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Kick the Ballistics
Original Air Date: Oct 10, 2011
Divina F – TwoCents Reviewer
divina@thetwocentscorp.com
Ever since Honeymilk I’ve been hoping for some good Ryan backstory and character development. When Jerry Tyson, aka the Triple Killer, stole his gun and badge back in season 2, I was anxious for the storyline to pick back up. The victim is a young blonde woman, 3XK’s usual target. But she’s been shot, rather than strangled. Ballistics determines the gun was Ryan’s Glock 17.
The victim’s body is discovered by construction works as they fill an area with cement. Castle jokingly pins it as a mob hit, but as they interrogate the victim’s ex boyfriend – always a favorite suspect – Beckett gets the call from Ballistics. Seamus Denver does a great job throughout this episode portraying guilt. He’s perfectly justified, and the way it builds up his determination is very emotional.
Best of all, the connection to Jerry Tyson is unavoidable. Captain Gates wants the team to track down the gun and bring him in.
This is a dramatic episode, so the unraveling of the murder is rich and complicated: Jane, the victim, works as a tutor. The day she died, she cancelled all of her appointments. She reportedly spent hours at Grand Central Station, pulling out money from three different ATM machines. She was found with a cross pendant in her hand. Everything suggests that she knew her killer.
But even as everything starts falling into place, the connection to 3XK is lost. Shooting his victim is not his trademark, and even after a year he wouldn’t have come back to New York. When Beckett and Ryan hit a bar hoping to find him in a new alias with a connection to Jane, they discover an undercover narcotics cop who enlisted her help in bringing down the Li family, whose son she tutors. Ryan loses it when they question him, and he reveals an embarrassing mistake he made as a rookie working in the narcotics department. Thankfully, after that outburst he becomes more positively driven.
Meanwhile, Castle theorizes a connection between 3XK and Cliff Li’s family, but when Beckett and Ryan go in, Li calmly informs them that he knew Jane was spying on them. He casually turns the blame on the detective in narcotics who set her onto them. Following on his theory, Castle combs through prison records. In my favorite trope of the series, Alexis leads him to an epiphany when she complains about being set up by her friend to take over a stressful and boring student government job. He comes up with Phillip Li, the eldest son of the family, registered in prison with Tyson under his Chinese name.
Back at the precinct, Beckett has uncovered surveillance footage of Jane’s ex assaulting her outside the station. The contents of Jane’s belongings reveal that she was leaving New York, most likely with the boyfriend her roommate was suspicious because Jane implied that they couldn’t be together publicly.
Castle’s discovery of Phillip Li’s history with Tyson leads them to the boyfriend: his brother Ben, who Jane was tutoring. Unfortunately, besides Phillip’s cell phone tracking putting him near the scene, they have no evidence to bring him in, and they are too powerful. In the holding cell, Seamus Denver performs brilliantly yet again, convincing Jane’s ex – who worked for the Li family – to testify against Phillip. Captain Gates, needing to keep protocol and not draw negative attention to herself and the precinct, has a disagreement with Ryan, who feels they should push harder. She orders him to take the day off.
Not surprisingly, he goes off to persuade Ben to the side of justice. In perhaps the only comic relief break of the episode – Castle’s “concrete evidence” joke notwithstanding – Esposito helps him get past a bodyguard by dressing up as a gangsta college student. Ryan’s speech touches Ben, and he comes to the station to be set up with a wire.
The scene in which he questions his brother is tense and suspenseful, mostly because Phillip knows almost immediately that something is up. He points Ryan’s Glock 17 at Ben and demands to see the wire when the police break in. Ben picks up the gun and accuses Ryan of ruining everything, and is then shot by another officer. I nearly cried. It was truly a Romeo and Juliet set up.
Phillip didn’t confess, but his possession of Ryan’s gun is enough to convict him. However, he tried to get immunity by claiming he has information about 3XK. Beckett is left with the difficult decision of taking the bait or putting him behind bars for Jane’s murder. “We’ll get 3XK. And we’ll do it right,’ Castle says, advising her that any information Phillip has is probably false. “Damn, Castle. Look at you, thinking like a real cop.”, Beckett returns.
What did you think of Seamus Denver’s acting in this episode? Do you think the team will close in on 3XK this season? Was Esposito doing an homage to the Fresh Prince?
Next Week: Eye of the Beholder
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