In Castle‘s “Dressed to Kill,” Beckett’s past as a model comes back to haunt her as the team investigates the murder of the recently fired assistant to notorious fashion magazine editor Matilda King.
Our victim of the week is Ella Hayes, assistant at Modern Fashion who was murdered the day she was fired by King for making scheduling mistakes. There’s a huge amount of drama going on at the magazine, both with King and with others, so there are no shortage of suspects, especially when the murder weapon turns out to be a blue alpaca scarf that was given to all employees as a Christmas gift. When it turns out that King is bugging her employees’ homes, and that Ella was going to sell important information to a rival magazine, King becomes the prime suspect. And Ella was in fact framed for the scheduling errors that got her fired – but the target was someone who wanted King’s job (and so was making her look bad by having her miss appointments). But the murderer actually turns out to be a designer named Yumi: Ella had given him some of her own designs because she wanted a job with him, and he had passed them off as his own for a spread in the magazine, and killed her to cover it up.
When Castle and Beckett first arrive at the magazine offices to investigate the murder, King recognizes Beckett immediately from her days as a model: “Kate Beckett. I never could forget those cheekbones.” She tells Castle that she wanted to give Beckett a shoot in the magazine and Beckett was the only person to ever tell her no. I’m a little surprised that Castle doesn’t start demanding more details (and/or pictures) of Beckett’s modeling career – and maybe he will later – but I guess there wasn’t a lot of time for that because of the other big Castle/Beckett plotline this week, which was . . .
Wedding planning! Martha makes Beckett read wedding magazines with her and Castle and Beckett both scoff at this (as they would) until they see an ad for a venue they like. They make an appointment to see it but Beckett, of course, ends up having to work. Castle: “Do you trust me to make this decision on my own?” Beckett: “Can you go with Martha?” Heh. The place is beautiful but they have no openings until fall 2015 – until they suddenly get an opening for spring 2014. (That was a bit too convenient, but whatever.) Castle gets first crack at the opening – ahead of the waiting list – since he’s literally at the venue, but when he calls Beckett to ask if they should go for it, there’s a wrinkle. Beckett is with King, and after a model doesn’t show up, Beckett agrees to model a dress King needs to see – and it turns out to be a wedding dress. King: “If I had a daughter, this is exactly the kind of dress I’d want on her.” Aww. Of course, this makes Beckett think about her own mother, so when Castle calls, she’s upset and tells him that spring is too soon.
But King sends Beckett the dress – confession: I actually thought it was really ugly, anyone else? – and, thank goodness, she talks things out with Castle rather than letting this be an ongoing point of angst. Her cold feet don’t have anything to do with Castle himself, but rather with the idea of getting married – and going through the entire wedding process – without her mother. She says it’s stupid, but Castle is very understanding: “No, not stupid. Human.” Beckett: “You know what else I wish she could experience? You. She would have loved you.” Awwwwww. Beckett decides she doesn’t want to wait anymore, and they should go ahead and get married this spring. Season finale, anyone?
(Image courtesy of ABC.)