CASTLE Recap: “Headhunters” – or – That is a mighty fine car

I’m in love with this car. When I finish watching an episode of Castle, my first thought is not normally about vehicles. However, I must say that with the return of Nathan’s ‘floppy’ hair, he came in a very close second in the eye-candy department. I love updated muscle cars, and I think the Challenger is my favorite.

The two-week-breaks between episodes which is happening through April has me a little crazy, but “[easyazon-link asin=”B007UYZFIG”]Headhunters[/easyazon-link]” was worth the wait. What fun! It was three of my favorite shows all melted together in yummy Television gooey-ness. An early scene made me laugh right away. Martha walks into Rick’s office with the mail to find him playing with ‘dolls’. I muttered: “Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal.” – I had to. Of course there was the overt reference to Firefly when Slaughter compliments Rick’s ‘fine coat’ – which just happens to be brown. That one was a given, yes?

So yeah, there was a dead body, but it wasn’t the most suspenseful or exciting case ever featured on Castle. Dead guy shows up in an alley with a bag full of severed heads. Meh. What else is new. Since Slaughter (Chuck and Firefly vet, Adam Baldwin) plays a detective in the gang crimes unit, he’s assigned to investigate. The victim and his bag full o’ heads (patent pending) were all gang members, and it seems that the lad, who was trying to impress his father, dug up bodies of rival gang members and did the ol’ chopitty chop.

Slaughter takes Castle on a run to meet with ‘a guy’, and scares Rick twice. First, he intimates that he’s ‘macking on’ a hot new redhead down at the morgue. Rick figures out that he means Alexis, and punches him right in his beautiful, beautiful face. Turns out he was kidding, but still… eww. Then, he follows his contact into a building and tells Rick to wait outside. After a very uncomfortable minute where Castle tries to look casual, shots are fired and Slaughter comes barreling out, telling Castle he doesn’t want to know what happened.

Again, he was pulling Castle’s pigtails when his contact saunters into the precinct and reveals himself to be an undercover cop. Jayn… I mean Slaughter wanted to make sure Rick had his back, and apparently, because he stayed quiet about the gunfire, he passed the test. The third cop gives them the name of a gang member they can question. Rick is horrified when the ‘questioning’ entails the boy being put into the back of a garbage truck and getting yelled at while Slaughter slowly closes the hatch.

A few convoluted turns later, there are leads that draw Slaughter and his new shadow to a third gang from Texas. They learn about Glitch’s plans for cemetery treasure hunting, and decide they can use the incident to spark a turf war between the two native NYC gangs. Then they can step in and take over whatever’s left.

Detective ‘Widowmaker’ Slaughter takes Castle along to suss out a weak link in the Texan’s organization, giving Rick a very close brush with death. It’s a good thing that Rick had been using his friends at the 12th to look up information for him, because Espo and Ryan figured out where they were going and interceded – saving their lives.

Slaughter is quick to pull the weak link in the third gang in, and when he prompts the boy to give the correct info, Rick confronts him. Strangely enough, Castle is against arresting the wrong guy, even if he’s a horrible person.

Who do you think he turns to? I’ll give you two guesses and the first one doesn’t count. Yup – Rick goes right to… Ryan – who brushes him off, and Espo tells him to talk to Beckett. So yeah, he ends up with Kate. Close enough. Kate gives him information she and Ryan dug up on the off chance that he’d need it, and there’s a sweet scene between them when he realizes she did something nice for him.

When Slaughter finds out they’ve gone behind his back to do their own investigating – which is a huge no-no – Castle learns more about Kate’s willingness to help him even when he’s being a douche. She could lose her job over her meddling.

The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the man who has been arrested is not the guilty party, and they trace a call made from a nearby public phone to Glitch’s father. He’d messed up one too many times, and was too big of a liability. It’s truly a sad world when your own father has to snuff you out.

The threesome tie things up back at the 12th, and watch the very bad, but not guilty gang leader being let go. Beckett shows her badassery by threatening the guy – right up in the dude’s face. I don’t know about him, but I might think twice about staying in NYC if she threatened to hunt me down.

Back on the Castle-front, Alexis has been getting her college notification letters, but Martha finds out Rick’s been hiding them away, so she can read them all at once. His logic? If she sees the good along side the bad, it won’t hurt as much. Oh Rick. *sigh*

Alexis is accepted everywhere, including Stanford, which turned her down for early admission. Since it was her first choice, she’s torn between wanting to go to her dream school, or being too hurt to go there after they rejected her. (slight sarcasm alert) I’m not sure, but it kinda seems like they were making a parallel between Alexis’ college problems and the issues Rick has about Kate’s lie. (sarcasm over)

Castle’s parting gem of wisdom to his daughter is “Do you want it badly enough to get over being hurt?”. Seems like they both have the same decision to make. Although I somehow doubt there’s a chance that Stanford will tell Alexis it doesn’t love her in return.

Overall, a very entertaining hour of television. Watching Adam Baldwin acting like a cross between Jayne and Casey is always a welcome treat, but I’m a little worried that the show is ramping up towards the finale a bit too slowly – I guess I just gotta keep my optimism.

Another week off, then Castle returns with “Undead Again” on April 30th.

Favorite Quotes:

Castle: “Shouldn’t we call for backup?”
Slaughter: “You got a skirt that says ‘writer’ on it too?”

Castle: “That was awesome! Beckett never drives on the sidewalk!”

Slaughter: “That is a very fine coat.”

Slaughter: “I’d go all caveman on that partner of yours, show her what time it is in ‘real man’ land.”

Slaughter: “Detective? You ever wanna go out on a date that ends in hot sex after a drunken fist fight, you know where to find me.”
Beckett: “Yeah… in ‘never gonna happen’ land.”