Castle S7 Ep2 – Montreal

This week gives us another pretty intense episode, albeit with more funny moments than the season opener. Castle begins the ep by offering a $250,000 reward to anyone who can give useful information about his lost two months.

Meanwhile, the case of the week is a dead guy found in the river, wrapped in plastic (great timing on that, even if it wasn’t an intentional reference). It’s the CEO of Williger’s Toys. No one knows exactly what Williger was up to the past few weeks before his murder, but it involved age makeup, a second residence, and a dog that lives with him at this other apartment. Oh, and he’s also been working in this age makeup disguise as a janitor at one of his company’s warehouses. Whaaa? Turns out the dog is a drug-sniffing dog that helped Willger find out that his assistant was heading up a drug-smuggling ring, using toys shipped in from Asia.

It was between this and the running giant piano gag for funniest moment. But this one won.

Castle is distracted during the investigation, though he does get a fun scene of playing with the toys at the company. He needs to know what he did during his missing two months, so much so that he’s willing to find a needle in a haystack – the haystack being the growing number of useless “tips” from people who don’t actually know anything. Beckett refers to this as “a haystack of nutjobs”, which made me laugh and also turns out to be true, for the most part. But then a young couple comes forward with a cell phone photo that has Castle in the background. He’s talking to fake Jenkins from last week’s episode – and the two of them are in front of a bank in (you guessed it) Montreal.

That’s when Alexis has the bright idea that the key sewn into Castle’s pants might be from a safe deposit box from that Montreal bank. Of course Castle wants to rush out there right away. Provided Alexis travels with him to keep him from doing anything stupid, Beckett gives her okay. It is indeed the key to a safe deposit box – one that contains envelopes addressed to Kate, Martha, and Alexis. Each one has a memory card inside, with one of those “If you’re watching this, then I’m dead. I’m so sorry and I love you” videos. Not saying it isn’t effective, though, especially watching Castle’s & Beckett’s reactions to her video. This doesn’t exactly calm Castle’s urge to find out what happened to him. In fact, when analysis reveals he filmed the video at a specific address in Montreal, off Castle goes to Canada again – this time by himself.

And what does he find? Why, fake Jenkins himself, telling Castle he wasn’t ever supposed to come back. Castle himself, it seems, begged to forget whatever happened to him while he was gone, and told fake Jenkins his secret childhood story of the real reason he became a mystery writer as proof that it was really his idea. Thankfully Castle doesn’t keep this information from his family. But it’s clearly still eating away at him.

“It’s Canada – how risky could it be?” Fantastic line. Although the bank manager guy seemed shifty to me…

At the end of the ep, Castle wants to go ahead and get married, but Beckett suggests they wait until there’s some distance and stability between them and the disappearance. I’d have to agree with her on this one, much as I want my Castle/Beckett wedding.

So whatever happened, it was so disturbing that Castle wanted to forget. Seems a little bit sci-fi that he was able to get “them” to make him forget just those specific two months’ worth of memory, but whatever, we’ll go with it. Also, I’m guessing we’ll hear more about Castle’s real motivation for becoming a mystery writer at some point this season. Anyone got any theories?