TV Recap: Castle 6-15 - Smells Like Teen Spirit

I love the fact that Castle can take a scary subject (or a potential one) and make it light and fun.  Also, was it me or was Castle more a part of the episode than he has been in recent weeks?  No sub-plots might have helped give that impression since the last few weeks he’s been mostly off on his own and not really fully involved in the investigation.

The episode starts with two girls in a cab who get a Face Time call from a friend.  She’s calling to tell them she’s running late.  But then she hears a noise and something strange starts to happen.  Next thing we know, she’s pulled up and out of the frame and then her body drops to the floor.

No, that’s not strange enough.  When Castle and Beckett arrive at the scene, the victim’s bedroom, they learn that her blood is smeared on the ceiling of the room.

Of course, Castle and Beckett don’t learn about the video until they track down the two friends.  They had their cabbie call 911, but it doesn’t take the team long to track them down, especially since they and the victim go to a private school – one that Castle used to attend but was kicked out of right before his senior prom.  Anyway, the girls tell about what they saw and then mention “the cafeteria incident.”  They refuse to say anything else but send Castle and Beckett to the principal.

The principal turns out to be the same one from when Castle went to school there.  He insists on calling Castle Mr. Rogers, which would have been his name in high school until he legally changed it for his first novel’s release.  The principal reluctantly shows them the video of the incident, which shows the victim and her two friends harassing a girl.  Then, as the bullied girl shakes in rage, tables and chairs fly toward the girls who were harassing her.  Yep, we’ve got a real life Carrie on our hands.

The bullied girl has left school as soon as she heard about the murder, so the hunt is on to find her.  Meanwhile, they start digging into the victim and learn she has credit cards in her own name but pays them off by herself every month.  And the charges are quite large.

When we finally track down the bully victim, she’s at an institute devoted to the study of telepathy.  After what happened in the cafeteria, she’s sure she has it.  And she’s afraid that she did kill the victim even though she doesn’t know it.  She wished the victim was dead.  Could that be enough?

Beckett doesn’t think so and probes a bit more.  From that, we learn that the harassment started one day when the bullied student ran across the murder victim in the Russian classics section of the school library.  It’s a section rarely used, so Beckett spots a book obviously pulled out regularly.  The book is hollowed out, and inside are German barer bonds worth $2million.  When they ask the victim’s parents where she might have gotten them, both deny it, although the father is obviously hiding something.

Thanks to the serial numbers on the bonds, they are able to track them back to a Chinese mobster who was a client of the victim’s father.  But the mobster didn’t commit the murder since he was out of the country.  In fact, he got out of the country in such a hurry he sold his house for well below market value.  His realtor says that one night, his patio furniture started levitating and spinning around, which freaked him out.  That was the night he was robbed.

And it corresponds to a night the victim was out late, according to the charges on her credit cards.  In fact, all the nights she was out late, parents of her school mates were robbed.  That’s how she was getting her money.

While investigating the mobster’s house, they find traces of blue paint.  The same blue paint that a student they talked to earlier was using to create the posters for the school dance.

Castle and Beckett go to his house, and they see objects spinning through the window.  They walk in to find the bullied student in the middle of the objects.  However, the boy who lives there then walks in and confesses to setting up some pranks.  He used his love of special effects to rig things in the cafeteria to try to get the victim to leave the bullied student alone.  The victim figured out what had happened, and she blackmailed him into helping with the robbery of the bonds and one more thing – creating the video where she faked her death.  The same one that her friends saw when she really died.

Using their phone record magic, they determine that she showed the video to one of her friends earlier, and the friend used it to establish an alibi after she killed the victim.  And those two friends were the victim’s accomplishes in the robberies.  The killer wanted out, but the victim wasn’t going to let her.

The final scene takes place at the school dance as Castle and Beckett, who had both missed their prom, crash.  They have also spent the episode trying to come up with “their song” for their first dance at the wedding.  As they dance to a song I didn’t recognize (darn the lack of knowledge of pop music of any era), they both talk about how they love that song.  Suddenly, their song is born.

Also, the bullied student and the boy who set up the pranks to help her find each other and start dancing.  Is love born?  As an aside, Beckett mentions to Castle that when they went back to the boy’s house, they found none of the wires and magnets he used elsewhere to explain the floating objects in his living room.  And one of them did shatter and break.  Honestly, from the way Beckett said it, I couldn’t tell if she was attempting to give Castle some hope that it was real after all or if she was telling the truth.  It seemed more like humoring Castle Beckett than serious Beckett.  Thoughts on that?

Despite the potential scary subject matter, I found this to be a rather light and fun episode.  I loved the reference to “Stephen” just like Castle really did know Stephen King (I miss those writer references).

The thing that got me the most was the principal calling Castle “Mr. Rogers.”  It took me a few seconds to remember that Castle changed his name as an adult.  Rogers would make sense because Martha’s last name is Rogers and that’s the last name he would have been given at birth.

Speaking of whom, no Martha and no Alexis this episode.  I really want to hear how the break up with Pi went.  No Gates either.  Is it just me, or is she in even fewer episodes than normal this season?

Overall, another good episode.  What did you think?  Hit me up with thoughts in the comments.