You know, when I saw the premise for this episode, I was actually surprised. This is something that is just screaming for a Castle mystery, so I’m a little surprised it hasn’t been done already. But yeah, better late than never, right?
The episode opens in a nightclub that is being used to film the latest entry in College Girls Gone Crazy. There is a protest across the street from those who find the videos that result pure filth. But Beau, the owner of the site, ignores them and goes into the party. After he welcomes everyone, he heads over to the bar, where he turns down a second drink and tells the bar tender that he doesn’t expect there to be any more parties. Seeing someone across the way, he heads over to them.
And that’s when Beckett, Castle, and the team are called in. Beau has died, strangled in the women’s bathroom by a woman’s bra. It’s a high end model, so it might be possible to track down the owner. Beckett and Castle interview Beau’s producer and learn very little. But Esposito and Ryan interview his body guard. His female body guard, someone that Esposito hits it off with right away. She says that Beau’s ex-girlfriend, who he broke up with two months ago, was at the party. She’d been kicked out once; maybe she snuck into the party again.
Going to the production company’s office, they find out that someone used Beau’s key card to break in. That someone was then caught on tape stealing something from the safe in Beau’s office. That someone? His body guard. So we’re back to her. She confesses to breaking in and explains that she was doing it for a friend. In fact, she took that job to get back a tape of Beau with one of her friends. Since her alibi checks out, they let her go. And since she is no longer a suspect, Esposito asks her out for drinks.
The body guard had roughed someone up who had confronted Beau on the street a couple weeks ago. And he was at the party as well. Castle and Beckett track him down to his place of business – a warehouse where he’s just about to start shooting College Guys Go Nuts. He wanted to go into business with Beau and do for females what Beau was already doing for men. But Beau wasn’t going to have it. In fact, he said he was going to start doing children’s shows.
Meanwhile, they’ve managed to track down the ex-girlfriend, who happens to be the owner of the murder weapon. But she’s not the killer. She left the weapon behind after a revenge hook up.
And so we circle back around to the body guard. The story about her friend breaks down, so Beckett and Ryan go to bring her in for questioning again during her date with Esposito. That’s when she finally confesses that she was really working for someone else – someone who hired her to find any kind of evidence that could be used against Beau. She didn’t know what was on the data drive she stole, but he guarded it closely, so it had to be important.
And her real boss? The owner of a children’s television company that Beau wanted to buy out. The owner admitted they were struggling, but wasn’t at all interested in selling out to someone with Beau’s reputation.
They manage to get the tape that was stolen, and on it they find it was indeed Beau from a hook up. And the female? She was at the party, and we’d talked to her earlier, but when they do some digging, they find out that she is a kindergarten teacher and that she’s changed her name. She’s really the daughter of the man who wants to shut Beau down and was leading the protest across the street the night that Beau died.
Even more surprising, she is pregnant after her one night encounter with Beau. And it sounded like that was enough to turn Beau around. Suddenly, his efforts to clean up his business make sense. In fact, he was trying to prove he deserved to be in his child’s life. He’d already told his producer that the video they were shooting at the beginning of the episode was going to be their last.
And that turns out to be the motive for the murder. His producer didn’t want to walk away from the company and the money, so he killed Beau in order to keep the company going and reap all the profits for himself.
Meanwhile, Castle has found out about Alexis’ Vlog, and he freaks about the dangers she might be opening herself up to. But everyone manages to calm him down, especially since Alexis is very careful about what she says on the internet.
All in all, it was a fun episode with some great banter. Typical mystery formula to the plot and not much in the on-going story of the character’s lives, but that’s standard for many episodes on the show.
We’ve got a week off, so let me know your thoughts while we wait for the next new episode.