Castle S8 Ep3 – PhDead

Well, all right, show. You’ve convinced me to give you a few more episodes. Or at least one more, anyway.

This was an amusing scene, but I still don’t buy Castle encouraging Alexis to go in there by herself first.

So the ep opens with a guy in a prison uniform being stabbed to death on a sharp tree branch at night. Then it’s morning in the Castle loft. Rick decides he needs to win Beckett back by doing what made her fall in love with him in the first place: solving cases together. But since they’re not partners anymore, he has to sneak into the precinct to find out just enough info on the murdered jumpsuit guy to get his next angle. So he becomes a guest professor at good ol’ Hudson University in order to get information on the dead guy, who was not a prisoner but a student there. Of course, Alexis can assist him in places where neither he nor Ryan & Espo can get, by posing as a student.

That brings up my first problem with the episode, fun though most of it is: Castle continues to partner with Alexis. That’s fine, except he keeps seeming all right with taking her into very dangerous situations, and only seeming to notice how much risk he’s putting her in when someone else points it out. This is not the Rick Castle we know and love. One of his defining character traits is his care for his daughter above all else. He can be absent-minded, especially when he’s concentrating on a case, but still. So Alexis, much as I like her, really doesn’t work as a substitute for Beckett. (In a lot of ways.)

Also, does it actually make any sense for Beckett to be captain and still investigating cases on the field? I was under the impression that was … not a thing that happened. But whatever. I guess we can handwave that away because Beckett doesn’t just sit back and order people around – she does things herself!

The actual case itself ends up being based around the Stanford Prison Experiment. If you’ve seen any crime dramas at all ever, you know how this goes: students are divided into prisoners and guards, and some psychologist studies the effects these roles have on people. But in this case, the murder victim was a guard and then was “demoted” to prisoner, and then escaped with the help of a fellow prisoner. Who then murdered him, because the trauma of the experiment increased her jealousy toward him for winning a scholarship she needed.

Hey, showrunners. You know that spark you said was missing? It wasn’t missing. It was right here. Just like always.

My other main problem with the episode, which will continue to exist until it is resolved: I don’t want Castle to have to “pursue” his wife. She’s his wife! She told him no more secrets last week, which evidently was a lie. I guess they’re going about the Beckett-investigating-on-the-side thing all right, considering. Vikram is fine, as characters go. But there’s still too much time with her and Castle apart. Which is what would have to happen, with this infuriating storyline.

So what did you think of the first ep of this new direction? Love it or hate it? Let us know in the comments!