Castle: Dressed to Kill, Review

And ka-thud. This is a seriously dopey episode that has no business being part of the Castle canon and merely exists for those fans that are staying around strictly because Caskett are finally getting married! Leave it to the wedding industry and fashion to take the fun out of both love and a good old fashioned murder mystery. This episode belonged more on the Bravo network than in a prime time cop show. Plus it moved at a glacial pace with zero at stake, unless you are that concerned with just what Beckett will be wearing when she walks down the aisle this May. Yawn.

When an office drone from a Vogue-like magazine is found dead in a nearby dumpster, the gang at the 12^th catch the case. Assistant Ella Hayes has been murdered by fabric and it just so happens that she is fashion magnate and editorial goddess Matilda King’s go to gal. I will say that Frances Fisher (Titanic, Gone in 60 Seconds)  is inspired casting as the publishing diva. Clearly the episode has taken a page from the Devil Wears Prada playbook milking the metaphors about how difficult life is especially when compared to the fashion industry. We get it already and how much longer is this metaphor going to continue?  Sorry, didn’t mean to fly off the handle there—had to be done. Still, the shake up at Modern Fashion Magazine is not going anywhere without a suspect in custody. Oh, I should mention that naturally Matilda recognizes Beckett and her cheekbones as the “model that got away” or the one that turned her down years ago when she was a waitress-slash-model if ever so briefly. Leave it to Castle to make New York City feel like a small neighborhood.

Also this week Caskett are feeling the tension of finally putting their wedding together. When you think about it they really have done no solid planning as of yet this season. While Castle and Martha begin looking at venues, Beckett focuses on the case but becomes a little withdrawn when trying to focus on her nuptials. Fact is she just wants to be married already and desperately misses her Mom. She would have loved to help Kate plan her wedding and now that the wheels are moving along she is getting a little blue. The mystery is fairly atypical with all of the MacGuffin’s and usual misnomers and false leads. Throw that in with all of those fashion industry cliches and it makes for an easy script to throw together I suppose. However for those that cannot stand “what’s hot and what’s not,” it is a tough sell. At least throw in some models that Rick used to hang with in his glory days.

The investigation goes the route that you would expect with a shallow reason for committing a murder. However this is even more shallow because hey, it is the fashion industry after all. While the ending is a nice touch and a classy way to end Beckett’s one-time modeling gig, everything ends too much in a big bow. Castle is at its best when it is messy leaving us with questions and theories. So for me, this was a throwaway episode that falls by the wayside. While we know that there are going to be wedding related episodes I think that the team cannot just have it take a back seat to their bread and butter of murder. It hurts the narrative and it just cannot be both shows at once despite having some success teetering in the past.

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