Castle, S4 Ep22 – Undead Again

Thing are looking up, people! Castle might not be as much of an idiot now as he has been for the past couple of episodes! And plus, zombies.

"Our killer's a zombie?!"

I’ll start out with the case of the week: a currency trader named David Locke is killed in the parking garage of his workplace: blunt force trauma to the head, and a human bite mark on his arm. His coworker was attacked and bitten at the same time — by a zombie, according to the rather hysterical guy (who begs Beckett to shoot him because he’s sure he’s going to “turn” since he’s been bitten). Plus, there’s security camera footage of a figure leaving the parking garage right after time of death, who looks exactly like a ‘real’ zombie. Castle, who has decided this is going to be his final case with Beckett & co. (see later on for explanation), is thrilled that he’s going to go out “with a bang”. He offers up comments throughout the rest of the episode about how awesome it is that they’re tracking down a real, not-live zombie — to Beckett’s annoyance, of course. Oh, and by the way, he doesn’t tell anyone at the precinct that he plans for this to be his last case. He just drops a few vague hints, which puzzle Beckett especially.

It turns out that David was pursuing an old girlfriend of his, Greta, who is now engaged to a pre-law student named Tom. (By the way, I’m taking this as a shoutout to Jonathan Coulton’s fantastic song, “Re: Your Brains”, since the zombie in the song addresses his email to a Tom.) Greta called it off with David after Tom found out about their past history and recent hookup and threatened to break off the engagement. Tom, naturally, says that while he’s not very sorry to hear about David’s death, he didn’t kill him. He has an alibi, as well: he was studying at the law library in the wee hours of the morning when David was killed.

Ryan tracks down a chemical that was found on the victim’s body that’s only made in three laboratories in the area. That and the victim’s credit card receipts lead Beckett and Castle to an abandoned laboratory downtown — at night, of course. There’s no one to be found there, and our duo are confused as to why a respectable currency exchange office worker like David would be hanging out in that kind of place. That’s when two terrified civilians run past them screaming. Beckett pulls out her gun as she and Castle are slowly but inexorably surrounded by shambling, moaning zombies.

It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark...

Just as it looks like our heroes are going to be overwhelmed, Beckett yells out that she’s NYPD and orders them to halt. They do. One confused member of the mob quickly explains that no one’s actually going to hurt anyone: they’re just “zombie-walking.” Apparently that’s a thing that people do. And after this scene, I want to go watch the music video for “Thriller,” which definitely isn’t a bad thing.

Back at the precinct, none of the zombies or ‘normals’ whom they were chasing recognize the victim. But a couple of heavily-made-up guys, one of whom is obviously high, do recognize the zombie makeup on the killer. It’s a guy named Kyle Jennings. When Ryan & Espo bust into Jennings’s apartment, however, they find the killer zombie apparently dead on the floor. He remains dead until Perlmutter is about to draw some blood to see what killed him. At this point, Kyle sits up suddenly, screams, and flees out of the room. Kate is very, very shocked (like everyone else in the room) but pursues him, yelling for Rick to call for backup. “Is there a police code for zombie on the loose?” Rick asks Perlmutter before he dials the number on the phone. Hee.