Castle – Recap & Review – Kill The Messenger

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Castle
Kill The Messenger

Original Air Date: Nov 9, 2009

Karen B – TwoCents Reviewer
karenbelgrad@thetwocentscorp.com

Kudos to Castle for finally having an episode where the culprit was not a family member! A minimal step up from last week’s cliché rock-n-roll story, this week had three murders for the price of one episode. The bike messenger, the inmate, and the 10-yr old homicide…

The main issue with this episode was too many throwaway characters. We meet the bike messenger’s sister, the aunt/widow/child of the inmate, the aunt of the 10-yr old homicide, along with her date and a slew of members of a wealthy family she was associated with and a few that they were associated with. Overall, there were more than ten character names introduced that did little to advance the plot.

The quick cut of the bike messenger racing through the New York streets was intense enough, but it was a twist for the episode to actually show him murdered (hit by car driven by masked driver). The messenger bag stolen from his arm would be the key to the case, but its contents never divulged.

The back story of the case involved several red herrings: The messenger was just doing his job. The sender was an elderly aunt hired by her incarcerated nephew, Brady Thompson, to send proof of his innocence in a 10-yrd old case to the Captain, who handled the original case and conviction. The nephew had been shanked in prison that morning. Quickly enough, they track down his wife who confirms that Brady had been paid to falsely confess to the crime. The Captain is greatly affected to learn he sent an innocent man to jail.

The case really turns on the original homicide, Olivia Debiasse, a 20-yr old who had been bludgeoned to death. Brady confessed to the murder to receive monthly payments to pay for his son’s medical care.

The second half of the episode focused on the original murder, which would lead to the solving of the two current murders (bike messenger and Brady).

By retracing the final night of Olivia and exhuming a surprisingly empty coffin, they track down a wealthy Kennedy-esque family, the Wellesleys. We learn in rapid fire succession that she was the long-lost daughter of Winston Wellesley, brother to Senator Blake Wellesley and son of elderly Lenanne Wellesley… but wait….

It turns out that Winston is actually gay and Blake was her father. And the mother sent her man-servant/hitman Frank Davis to “take care of the girl” and avoid blemishing Blake’s burgeoning political career. And Frank did, by murdering her and disposing of her body. When Frank learned that Brady was going to turn him in, he had a prison guard kill him and also took out the bike messenger to get the package containing evidence of his original crime.

It was a more convoluted case than the show usually highlights. The downside was minimal screen time for Esposito, Ryan, & Alexis. We were given some visual scenes of Beckett’s soft touch when working with victim’s families. Overall, the episode was light on the Beckett/Castle rapport that makes the show distinguishable from other procedurals. One brief “Absolutely Not”/”Not Yet” response to Winston’s inquiry as to if they were a couple was the sole highlight of their usual witty banter.

Martha’s side story was enjoyable, but slightly forced. I would like to declare a moratorium on generic social-networking websites for all shows at this point. They may have referred to the site in jest as “MyFace”, but one look showed it to be neither MySpace or Facebook. The use of old photos as a flirtation device between Martha and her high school sweet hear Chet felt a bit 1997-match.com. However, it was humorous to see Susan Sullivan’s Falcon Crest-era head shots!

Certainly not the best episode of the series, but a few good notable moments:

• Castle unable to pair down to the facts for the initial case run down. Quicksilver? I think The Real World’s Puck is a better pop-culture bike messenger.
• The aunt being mistaken for a terrorist (S Nadal Matar on the terror watch list, as opposed to her name being S Niedermeyer)
• Esposito, Ryan, and Castle drinking tea and being swarmed by cats at the aunt’s apartment.
• Castle’s expression at learning about his mother’s “first.”
• The precinct had experience a 20% reduction in force and was below standard in closing cases. The three solved homicides put them just over the baseline.

A quick end note… They really need to shorten the opening montage. A full recap of the series premise seems a tad excessive considering the Turner and Hooch joke wasn’t that funny the first time around.

I’m a huge fan of the show and hope they can swing back around to the clever banter shown in the Halloween and Artic-fake-Explorer episodes.

What did you think? Put your own TwoCents in the comment section below!