Castle – Recap & Review – Pandora
Castle
Pandora
Original Air Date: Feb 13, 2012
Divina F – TwoCents Reviewer
divina@thetwocentscorp.com
ABC has been hyping this two us as the “seasonal two-parter”. I am anxious for this for different reasons because two part episodes are intense and awesome but the first one always ends with a cliffhanger. This part one opens outside a window, the noise of a fight going on. Suddenly, a man flies out of the window and lands on a car below, dead.
He’s a veritable Rasputin in that he’s been chocked, shot, and stabbed before being pushed. Lanie – and her new intern, Alexis! – take the body to the morgue, but it is soon spirited away. Thomas Gage, the suspect, also disappears. Security cameras track him stealing a police uniform and hacking the police database for the name of a woman. Unfortunately, when Castle and Beckett arrive, she is dead. And as they canvas the house, they are kidnapped. When the sacks are removed, they find themselves descending into a basement that turns out to be CIA headquarters.
It turns out that the CIA – headed by one Sophia Turner, once the inspiration for Castle’s CIA character Clara Strike – took the John Doe body, and it was one of their operatives. As was Thomas Gage, before he heel face turned. The woman he killed was somehow involved in whatever he was plotting. The following sequences out to a bizarre and complicated plot that reveals another operative – Dr. Blakely – faked his own death years ago. Somehow, he is the key to unraveling a catastrophic chain of events that will trigger the US economy in a way it will never recover from.
Castle and Beckett break the secret code Blakely left for Tracy McGrath, the woman Gage killed. But just when they get him to start talking about what the Linchpin trigger for Pandora might be, he runs out of the car onto pier 32 and is shot. Seconds later, a black SUV rams Castle and Beckett into the harbor.
Since next week will conclude the events, I think now is the best time to drop the obvious observation that Kate is feeling really confused right about now. We know that she knows Castle confessed his love to her when she was shot, but she’s keeping it so close to the vest, treading water over how she feels about that. With the appearance of The Clara Strike I could almost see the frustration on her face as she had to watch Castle and someone else finish each other’s sentences. I admit I like the jealousy, but as optimistic as I am about Castle/Beckett I am beginning to lose my patience.
As for Alexis, I don’t understand why Castle is so uncomfortable with her interning under Lanie. It’s not as though she’s suddenly Megan Hunt, intervening on every aspect of the case. There’s no way she could ruin the dynamic he was with Beckett if she’s in the morgue the entire time.
Finally, as interesting as this whole plot is, I could not help reacting negatively to the promo for next week. I hardly believe that anything could trigger a collapse into World War III. I thought that was lame.
Next Week: Linchpin
Does youreview your recaps before posting? The misspellings, missing words, and nonsense phrasing reminds me of texting with autocorrect on an iPhone. Your reviews are especially unreadable because of this.
“Does youreview your…”
Was that intentionally ironic? Or just the old pot and kettle scenario?
Not that I disagree with the need for a look-over…
Yes, I was going to ask what “heel face turned” means. Is Gage a “heel,” is he “two-faced,” was he “turned”? Or maybe he’s “head over heels,” which has more to do with being in love than being a traitor. Or maybe he just likes to knit socks and it was time to turn the heel.
Still. I got the jist of what you were saying. And yes, I’ll also be curious to see what they think could bring down the US economy and cause WWIII
I’m not the author but I did enjoy the proposed sock-knitter explanation for “heel face turned”. I wondered myself if that particular phrase had eluded me somehow in all my years on the planet.
Ooops, sorry. I should have checked the by-line and not assumed. I’m thinking it’s some foreign idiom that was imperfectly translated, or an mixture of misunderstanding – like when my mother says, “He knocked him out cold as a cucumber.”
And, of course, it’s spelled “gist.”
Yes, it was meant to be ironic. Unfortunately, this is not the only recapper on the site with poor spelling and grammatical skills.
A heel face turn refers to a god guy turned bad scenario. I thought this was a common expression.
Well, if you mean the wrestling term, that’s about a bad guy (the heel) turning into a good guy (the face), but maybe that gets flipped around when talking about stories. Too bad, I was hoping it was about knitting socks.
A quick google search seems to indicate it has its origin in wrestling. I’ve never heard it before and thought, like the first commenter, that there was some sort of typing mishap. It’s a strange phrase, in any case.
As for the episode – I have a feeling that Thomas Gage went rogue to stop something rather than start something. I don’t trust Sophia Turner and her strange fawning praise of their case-handling. Maybe it’s a jealousy thing (seeing Kate as Castle’s new muse) and I’m reading too much into it, but I think that would be a pretty interesting twist. But I do wonder why Gage didn’t just kill them rather than putting them in the trunk, along with a means for a seemingly easy escape.
I thought this episode was so over the top. Why does Marlowe think that all two-parter episodes should have such high stakes in them. Last season it was about saving NYC, this season it is about saving the world ! Why not keep it simple and less complicated. I enjoyed the two-parter episodes in season two. They were interesting and simpler too. I also thought that Rick does not do much to reassure Beckett, it’s as if he does not care very much any more. I find a big change in Rick this season, he’s not the ” head over heels in love” man any more, and it is very disappointing, especially after the big ” I love you Kate.” After watching the finale for season three I was so excited for season 4, but, I have to say I am very disappointed so far with what I have seen and I also find the status quo in their relationship very frustrating. I think they should do something fast to shake things up between Castle and Beckett or they are soon going to start losing viewers.