Castle's 100th Episode!

You can't have me watch a milestone episode of my favorite show on the planet, without expecting me to blog about it.....so here goes, Castle's 100th episode: The Lives of Others. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The hype of this episode has been building for months. It had an awful lot to live up to. And it completely blew my mind. I may be a tad bias, but I am willing to say it is the best 100th episode of any television show I have ever watched. It was brilliant. This milestone episode was written by Creator and Executive Producer Andrew Marlowe and his wife/muse (the show's dynamic couple is based on them) Terri Edda Miller. And coincidently, the episode happened to land on April Fool's Day, which has long been known to be main character Richard Castle's birthday. With all of this knowledge, this episode HAD to be good! 

Castle's big episode was based on Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, in which Castle is stuck at home with a broken knee cap after showing off for Kate on their ski trip a few weeks beforehand. Kate is off at the precinct, solving a murder with Ryan and Esposito. Castle ends up incredibly bored and starts creeping on the neighbors across the street with the binoculars his daughter, Alexis, gave him as a joke. So, thus, the madness and hilarity of Castle ensues. 

As Castle is looking through the windows of his neighbors (Andrew & Terri made a cameo--at left--to which Castle said, "They must be writers."), he stumbles upon a seemingly happy couple starting to heat things up in the bedroom...but then the actual boyfriend comes home! Castle narrates the situation as the cheater shoves her lover into the closet before redressing for her man. Her lover runs out the door while her boyfriend is in the bathroom, but he leaves behind his hat....which is soon after found by the boyfriend. And then more madness--Castle sees the boyfriend following the cheater into the bedroom (where the blinds are now closed) with a knife and convinces himself he has just witnessed a murder, Rear Window style. He calls Kate and the boys, but no one believes him. 

Castle drags Alexis into the investigation, as she dons her own pair of binoculars to spy on the mysterious neighbors. He then launches the hilarious plan to break into the neighbors house--on his crutches with his massive leg cast--to find evidence so that someone else will believe him. Alexis watches her dad and communicates with him via walkie-talkie as he hobbles across the street and into the apartment. He finds what appears to be blood spatter on the closet wall, with paint and bleach near by. Assuming he has found the evidence he needs, his excitement causes him to fall over and lay stuck on the floor, just as the mysterious maybe-murder-man comes back home. 

He rolls under the bed to safety and hobbles out while the man takes a bathroom break. After finding a storage unit rental receipt in the man's garbage, Kate finally believes him enough to go to the storage unit to investigate--but without a warrant ("When you do it, it's an illegal search. When I do it, it's just illegal.").  And of course, they're caught by the rent-a-cop security team when they break into the unit and find a rolled up carpet, clothes, and a mannequin head/wig. 

After getting a stern yelling from the precinct captain, Castle resigns himself to apologizing to Kate, for pulling her away from her investigation and for his overactive imagination. But then she mentions something about a fridge...and Castle is at it again, remembering his neighbor bypassed his fridge and went to his cupboard for a soda instead. Yep, now Castle is POSITIVE the murdered body of the girl across the street is chopped up on ice in the fridge. He refuses to leave on his birthday date with Kate until that fridge is opened. Kate, determined to go out on this date she planned ("I made plans for you! I dressed up for you!"), takes matters into her own hands, goes across the street in her fancy black dress and entices the neighbor man/possible murderer into letting her in, presumably asking to borrow some ice. As Castle is watching from across the street, Kate riles the man up, he overtakes her on her way to open the fridge and pulls a knife on her just as the lights go out. 

*cue dramatic commercial break*

Castle hobbles as fast as he can across the street in his fancy suit & crutches, just as Ryan and Esposito arrive to save their partner. They bust down the door where the lights remain off. Castle screams for Kate...and then...

 Yep, it was all a set up. A fabulous birthday present for a mystery writer home-bound for a month. Kate felt bad for him secluded at home and bored when they had planned to be in Bora Bora for his birthday. It was quite brilliant if I do say so myself! His mother, Martha, used her connections at her acting school to hire actors, Kate rented the apartment across the way, Alexis purposely gave her father binoculars, Ryan & Esposito played along, Captain Gates turned out to be a fantastic actress, and Castle did all the rest himself! 

And then this happened...

It was literally everything I was hoping it would be and more. The perfect 100th episode. The nods to past episodes. The nods to fans. To the writers, producers, set design, costuming, crew... The massive birthday to the little show that could.

People were always worried about what would happen when Kate & Castle finally got together. Would it be jumping the shark? Would it be the show's death sentence? Would anyone watch anymore without the tension? Consider all Moonlighting"curses" debunked. Castle has more than succeeded in continuing the show after the main leads get together. It's clear as the viewership continues to go up week to week, more tie-in novels, card games, and computer games come to market. Castle's current 5th season is it's most watched. Bravo.

Here's to 100 more!