C: This week’s episode of Castle, one of my favorites of the season so far, begins with the murder of a shady art dealer and segues to the discovery of a man who may have witnessed the crime… but has amnesia!

It was obvious the amnesiac would turn out to be important, as he was played by Marc Blucas – an actor familiar to my roommate from The Jane Austen Book Club and to me from I Capture the Castle, and who I presume (after checking IMDb) my sister and many of our readers know as Riley from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  (E: Yes yes yes!)  Blucas struck me as a bit stiff at first here, but I became more convinced by the character as the episode wore on, especially after the ex-wife was introduced.  But therein lie spoilers, so follow us after the cut!

The murder plot in this episode took something of a back seat to the investigation of the charming John Doe’s origins.  It was fascinating to see our detectives, particularly Ryan, immediately warm to the man and go out of their way to be nice to him.  This felt very believable to me, because as tragic as it is, amnesia is also fascinating.  A person who has no memories is like a grownup newborn: they can harbor no hatreds or grudges, can’t judge you, can’t be held accountable for anything they’ve done in past.  Or… can they?  That’s the struggle Castle and Beckett face when they try to reconcile themselves to the idea that justice will be served by sending a man to prison who can’t remember committing a crime.

E: Unlike Jason Bourne, he starts with lesser crimes.  “I’m divorced?” he asks Beckett, once they’ve finally figured out his identity (from his dog!  good call, Castle!), and you can see how unpleasant it is for her to pass along that unappetizing tidbit.  The first meeting with ex-wife was lovely, and Anne Dudek did some nicely calibrated work here too. “That’s the man I fell in love with!” she marvels – their messy past, at least on his side, wiped clean.

I must admit, I thought he was faking it at first.  It was all so – convenient.  I was astonished that everyone just took him at his word!  (I did like the little lecture on types of memory and memory loss from Doc Holloway, though.  And wondered if it wasn’t some sort of play on Doc Holiday.) ‘Course then we got to the point where J appeared to be the murderer, and it became decidedly less convenient.

C: Yes, I thought sure he’d turn out to be faking. Resisting that “twist” was actually a twist unto itself, because revealing him as a fake or having him regain his memory were the expected ways to go.

E: I know!  Kudos to the writers! I want to tip my hat to the prop master again this week, as well.  Be still my beating heart – J’s got Mick’s bookshelf from Moonlight!

C: Yes! I’ve coveted that gorgeous thing for two years now.

E: And Crime and Punishment, with a bullet hole right in Dostoyevsky’s eye?  Awesome.  I must admit, I was waiting for them to start calling him Raskolnikov.

C: That was great.  On another note, I’m pleased that the show seems to be making an effort in recent episodes to give the Wonder Twins things to do, not always together.  I liked seeing Esposito in a scene by himself, cracking down on a witness. The moment when his pretend-to-walk-out ploy worked and he grinned for the camera was priceless.

E: Wasn’t it?  I felt for a second as if I’d never really seen him before – I don’t know if we’d ever actually gotten a close up of him like that, and he put so much life into that one expression.

I don’t want to dismiss the plot itself so cavalierly, though; I liked the idea of the art dealer and the forgeries scam with the Bahraini diplomat, and how Beckett got around his diplomatic immunity to steal the painting back. It’s typically interesting that this show doesn’t always set us up to figure out the killer or motive ourselves: we couldn’t have known any of the details that Beckett and Castle used in the final interview to trap the killer.  Do you think that the police interview people just to explain to them all the evidence they have against them?  Or do they just save that info for the DA?  I liked the names a lot – Victor Fink as the victim, and his old assistant Rocco the flea?  Excellent.

C: Indeed. Also, we’ve yet to discuss Martha’s subplot, and I can’t help reiterating that every scene of the Castle family brings me joy.  Castle’s interactions with his mother tonight showcased them both as the rich, complex characters they are.  As my roommate pointed out, this show is encouraging because it isn’t afraid to show different kinds of strong women.  In Beckett we have the tough, smart-talking, no-nonsense female cop whose sisters are all over television, but in Martha and Alexis we have unique, vibrant women whose traditionally feminine qualities don’t make them one bit less strong.

E: Yes – Martha, who’s a bit of a floozy but not stupid and not vilified for it, and Alexis who is practically perfect in very way and yet feels real and warm rather than artificial or prissy; we have issues sometimes with the way this show gazes at women, but with these two?  There’s clearly a lot of affection and respect, and I think it makes us like them even more.  I mean – whose mother has a walk of shame, and carries it off with such brio?

C: And there was Alexis’s chagrined “we share way too much in this family.”

E: Every moment of the adorable ice cream bar (the five stages of grieving; is the first stage accepting the ice cream?) thrilled me too.  And then there are the lightning ups and downs of Martha’s relationship with high school beau Chet. “Those are sitcom reasons for breaking up!”, Rick tells her, puzzled; I like that he didn’t want to let her off the hook for panicking.  I loved when she twitted him about getting home late, and having his own walk of shame from a night with Beckett. “You should kiss that girl while you’re still young. ”  A loving, functional (if atypical) family.  Almost as cool as an ice bullet.

C: Too bad they won’t be back until January 4th!  What will we do without our Castle fix?