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“You know, you still haven’t told me where your fascination with murder came from.”
He was five years old, that summer in the Hamptons, a young boy alone and walking on the beach that momentous day, “I was just about to turn back when I saw something had washed up on the beach…so I ran over to see what it was.”
“It was a boy my age…the tide hadn’t washed away the blood.”
“What happened to him?”
“They never found out.”
With Kate’s remarks of sympathy, “I’m so sorry, Castle,” Rick begins to laugh.
“You made that up?”
“It’s what I do.”
In “Vampire Weekend,” early in season two, Rick teases Kate who wants to know what motivated him to be a mystery writer dealing with murder and the macabre. They are dealing with a young man who witnessed his mother’s murder as a very young child and who now remembers it through his artistry, and painting of the scene.
With hindsight we may now consider: What if Rick is recalling an actual incident in his own life, some fragment, some memory, distorted perhaps, even blocked from his child’s mind …and now resurfacing? What if this little fiction he tells is nonfiction?
For months Rick is gone, disappearing minutes before their wedding. The search is exhaustive but peters out. Still Kate holds on to hope by looking at his picture on her now resurrected personal murder board. She holds on to his customary chair next to her desk in the precinct. She prays for his return. And he does.
With great hope, loving each other so deeply, they seek to rebuild their relationship. Kate confides in Lanie that there is “a shadow between us.” It is so. “She wants it to be just us again.”
Rick seems to blithely ignore the shadows and acts out if not a bit manic or frantic in his bid to shelter himself from reality. To see him turned loose in a toy store, touching and trying every toy is an adventure and a through back to Kate’s early description of him as the nine year old on a sugar rush let loose in a candy store.
In an interview, seemingly regarding his new book, Rick holds strong as the reporter “ambushes him” in Kate’s opinion. He is public property so they think. She quizzes him on his amnesia, such an obvious plot hole, she tries to embarrass.
But Rick stands firm. I like how he handles himself, gracious and then annoyed. The reporter accuses him of a publicity stunt or worse- he got cold feet with his coming marriage, for doesn’t he disappear minutes before the ceremony. “They don’t know what they are talking about.” Rick admonishes.
To support his point Rick issues a 25,000 reward for any information on his whereabouts.
Now the many crack pots surface.
One space cadet Rick meets alone with Kate as back up observing from the car, wearing her worried face. Like a true undercover spy, the nut informs Rick that he escapes the ship…the mother ship parked on the dark side of the moon. They wanted Rick to copy his skin and appear human while preparing for the invasion.
“We have to warn them,” he informs. Rick need not reply; his blank expression tells all
But one happy development has taken place in Rick’s absence. Lanie and Esposito are an item again, with Esposito’s phone proudly announcing Lanie’s call: Hi sexy; Hi sexy.
Often “Castle” writers craft a case paralleling the Rick and Kate story, at least in some details. This time Andrew Marlowe’s echo is Wallace Wiliger, a toy manufacturing CEO who retreats undercover, searching for answers.
He is found dead in the waters off Manhattan Island, a fate Rick Is spared. Then his grieving widow mirrors Kate’s very emotions when Rick disappears: the “sick feeling when he didn’t come home, but you hope.”
Kate always empathizes with the victim’s family, for she too knows their pain. Rick wonders how she does it and she replies with great love: “I was lucky; you came back.” Together they will see this through. They will remove the shadows.
The story alternates between Rick’s story and Wallace’s.
But first I must report Rick’s audacious, hysterically funny behavior with Captain Gates. Rick always succumbs to Captain’s admonishments usually beginning” Mr. Castle, just what the hell do you think you are doing.”
Since it’s always something, he has gotten used to it and acquiesces to her authority. Is he making faces behind her back as in “Swan Song” when a television crew comes to document their every move? Or is it when he smashes cupid dolls, one his gift to her and another one she personally owns and treasures?
Who can forget Rick’s planting a gorgeous valentine present to Kate inadvertently in Gates’ jacket; never a dull moment exists between Captain Iron Gates and Mr. Castle. Of course, the valentine intercepted by Gates reads: “You are beauty passion and fierce intellect.” Oh, he is so busted and he must eat crow, for yes, he confesses, he was seeking “to garner her favor.” Not.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I’m a married woman. Tame your childish nonsense and accord me some respect. I am going home to my husband because…I’m…his valentine.” Ah, she likes him Rick concludes later.
Now when he leaves the precinct phone number for the nuts to call, Gates goes ballistic. “Mr. Castle.” Rick grabs her and plants a huge kiss on her lips. Kate is dumbfounded and Gates yells out to the world. “What just happened?” Me thinks she liked it. But time will tell.
For his infraction Kate grounds Rick and “puts him in time out.”
On the Wiliger case Ryan and Esposito search the CEO’s office and find a phone. Ryan dances on the built in floor piano a la a scene from Tom Hanks’ “Big,” and cries poor mouth to an exasperated but also amused Esposito. Ryan can always become a rent a cop in his spare time, Esposito suggests.
Wallace has been seeing and calling Natalie Mendoza regularly; a fatal attraction, etc, etc, Rick and his counterpart Ryan conclude later, enjoying some wild theory building together.
But no, she is a theatrical make- up artist and was teaching Joe, aka Wallace the tricks of the trade. Wallace proceeds to use make- up to age himself, to appear as a 70 year old janitor and work undercover in his own toy manufacturing plant. Leaving work early, staying late, experiencing grief over his dead dog, Wallace is searching for evidence of criminal activity in his own company.
Meanwhile Rick pursues a new lead, a picture of him talking to the fake Henry Jenkins in front of a bank in Montreal. Kate cannot go to Montreal until the weekend, but shades of “Like Father like Daughter” Alexis can fill the bill. And buckle up buttercup. Kate knows this crime fighting duo smacks of trouble. Rick teases or begs jokingly to go and pleads. “It’s Canada. How risky could it be,” lines I shall always remember and smugly recite to my Canadian Castle friends. We love it.
Kate leaves Rick to Alexis with the warning:”Don’t let him do anything stupid.”
Now that is like telling the sea to stop rushing to shore.
The mixture of comedy and drama is delicious.
They gain access to the bank, and receive some sketchy looks. And using the 38 numbered key, Rick finally accesses the deposit box. In it he finds three letters, one addressed to his mother, to his daughter and to Kate. The envelope holds a memory card, how ironically named.
In a juxtaposing scene, Kate and her guys uncover Wallace’s undercover activities. As a janitor he has rifled through papers and manifests. Ironically Kate decries: “We are missing something here.” The team discovers a drug dog left in Wallace’s apartment, rented as his base for his undercover activities. One does remember “An Embarrassment of Bitches,” the dog and the drug bust chase.
It seems one of Rick’s far out theories is so. Wallace exposes a heroin smuggling ring, operating out of his own warehouse, the bags of dope hidden within the toy dolls, dolls Alexis apparently loved as a child and dolls Wallace’s dog loved and used as a chew toy, ultimately dying from the drug poisoning.
The culprit is Matt Monroe one of Wallace’s personal assistant. Thus ends the parallel story.
Bringing home the memory card for Kate to hear, Rick now stands by her. He is so vulnerable and painfully exposed, yet so honest and loving. On the card Rick records the truth that he orchestrated the disappearance and he ends that he might be dead if she is now listening to it.
It doesn’t all quite add up yet, but his powerful pain and emotion is riveting, Nathan Fillion brilliantly portraying the grief and love.
Broken, despairing, heartbreaking, Rick’s memory tells Kate: “I never intended to leave you on our wedding day. But just know I love you. I have always loved you…Always.”
Kate closes her eyes and her face registers all of the pain and all of the memories of his word “Always.” It is the most treasured word in the “Castle” lexicon, their secret unspoken word of love, of their promises and pledges to be there for each other, to have each other’s back, to loyalty, to love unconditionally.
Rick declares “Always” in “Knockdown” and in “Kill Shot” to bolster Kate’s faith and gently tell her he is waiting for her. Kate speaks their word once in support. Rick again in “Still.” It is a sacred word in “The Blue Butterfly” uttered years ago by Joe, to Vera, whose name means truth. And to our delight their night of love and reconciliation in entitled “Always.”
Poignantly, revealing all he is, Rick’s memory utters their word as he stands by watching her receive it, the message, his love, hoping.
On a rogue mission, Rick goes back to Montreal and to the place where he was held captive or simply lived. He breaks his promise to Kate, pledged in “Hunt,” to never go off alone again without her.
In Montreal he discovers Jenkins and comes to grips with some of his reality. Rick claims he remembers nothing. Jenkins tells him he needs to stop or he will find out the truth. Rick told Jenkins the truth three weeks ago.
Rick wants to forget what happened to him in the woods when he was eleven years old. Rick needs to forget. And we think of the innocent story told to Kate years ago.
Jenkins reminds him: “Some mysteries are meant to be solved. It’s over now. Go home. Live your life. Forget this every happened. It’s what you wanted.”
Rick returns home. Perhaps the answer is what Rick sweetly suggests to Kate: “Maybe that was why I asked to forget; so I could come home to you.”
From what sin or experience is he hiding? Why does he need to receive expiation and the blessing of forgetting? Why now? What happened to Rick in those woods when he was a child, an eleven year old child?
“How close to death do you want to come,” his nemesis 3XK once taunted. He thinks he sees in Rick his alter ego, a man who plots and schemes and who loves death as much as he does.
“What could I have done that was so bad that I asked them to make me forget?” Rick asks his family. Alexis answers him saying that perhaps he “witnessed something that you didn’t want to live with.” Could the pressure of a new book and their marriage been too much for Rick or for someone else who wants to silence Rick?
Rick is a different man with Kate, and the two of them now fully confide in each other. Perhaps someday he may say something that a trained detective would understand and piece together, a mystery of some inexplicable sort, a potentially dangerous situation.
Did Rick witness something having to do with his father who claims to have observed him throughout his life, even to giving him the book that sparked his son’s love of mystery, and spy genres: “Casino Royale?”
We have seen his father as a generous man who loves his family from afar, willing to do anything to protect his family, and we have seen or heard of his violence and unpredictability. Just who is he and where is he?
Some have suggested that Martha, although loving throughout the situation, is just a tad off in her reactions. She is very eager to get Rick home from the hospital and feels he only needs to be home and not on a psychiatrist’s couch. She stops conversation about what happened to him with a toast and other redirects.
She encourages them to let it be, for prying further would be like opening Pandora’s Box. Other times she seems reluctant to pursue discussion, but this could simply be the protective mother or a mother who is protecting her son in another, more knowing way.
Still the kind and giving man, Rick is concerned with how he can live with the pain he has caused his loved ones.
He and Kate pour out their hearts in a gratifying and hopeful scene of mutual trust and love, set in the privacy and intimacy of their bedroom. Rick knows but he needs Kate to tell him again how she survived her mother’s death. Her words to him are magic: I tried with my mom’s murder, “to bury the pain until you came along.”
And he did indeed help restore her to life as he had her father’s watch, restored and fixed. With his love and patience Kate emerged, trusting and hopeful, believing and now free. In “Veritas,” Kate tells Rick: “I could not have done it without you.” And it is so.
Is it possible to live with it without ever knowing? Rick needs to know. Kate sees the difference between their situations. Rick knows the truth. “You decided that you didn’t want to remember it anymore.”
Then Rick suggests they get married tomorrow and “put this all behind us.”
With all of her love for him on display, Kate suggests otherwise. They need time to find themselves again and get back to their lives, together find their solid ground. She reassures Rick that she loves him and she isn’t going anywhere.
She is there for him and is ready to dive into life with him. Just not today, I recall Rick’s words to her in “Rise.” Today and tomorrow they must heal…together.
They must find their way. They should post pone their wedding for a while. Rick asks how long and Kate suggests a month with no pressures or expectations. She must in her heart recognize that some pressure set this off and she wants to relieve the pressure, public or private. They talk together, revealing all their emotions. The honesty is remarkable.
Rick kicks back his arms behind his head, his expression so like the one he shows in “Rise,” at the first swing set scene when Kate wants him to return to her, or the time she suggests they go out for a hamburger on the city’s tab and Rick, mulling it over agrees. He cannot deny her then, and he knows she is right today.
“It’s a date.” He smiles at her his loving smile and she snuggles into him, resting on his heart. And yet Rick’s face seems unsure; he will try, but he is…concerned.
They will find solid ground as Kate suggests. They will find solid ground together. The words echo Alexis ‘graduation speech:
“There are some people who are so much a part of us they’ll be with us no matter what. They are our solid ground, our North Star and the small clear voice in our hearts that will be with us always.”
Rick and Kate are a part of each other always. They are each other’s solid ground.