Review: Castle - One Man's Treasure

Let me start off by saying that tonight's Castle was probably one of the best episodes in a while. This show is at it's best when Beckett and Castle have bizarre cases to solve. The crazier, the better. And this week was definitely all sorts of crazy.

One man, one wife, one fiance. It's not a line in a joke or the tagline for a new reality show. This week's victim was a man living two separate lives - a wife in the country and a fiance in the city. Or so it would seem.

Of course, both women swore up and down that they had no idea of his double life but only one of them was telling the truth, thus making them both suspects. The rest of the episode saw Castle and Beckett solving the puzzle of this man's bizarre life. The key to the case ended up being his employer, who had sent him to infiltrate and spy on a rival company, which is why he had created a new identity and moved himself to the city for five days a week. Things only got crazier when it was revealed that his "fiance" was not really his fiance at all, she was a spy sent to spy on him by the company he was spying on! Confused? That's half the fun!

Anyway, I never suspected the real killer. I was definitely banking on one of the women who claimed to love him, but maybe that would have been to soap-ish. I guess it wouldn't be as interesting without the element of surprise.

I'm really liking the Beckett-Alexis dynamic they're introducing into the show. Last week, we saw Alexis going to Beckett for advice and this week we see her ask Beckett to volunteer at the station. Sure it was for school, but we got to see some nice scenes between them and I like how Alexis knows Beckett's pretty much the only other sensible person on the show besides herself. It'll be interesting to see what happens if/when Castle and Beckett finally do get together.

There wasn't too much of the bickering we're used to between Castle and Beckett, a couple of cute eye rolls and a hilarious line about "witchy women," but pretty low on the bicker chart (another thing that makes Castle so great).

Regardless, it was an excellent episode and I hope to see more like it, case-wise at least. The last couple of cases left much to be desired and I love when they're so out there that Beckett has to rely on Castle to use that writer's imagination of his to get things moving.