This week on Castle, Rick Castle has been named one of “New York’s Hottest Bachelors,” an honor slightly tainted by the fact that reports are claiming that he’s romantically linked to Beckett, something that he knows she will not be pleased about.
The murder victim this week is Doug Bishop, a man who had broken into a family’s apartment and was living there while they were on vacation. When the family returned, they found him in their daughter’s bed with a needle mark on his neck.
However, further evidence indicates that Doug wasn’t actually the one living in people’s apartment, but he was somehow mixed up with a man who seemingly had done this before. The police team examined picture evidence that the suspect took in the homes that he broke into.
Castle quickly figured out that the way that the suspect was figuring out that no one was home in the houses that he was living in was by vacation notices sent to the local newspaper to stop delivery.
While the investigation of the murder was interesting, by far the most interesting issue in this week’s episode had to do with Castle and Beckett’s mixed feelings about the “Hottest Bachelors” article featuring Castle. Beckett’s disbelief and annoyance at being brought up in connection to Castle led him to pursue a date with one of the “New York’s Hottest Bachelorettes.” Immediately after, Beckett admitted to Lanie, the coroner, that she needed a date because she was lonely. Though Lanie’s answer to this problem was to set Beckett up with a fireman, the clear solution would obviously be for Castle and Beckett to finally get together judging from the looks on their faces whenever the other talks about dating anyone else.
When the newspaper worker suspect, Mickey Carlson is brought in, his story asserts that there was a third person involved in the break-in murder extravaganza. Though he was at the scene when Doug was killed, he stated that he ran out while Doug and the other man fought.
Things get more complicated when Anton Francis’s body shows up at an apartment the police are investigating. The one thing that the police can’t figure out is why that man and that specific apartment were the target until they realize that the apartment is linked by dumbwaiter to the back wall of a bank. The ultimate plan was a bank heist.
Castle, Beckett, and the team quickly put together the connection between Doug Bishop and the mysterious unknown man. They realize that through the travel agency the Doug worked for, he gave some people a fake cruise to get them out of their apartment. Now all they have to do is find the still anonymous mastermind of the plan.
Tensions are high when Beckett and Castle end up on dates at the same restaurant. But no worries about either of them forming a connection with their dates, both are too obsessed with the case to pay much attention to the other person at the table with them. In the end, they figure out that the real heist was targeting the pet store opposite the bank that was smuggling in diamonds from Africa via the stomachs of slow digesting snakes. Anxious to solve the case, Beckett and Castle leave their dates who have now joined each other.
When the police take the pet store owner into custody, he denies knowing anything about any of the men involved. They finally get him to acknowledge that he picked up his smuggled goods at the airport and locked them in his store. According to his testimony, the next day they were gone, but obviously he couldn’t report smuggled goods as stolen.
The big kicker comes when Beckett realizes that Doug Bishop’s brother-in-law is the big mastermind behind the case. He works at the airport and has arranged the whole heist after observing the unusual shipments coming in for the pet store. He killed Doug and the other man because they got in the way.
Though the episode ends on a somewhat ambiguous note for Beckett and Castle with them leaving the police station together to get dinner, the one clear thing is that everyone watching knows that there should definitely be a romantic involvement for the two.