On the most recent episode of Castle, “Deep Cover,” Castle’s father returned – and got to meet his future daughter-in-law! But trust me, it was not as sunshine and roses as that makes it sound.
Our victim of the week, 20-year-old Ted Rollins, was shot in the chest and then moved back to be left in his own apartment bathtub. When the team finds a hidden, complexly encrypted laptop, Rollins’s father tells them that his son was a computer genius who hacked credit cards and stole over a million dollars as a teen. The laptop was hidden because part of his plea deal was that he would have no access to the Internet. The father says he doesn’t know if Rollins was back to hacking, but he was paying for an expensive apartment and helping with his brother’s tuition, so obviously that’s not suspicious at all. They find out that Rollins was connected to the vague-sounding Universal Banking Solutions, whose Manhattan office is run by a man named Anderson Cross. But right as he and Beckett are about to talk to Cross, Castle gets a call from his father, who tells him something’s going to happen but lives are at stake, so Castle can’t react. And yep: Cross is in fact Castle’s father. (I’m going to call him “Cross” throughout, just for simplicity.) Cross claims to know nothing about Rollins, of course, but Beckett thinks he looks familiar, and can tell there’s something weird going on – especially when Castle refuses to speculate with his normal crazy theories.
Luckily, Lanie has discovered a few interesting things: the killer took an Iranian rial from Rollins’s sock, and Rollins ate clams and funnel cake before he died. That combined with the paint and oil on his clothes makes Castle and Beckett have one of their adorable simultaneous breakthroughs: Rollins was killed at Coney Island. And yep, they find blood there. Meanwhile, Cross texts Castle to meet him (and Castle has no poker face in this episode) and lectures his son about getting emotional and letting his guard down. “Trust kills faster than bullets. There’s a storm coming. If I don’t stop it, a lot more people are gonna die.” Well, that’s both dire and unhelpful. Meanwhile, Beckett has seen and recognized Cross on the Coney Island security video and, understandably, thinks he’s the killer. And when they go back to Universal Banking Solutions, all traces of the company are gone. “This guy Anderson Cross is like a villain out of one of your books.” Heh. Beckett realizes that Cross was involved in Alexis’s kidnapping, a friend tells her he’s a former CIA operative turned hit man, and wanted by the government.
Castle goes home and has a heartfelt conversation about his father with Martha – but they’re interrupted by the man himself, who shows up at the door bleeding. As Martha and Castle try to get the bullet out, Cross tries to convince them that the whole “wanted fugitive” thing is just a cover and that he’s actually working for the CIA, trying to find a mole called Gemini. Beckett shows up at the apartment and Castle comes clean about what’s going on; while she is understandably annoyed at him harboring a fugitive (and finding out about his father) without telling her, she forgives him pretty quickly, and Cross talks her into working with him. Things get a little convoluted, but the idea seems to be that Rollins was helping Cross track down Gemini, and the rial in his sock was meant to signify that Gemini was working for the Iranians. Cross was shot in a confrontation at the apartment where Rollins was working, and he managed to steal Rollins’s hard drive. Now the plan is for Beckett and Castle to keep the appointment Gemini made with the Iranians: they’ll go to the library and Castle will download the information Gemini is leaking so the Iranians can’t, while Beckett will trace the wifi signal to find Gemini. (“You can find a spy on your phone?” “Mother, there are apps for everything now.”)
This plan goes wrong exactly the way you think it will: Cross charms Martha into letting down her guard and escapes, while Beckett tracks the signal only to find a network repeater and Castle discovers that the important document he’s downloading is in fact just the phone book. Gemini shows up in the guise of a Richard Castle fan and kidnaps him, and, of course, Cross shows up, kills Gemini, and then disappears with the body (but leaves the weapon that can be linked to Rollins’s death). So they’ve got their killer – the weapon lets them determine that Gemini is actually named Tony Blaine – but Castle is mad that his father sent them into a trap, and that he deliberately moved Rollins’s body to put it in Beckett’s jurisdiction. “I keep making the mistake of thinking he’s family, but he’s not. You are.” Awww. Martha, too, was somewhat hurt by Cross’s brief reappearance in their lives. Castle: “He was never worth your time.” Martha: “Oh yes he was. First time I met him, he gave me the greatest gift of my life. You.” Double awwwww. And at the end of the episode, we see Cross outside, looking up at the window of the family he could have had.
Throughout the episode, in a light but also serious break from the spy hijinks, Castle and Beckett are trying to pick a wedding date. Martha: “A little unsolicited advice.” Castle: “Do you give any other kind?” She suggests that they just go to city hall and get married, but while they consider that, they eventually decide not to elope – and hey, I’m happy with that, because I want to see a wedding episode. At the end of the episode, they decide they are getting married in September (even though Castle’s supposed to be on book tour then). Hmmm, the show usually premieres in September! What a remarkable coincidence!
In another nice family-related bit, Ryan is back from paternity leave, with plenty of adorable pictures of Sarah Grace. Beckett: “Is it me or does she look a lot like Esposito?” Heee. You know, I’m proud of her. She started out the series so closed off, and now she’s formed this family for herself – not just literally with Castle and his family, but emotionally with the rest of the team and their families as well.
(Image courtesy of ABC.)