Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) is a driven and uber capable detective with a code of honor that is above reproach, but while she aims to clear every case that comes across her desk, the murder of her mother has been the beating heart of her personality and some of Castle’s best episodes since the show’s inception. For a little while, during the sometimes silly season six finale, it seemed like Castle might spend its golden years with Kate and Rick Castle (Nathan Fillion) pursuing grim cases and mysteries with a tinge of lightness while wrestling with the challenge of making a marriage work both at work and at home. That fantasy faded into the breeze in the waning moments of the finale when Rick’s car was run off the road and Kate found a blazing wreck in a ditch. In that the show is called Castle and in that it is still a staple of ABC’s primetime lineup, we knew that the show wasn’t going to shock us all and turn into a grim tale about Kate’s pursuit of another villain who had taken someone away from her, but we weren’t quite prepared for the direction that they went down, either. For more than two months, Kate dealt with the gnawing suspicion that she might be chasing someone that didn’t want to be found, but while others seemed to give up hope, she seemed to hang on. She (and we) know Rick better than to think that he would run away, but when Kate finds a campsite with all of Rick’s things (including his wedding tux) and a witness that says he saw Rick camping on the site, it’s nearly impossible for Kate to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore. When Rick is found floating in a bullet riddled boat after almost a week adrift at sea, Kate is cool to both Martha and Rick, who seems to think that he’s only been gone for hours. The amnesia angle is an interesting, albeit tired, choice by the writers that will conceivably allow Rick and Beckett to team up to get to the bottom of this latest mystery. It’s also a great way to fill the void left by the end of the Bracken chase, but when we quickly discover that the witness who identified Rick was actually impersonating another man, any and all doubt about Rick’s story is washed away and the barrier between Kate and Rick topples over. And that’s a shame. It would have been more interesting to slow things down and let Kate’s suspicions linger a little, but at the end of the day, this show relies heavily on the chemistry between these two characters. While Stana Katic did a great job carrying the torch alone for most of this episode, it simply felt like a different show — a darker and at times more cinematic show — but that probably wouldn’t be sustainable going forward. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
