Castle: I, Witness

by Michael Seese
 
I'm having a hard time with this review...

First the good, which will feature SPOILERS!

I, Witness served up a lot of twists and turns. First, we had the (seemingly) cut-and-dried murder that Castle witnessed. Then, Castle's theory (which my wife called early) that the murder was staged to frame the philandering husband. (Which proved true, of course.) But then the victim turns up dead for real, and we have a whole new slew of suspects. I thought it might be one of those out-of-nowhere murderers which we have seen rarely, though on occasion. But my wife was two for two, as she tabbed the attorney. (Though my theory was it was the first wife, who wasn't really dead; so at least I had the right connection.)

I have to say, Castle's eavesdropping microphone was a cool toy, though I thought he risked blowing his (under)cover by glancing over at Whitfield's table a bit too much.

There were not a lot of lines of note.

The best was Esposito's combination look / line when he took a glance at the picture of his blind date and said, "She's all right."

Beckett: "And when did the affair begin?"
Taylor: "About a week later."

Castle: "What do all cocky men do?"
Beckett: "Make mistakes."
Castle: "Exactly. Wait. You're talking about me now, aren't you?"

Castle: "Something's bothering me."
Beckett: "Yeah, something's bothering me, too."

Now the bad...

I understand this is television, and fiction, blah blah blah. But sometimes there is a contrivance that is so onerous, it just loses me. (For reference, see the Cindy Crawford movie Fair Game.) In this case, Castle hears his friend scream, and rushes up to the house. Fair enough. But once he sees her body being dragged, he's not going to go to another window for a better look. He's going to call 911. And when he's following the car, he's not going to call Beckett. He's going to call 911. Sorry! (BUZZER!) Thanks for playing.

That hit me immediately. What came to me later was that Eva made a similar mistake. On paper, the plan to get Castle to witness the murder looks great. But what if he does call 911? Or, what if one of the neighbors calls 911? That would kind of mess up the performance. A better plan would have been:

- Spread blood
- Scream
- Hop in the car and start driving
- Have the male accomplice call 911 (using a burner phone) and say, "I just heard a woman scream at (address)."
- The police arrive, then wait for the husband to show up to a kitchen full of blood (and no alibi).

Onward. I'm so looking forward to next week, and the reappearance of 3XK.