick to the realization that the woman had taken dynamite. Nobody wants to see Kate and Rick act like they are covered in scars from the things that they have been through, but it’s not a comic book where they re-generate and retain no memory of their wounds. The producers made the decision to marry these two characters and doing that means that they have to grow and not act as reckless as they did in the early years of this seven season series. It shouldn’t matter that we know that no lasting harm will befall these characters because this is a procedural and a popular show, and it’s called Castle. With those sour feelings aside, this is a solid episode, but not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be given the backdrop. In closing, I’d like to urge you to check out Time Trax. It was a pretty amazing show.
