Review: Castle 2.09 – “Love Me Dead”
Original Air Date: November 16, 2009
In this episode, the team investigates the death of an AD involved with a call girl operation, and Castle has to deal with his daughter growing up.
The murder victim is the AD who closes cases; every cop wants this guy to try their collars because he doesn’t deal and gets convictions. Surprises of all surprises, the workaholic AD turns out to be a John for a call girl operation. They find this out because one of the pros (Scarlet) is working as an intern in his office. She spins a tale of how, yes, he was initially a client but he turned into a savior and tried to help her out of “the life.” Scarlet tries to throw the team off by revealing that there is a firewall between the girls and the pimp (“Denton”), so if any of them are brought in they can’t identify him.
Too bad it eventually comes out that the AD was the guy running the call girl operation. He had put away the original Denton, and swapped the business for a lower jail time with him. So Scarlet throws the blame on the Enforcer (the guy who is supposed to make sure the Johns don’t rough up the girls). Basically what happens here is, Castle gets played by Scarlet like the Devil plays the violin (fast, loose, and sloppy). Scarlet and the Enforcer were taking over the business, and that obviously didn’t sit well with the AD because he was the kind of guy who didn’t lose. Also, he liked all the money it was making him. Scarlet had the Enforcer kill him, then when she couldn’t get the cops to arrest him for it, she manipulated it so that it looked like he beat her up, kidnapped her, and forced her to defend herself by shooting him. Scarlet was the mastermind the whole time.
The Alexis storyline wasn’t as exciting/harrowing as Castle had built up in his mind. She was considering doing her school’s foreign exchange student program, but wasn’t sure about leaving Castle. Instead of just talking to her dad about it, she called up Beckett to get her opinion. While Beckett tells her that a few weeks apart from her dad might be a good thing for them both and get them ready for when she leaves for college, Alexis decides not to go.
Rating: 3 / 5 Stars
