7.21 In Plane Sight On one level, this is a surprise. After all, this episode has few of the hallmarks of what faithful viewers tend to think of as key to a good Castle tale. In Plane Sight takes place entirely during the course of a transatlantic flight on the always-tragic Oceanic Air (Oceanic Air/Airlines/Airways is the commonly used name of an airline company where bad air stuff always happens—think Lost or Executive Decision) during which Rick and Alexis are on their way to London to have a little father-daughter bonding-time. Or so Castle thinks. Alexis has other plans. But both their plans are forgotten when the crew begin to act oddly and Castle, being Castle, cannot help sticking his nose in where it would usually be unwelcome. The flight’s air marshal has gone missing and the crew is only too happy to have the detective’s help in first finding the missing man and, when it turns out that he’s been murdered and his body hidden below decks in the luggage, help in tracking down both murderer and motive. However, the episode is not devoid of chemistry. Instead, we get a slight re-emergence of what used to exist between father and daughter before the disastrous Pi came on the scene last season. It’s nice to see the two working together and nicer still to see Molly C. Quinn back on the show for more than a quick cameo, but it’s still a far cry from the days of laser-tag and dad-daughter besties. It would be excellent if this was a sign of things to come. But what the episode lacks in the show’s usual charms, it more than makes up for in the essential mystery. And this has got to be in great part due to the writer, Dara Resnik Creasey, one half of the writing team that gave us the two best written mysteries the first half of this season: Bad Santa and Clear And Present Danger. Her success is largely a matter of misdirection and pacing done just right. The pacing that the writer sets up and that the director, Bill Roe, delivers on works equally well in two important ways. One, of course, is that it doles out the discoveries steadily enough to keep the tension constantly ratcheting, an important key when you’re essentially working in a disaster-movie milieu like this. Things must always seems like they are just about to get terribly worse. But it also works to run out the clock, taking us so close to the end of the episode, that we become convinced that the woman in the wig really is our villain and must simply be made to divulge her last secret (where the bomb is? Who her accomplice is? etc.) for us to have entirely solved the mystery. So the fact that the whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with her comes as a genuine shock. As does the true nature of the crime and even the identity of the murderer and here, I have to give some credit to the casting people. For procedural junkies like myself, it seemed virtually impossible that Paula Newsome’s Debbie Parker could be a killer. Her previous role as wife of NCIS’ Director Vance, and subsequent death of that character last year in the pivotal Shabbat Shalom episode (raising her to the level of martyr) was a sort of secondary camouflage which stood her in great stead here. And made the final scene between her and Quinn read so well, I think. We’ve seen in the past the lengths that Castle will go to to protect his little girl so in normal circumstances, it would be impossible to believe that he would have stood back and allowed her even to think of negotiating with a murderer. But the calmness Parker brings to the role (and the NCIS baggage she brings with her for some of us) makes the gun in her hand just look wrong and like it cannot possibly be the instrument of death that it is. It makes Alexis’ gentle but non-patronising approach seem like exactly the right way to de-escalate the situation, and it’s not until it’s over that we realize that Castle has let it happen. And it’s nice to be reminded what we’ve been missing in Quinn’s absence. It’s certainly not the episode we expected after last week’s big reveal, but In Plane Sight is certainly one of the most welcome surprises of the season. Read Laura’s review of episode 19, Habeas Corpse, here.
