Things got off to a bit of a slow start this week. It wasn’t that anything was particularly wrong with the episode. Ray Wise had popped up, and they teased the possibility of digging into the mystery of Castle’s father. That’s all well and good, but nothing about the case really grabbed me. It was feeling a little bit by the numbers. The operative word there is was. Everything changed when we finally met the mysterious Lara (Vanessa Martinez). Castle always does a good job with the guest casting, but this might have been my favorite guest spot yet. Lara quickly turned what felt like an okay episode into an excellent one.
I’m not really sure what it was about the case that wasn’t really working for me. The show has gone down the circuitous investigation path before to good results. This time though, everything just stacked up before I was really that invested in what was going on. Before we knew it we had the dead baseball player, the slimy agent, the iffy business partner (Don Franklin), the suspicious wife (Chandra West), the loan shark (Dayo Ade), the newspaperman with a grudge (José Zúñiga), and the dad from Greetings From Tuscon (Julio Oscar Mechoso) all up on the board.
It was an awful lot very quickly, and I was more interested in the fact that the Castles are mostly con-artists and circus folk, or how Beckett says fallacious. Fortunately, it did all turn around with the appearance of Lara. How her story tied in with that of Castle and his father worked very well. But what really made the episode were Lara’s scenes with Castle, Beckett, and Esposito in interrogation, and back at the Vega house with Maggie. That’s just good stuff, and it made “Suicide Squeeze” a must see.
The Castle homestead also scored a couple points this week. His musings with Alexis about all the possibilities of who his father could be were interesting, and I really liked her scolding that he’d spoil his dinner. The best bit though was her offer to play catch with him so he could have something of a father-son moment. Awwww. So … a slow start … but they rallied in the late innings to bring home the win.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Feb 09, 2010 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
I agree it seemed like a bit of a slow episode, as demonstrated by the lack of comments for this one. After three out-of-the-box ones (Castle’s ex, Beckett’s mother’s murder, and the double dates), I guess they felt the need to do something more standard. Maybe it was the drop in energy from the previous three, which I thought were outstanding. Maybe I’ll get more out of it when I watch it a second time. I usually do with Castle episodes.
Can’t wait for the next one though. It’s been a long hiatus.