Last night the much anticipated Castle/Beckett kiss episode, Knockdown, aired on ABC. The action of this one centered on a return to the mystery surrounding Beckett’s mother’s murder, and begins to untangle the web of mystery surrounding who killed her (a hit-man we learned last season) and why (we start to learn that now).
This was another fantastic episode with emotion, action, humor: basically all of the things I’ve come to expect from an hour with the cast of this excellent drama/comedy.
Below are my notes, taken while watching. If you didn’t watch it last night, please do go watch it again before reading my comments below.
On to the show.
At the start, we are treated to ABC’s recap of Beckett’s mother’s story as told over the first two seasons of Castle. To set the backstory, understand that Beckett is Batman, and after her mother is killed, she turns to crime-fighting as both a passion and profession.
We open with a Det Raglan, as evidenced from photos, plaques and images we see around him. He is loading a gun, bring it to his chin, and begins to pull the trigger. We cut to Kate (Beckett) doing chin ups in her apartment (the new one, after they blew up her first one), as the phone rings.
Rather than kill himself, Det John Raglan, calls Beckett and introduces himself as the lead investigator on her mother’s case. “We need to talk about your mother’s case” He wants to meet her at a coffee shop at 4th and Main.
Beckett goes to Castle’s place. Apparently, she invites him to accompany her to the coffee shop, because the next scene is the two of them, entering the shop, walking over to Det. Raglan.
WHen they arrive, he asks her what part of no cops she didn’t understand. “he’s not a cop. He’s someone I trust.”
Det Raglan has just been diagnosed with lymphoma. He’s got 6 months. He’s going on and on about things you notice, and Christmas Carol. He did a lot of things and hid behind his badge. Now he has to carry them. Her mother’s murder was one of them.
When pressed, all he says is that he did what he was told and kept quiet. He tells Beckett that “People” noticed the hostage standoff (from last season, when Beckett caught the hit man who killed her mother).
This started 19 years ago, before he knew who Joanna Beckett was. He made a bad mistake and her mother was the beginning.
His coffee cup explodes. Everyone hits the ground. Beckett is covered in Blood. Castle asks her if she’s alright. She says she is, it’s not her blood. The Detective has been shot. Beckett yells to Castle to get down and away from the window. She calls the station for backup. Det. Raglan is dead.
The captain has arrived at the scene asks Beckett “tell me you didn’t come down here without backup.” Esposito and Ryan quickly come up behind her and improvise “We were backing her up. We were just..and they point to something off screen.”
Not fooled, the Captain warns Beckett to go where the evidence leads, not the other way around.
The forensics take a bullet out of the set. They use a laser to site the trajectory of the bullet. Beckett sends Esposito and Ryan off to check out the fourth floor of the building.
Castle comes back from the bathroom. He’s been washing his hands. When he saw the blood on her, he thought she’d been shot.
The building across the street is a secure building. Only way in or out is the locked lobby.
Esposito and Ryan bring back data on Raglan. Raglan was a widower. No next of kin. Only friend was another detective named McAlester.
In interrogation, McAlester tells them that Raglan was talking about 19 years ago. Beckett wants to know why, since her mother’s murder happened 12 years ago.
Raglan was retired by the time Beckett came on the job. She asks McAlester what Raglan was doing 19 years ago. NYC was a different city back then, and Raglan was a different cop back then. McAlester says he told Raglan not to get involved with a Vulcan Simmons, a drug dealer, punk, all around bad guy. Raglan worked homicide for 4 years and got involved with Simmons who used to run the drug trade in Washington Heights.
Beckett’s Mom tried to put together a “take back the neighborhood” in Washington heights back in the day.
Esposito says he’ll have him (Vulcan) “in the box by noon”.
Vulcan, a strong and scary large African American gentleman, tries to work on Castle and Beckett. Beckett surmises that 12 years ago, Joanna Beckett led a “Take back the neighborhood” campaign in Washington heights. She was murdered along with two of her colleagues. And he had his pet detective cover it up.
Vulcan leans in and tells her he remembers Joanna. RIch Bitch from the heights. Someone should have told her not to play with the animals. Beckett takes him, and throws him against the on-way glass wall, breaking it. Esposito and Ryan run in, Esposito telling her to stand down.
The Captain takes her off the case and tells her to go home. He tells Castle to go too, he doesn’t’ need him “nancy drewing” on this case. Captain puts Esposito and Ryan in charge of the Raglan homicide. They respectfully turn down the assignment. Captain “What’s it say on my badge?” R: “AH, captain.” And he tells them to get down there and solve the case.
Castle is at home, drinking and thinking. A very distraught Martha comes in and asks what if it had been him. He asks why she’s worried. And she very emotionally tells him that she loves him as much as he loves Alexis. She tells him he should be honest with himself why he’s doing it. (Beckett)
E and R are going through the tapes from the lobby camera of the building from the morning of the shooting. They find a man knocked down a woman and lifted her keycard. Wasn’t wearing gloves. They go to find the woman so they can get prints off of her arm, much in the way they can lift prints off of bodies.
Castle shows up with flowers at Beckett’s. Josh isn’t there. He’s in Africa, saving the world. She invites him in. He was thinking, all the best cops (Dirty Hairy, guy who makes the helicopter sounds in …) do their best work after they’ve been taken off the case. He kicked them off Raglan’s murder, but not her mother’s case. Beckett takes Castle to a three window pane she’s set up investigating her mother’s murder. She started it over the summer, while he was in the hamptons.
There were four people murdered linked to her Mom. Beckett thought they were related
E and R have found the woman. They are trying to get a fingerprint. She’s going on and on about how she’s not having any luck with men. On and on and on.
Castle and Beckett are going through photos of Beckett that her Mom took right before she died. There are some photos missing in the film. The last four photos on the negatives are of where her Mom was murdered. She took photos of the alley in which she was later killed. Is there something special about this alley?
The fingerprint comes up with a Hal Lockwood. He’s got nothing on his record. His credit card is active. He’s checked into a suite. They break into the suite, and find ammo, photos of Beckett. Wires. Explosive.
The sniper has been following Beckett since before Raglan’s murder. Captain is telling Beckett that she’s in danger, as is Castle. Castle’s in the basement going through old files. Does she want to tell him anything?
The sniper was taking meds to slow his heartbeat. Snipers time their shots between heartbeats so they don’t miss. Could Vulcan have been his dealer? Ryan ties the narcotics to a local dealer, a Chad…(something, I missed his name).
In interrogation, Chad tells him he’s got his lawyer on speed dial. Ryan tells him they aren’t narc cops. They don’t care about him. They want the person he sold the custom blend narsapan to the sniper. They aren’t going to arrest him, just detain him in lockup with some big guy. He says he didn’t sell directly to that guy. He sold them to one of his regulars. A lady that he can’t even get ahold of.
Castle comes to Beckett’s apartment. She answers the door with a gun in her hand. She tries to tell Castle to walk away for his safety.
Castle “Forget it. Fear does not exist in this dojo.”
Before her mother, there was another murder in that alley behind a club. An FBI agent was killed, Bob Armond. Her mother was a civil rights attorney. A thug named Bulgati pled guilty. Det. Raglan arrested him. He pled guilty because he was afraid of dyeing. He’s serving life in jail. The only people who could have seen how the FBI agent was killed were those who were there. The only people in the alley when Bobby was shot were the people who shot him. Bulgati did know Joanna. He wrote letters to every attorney he could find. She didn’t care that he was a thug, all she cared about was the truth. He warns Beckett to walk away. Nothing more dangerous than a killer with a badge.
Beckett, Castle update the chief and Ryan and Esposito. During this update, the Chief and Esposito share a really interesting look at the mention of the name Bulgati. This look is not explained during the course of the conversation or the rest of the episode. I wonder what this means in the future.
Turns out the McAlester was involved with Raglan and the setup. He tells them that Joe Bulgati wasn’t a good person. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t legal, but it was right. They’d take people off the street and they tuned them up. So they set bail and they set it hight.
McAlester was involved. He had nothing to do with hiring Dick Kunan to kill Joanna, and Raglan, and it’s so much bigger then she knows. He tells Beckett she woke the dragon.
Ryan and Esposito found two Jolene’s (the woman who bought the drugs from Chad) in the database. They separate to interrogate both. The sniper is following along behind. Beckett and Castle approach Jolene Granger. Her apartment is open. She’s been tied up and her neck broken. Beckett calls Ryan to tell him, and as he says “We’re our way”, someone from above them in the stairwell pulls the pin on something and drops it down the well, onto the stairs at Ryan’s feet.
Esposito and Ryan are missing. Only thing recovered are their cell phones. What Beckett heard was a flash bang. Lockwood grabbed them.
Cut to a factory building, and a large room. Lockwood congratulates Ryan and Esposito. No one has ever some this close to him. He and his people are filling a big vat of water with ice. He wants to find out what they know. He is going to make them a deal. option a They tell him what they know, one pro to another, and he will put bullet in their brain. If not, (option b) then they will be begging him to before this night is up.
Espotio chooses option B. Ryan says “oh ya, we’re definitely going to jerk you around.”
They find Jolene Granger’s cell phone bill. Try to call to get her account information. Need to get her mother’s maiden name. I miss how they managed to get this information.
Back in the factory building, Lockwood starts with Ryan, dunking him into the ice cold water. Esposito is forced to watch.
Beckett and company get the cell records. The last number she called has to be Lockwood. They find the building where Lockwood is, and where he’s got E and R.
Beckett and Castle arrive at the building and watch from the car. She’s worried that if they go in and that’s the end, Ryan and Esposito will be killed. She’s open to dumb ideas here. Castle says good, ‘cause I got one. They leave the car, and act as though they are lovers and Beckett is a bit drunk. The hired guard starts to walk toward them. Beckett reaches for her gun. Castle stops her and kisses her. Big kisses. After the first kiss, Beckett kisses him back. Big kisses. The guard stops walking, smiles and turns. By this time, Beckett is close enough, she roundhouse kicks him and knocks him out. Castle says that was awesome, then covers that he means the kick but we know he means the kiss. After Beckett turns, Castle touches his lips in a really cute and endearing “Oh my gosh we just kissed” sort of way, as only Nathan Fillion can pull off.
As the bad-guy is about to shoot Ryan’s kneecap, Esposito tries to tell him something, anything, to stop them from hurting Ryan. As the thug is about to shoot, Beckett comes in and shoots him first, and takes out a couple more of the thugs. As she continues through the room, the hit man/sniper gets his gun, and has his sights trained on Beckett. As he’s about to shoot, Castle jumps down from above him, tackling him to the ground, and punches him over and over again, knocking him out.
At the ambulance after the action, Castle is getting his hand bandaged. Beckett tells him that Ryan will be fine. Minor frostbite. His pride will be wounded too. Which will heal first. Beckett thanks him for alway having her back.
And end scene.
Another fantastic episode. Really, I say that every time, and I always mean it. Go watch it if you haven’t. Even if you’ve never watched an episode of this show, this one is a keeper.
Enjoy,
RSM
Continuing the series (part 1, installation, and part 2, Airplay) on setting up our new Apple TV at home, this post will sum up my thoughts of an app I had known about but since I didn’t own an Apple TV when it was released, had completely forgotten about. Apple has a tiny app (free) in the app store called Apple Remote, and it does just what it’s name implies. It turns your iOS device (iPhone, and, I presume, iPad, and iPod touch) into a remote to control your Apple TV.
Upon first tapping the app, with the iPhone already on our local wi-fi network, it immediately found the home sharing that I’d set up via iTunes on my MacBook, and also subscribed to by our Apple TV. Once I’d logged into the home sharing, taping the screen turned on (or, more correctly, woke from sleep) the Apple TV. After it woke up, I saw the Apple TV navigation titles on the screen that are controllable by the left/right/up/down clicks on the silver remote’s click wheel. The controls on the Remote app are super simple. You swipe left right, up or down, to move a cursor on the screen in that large black open area in the center of the iOS device’s screen. The “Tap to Navigate” directional arrows on the image to the left are exactly what you’d see. Once you have moved the curser over what you want to choose, you simply tap on the iPhone’s screen. Tapping does the select. 
