Castle: Season 7, Episode 21: In Plane Sight
It’s funny how just last week I was complaining about anti-terrorism propaganda in our media. Last week this show had a big plot involving Al Qaeda that annoyed me, and this week came very close to doing something similar with I.S.I.S. and almost pushed me completely away. I’m not a supporter of terrorism or anything, I’m just a firm believer that fiction should be an escape. Not that it can’t be a platform, but subtext has to be used in these situations. It’s never particularly healthy to just throw your opinions in another person’s face.
Fortunately, the I.S.I.S. connection was only a red herring in this episode. Sorry about my rant. I didn’t mean to go off on such a tangent and distract from this really good episode of a show I love. The tone was changed up a little for this one. Where most episodes of this show mix murder mysteries with laughter, this one was much more serious. It placed Castle and Alexis in a situation where they didn’t have the direct prowess of the NYPD or Beckett’s nearly infallible efficiency. The usual cast of law enforcers could only provide support.
This was a pretty good mystery. A murder on an airplane. It’s been done before, but this was fun to watch. Castle couldn’t be his usual silly and snarky self, because everyone’s lives were in his hands. He didn’t have the freedom of everyone’s competence, so his conscience was heavy and he was focused. Castle was in rare form, something usually reserved for episodes that are centered around him alone. Like last week. It’s actually very weird for them to have him serious two episodes in a row, but this was a good episode.
The actual culprit was very smart in how the crime was committed. There was a murder, but it was accidental and part of a different crime. There have been impulse kills meant to cover other crimes on this show before, but not like this. An isolated area, no Beckett or NYPD and the stakes actually being much lower than suspected made an excellent story. This was an episode that was truly worthy of Richard Castle.
Jonathan Thomas Jones is a speculative fiction author and founder of geekhavenreviews.com. He has been passionate about all things geek for his entire life. See more about him at jonathanthomasjones.com and follow him on twitter @jtgloryjones.
