“The Lives of Others” was the landmark one hundredth episode of Castle, and we should definitely take a moment to celebrate that achievement. It’s an amazing one for any show, and I’m especially impressed by the way Andrew Marlowe and company have kept the show fresh and kept the characters evolving in a natural way over the years.
When the episode opens, poor Castle is stuck at home in a wheelchair with a broken leg after a skiing accident – and his birthday is coming up. Bored all alone with his mother away and Beckett at work, Castle starts spying on his neighbors with binoculars Alexis gave him as a “joke” – and he soon sees a neighbor cheating on her boyfriend, and then that boyfriend apparently kill the woman. He spends the rest of the episode trying to convince Beckett and everyone else that he really witnessed a murder, and to investigate as best he can with his limited mobility. Of course, it eventually turns out that the people “involved” in the case are actors from his mother’s class and the whole thing is an elaborately staged birthday gift from Beckett, who decided to give Castle his own impossible murder to solve while he’s stuck at home recuperating. His reaction: “It was all fake? Nothing was real! You let me think I was crazy? You let me think you were going to die.” But then he confirms that it was in fact the greatest birthday gift of his life.
While all that’s going on, Beckett and the boys solve a real murder, too. Tax fraud investigator Clara DeWinter’s body is found in a dumpster near her office, after security guards see (through a security camera) a woman being attacked in the alley outside. After suspecting some of the people Clara investigated, they realize that Clara’s husband killed her elsewhere and staged the attack scene on the security camera, to make it look like he had an alibi for the time of death. He was helped by one of the security guards, with whom he was having an affair. The real case and fake case tie together when Castle’s realization that his case was staged leads him to suggest that Clara’s murder scene might have been staged too.
I know I’m in the minority, but I have to admit that this was not one of my favorite episodes. One of the reasons is a personal quirk: I hate surprises, so the whole surprise birthday party/fake murder thing just made me anxious. I recognize that Castle is the kind of person who would love it, which is fine, but it does still seem a little soon after Alexis’s very real ordeal to make him think that Beckett is in danger. I also would have preferred the hundredth episode to focus on something that didn’t ignore the huge but believable character evolution Castle has had over the past five seasons. The staged murder as entertainment recalls the way Beckett saw Castle when the show first began: as a shallow playboy who only cared about murders for his own amusement, not for reasons of truth or justice. Obviously, he has grown far beyond that, as Beckett and the audience both know. On the other hand, this episode was clever and a good way to have something “special” that wasn’t a heavy personal case so soon after the two-parter, and I’m honestly glad that most of the fans seemed to like it so much.
(Image courtesy of ABC.)
Sorry you didn’t enjoy it as much. Here’s a different way to look at it – maybe it can persuade you to feel a liitle better about it…it might not, but I’ll give it a whirl. I didn’t see it as a setback to how Beckett used to see him at all. Beckett did it because, yes, he loves crime solving, but she knew he would take it seriously, otherwise it wouldn’t have worked. The fact that he didn’t make the Rear Window connection shows just how seriously he took it. In the pilot he recognized the scenes from his book immediately. In Lives of Others, although he’s an old movie buff, Castle was so concerned that someone had been killed that the references never even occurred to him. He took it all very seriously – the complete opposite of how he was in the pilot. So, while it did recall the old Castle I felt it totally showed the ways he changed. As for it being too soon after Alexis had been in danger, Beckett is a police detective – he lives with the possibility every day. Had it been Alexis, or even Martha, I would agree about it being too soon.
police detective, the
possibility is always there. Hadits in a Lexus however I would agree
That makes sense. To clarify, I didn’t think it was an actual setback in how Beckett saw him, I just wished they had done something more serious for the hundredth episode.