Watching Castle 3.02: “He’s Dead, She’s Dead” (ABC)

Stabbed in the back of the neck and then stuffed into a sofa.  That’s how I wanna go! None of this wimpy “peacefully in my sleep” crap.  I want the kind of death that’s gonna make headlines, the kind that’s gonna make people check their locks twice before bedtime. The kind that the unfortunate Vivien Marchand met up with in the opening moments of this week’s Castle. That’s a death that would long be remembered, and considering the number of people Vivien was playing to keep her reputation as New York’s most celebrated psychic-medium alive, it was apparently well deserved.

Who did in the psychic that may or may not have foreseen her own grisly murder? Was it the mob enforcer who lost his money on her investment predictions? The greedy, amoral reality show producer? The cheating wife? The cuckolded husband? The Freemasons?

Castle rarely lacks for suspects, does it? Most of the time, that’s part of the fun, but with “He’s Dead, She’s Dead” it was a little too much coming at me too fast. I had to reverse my DVR three times just to follow the dialogue spelling out how all the suspects were connected to one another. What about you?

In the end, I suppose we could have guessed from the beginning that the culprit would be played by the actor/actress receiving the primary “Guest Starring” spot in the credits roll. Said individual was seen in a single scene at the top of the episode, and went completely missing until the final act. When the one-shot performer you’re spending the most money of your Guest Star budget on disappears for most of your story, you can bet they’ll be back at the end to pull off the dramatic confession scene with a flair that will transcend whatever dialogue is on the actual page of script.

And as usual, whether it makes sense or doesn’t, “He’s Dead, She’s Dead” was a lot of fun thanks to Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic. Oh, that Castle and Beckett. When are those two gonna realize they’re prefect for each other?

Hopefully never.

Here we go. Vivien Marchand is found dead in the above-referenced couch by her spacey daughter, Penny. We know that the daughter is spacey because her red hair is curly and unkempt and she wears pastels.

Vivien’s last appointment before her death was with the lovely Paula and Marina Casillas, mother and daughter. Paula is played by Bess Armstrong, who you may remember as one of the three potential “bitches” who may or may not turn out to be the birth mother of super-vixen Phoebe Cates in Lace.  Paula’s husband, vitamin tycoon Emilio has passed away and Vivien was helping the two of them find closure. Paula professes Vivien’s uncanny ability to connect with the spirit of her dead husband, and mentions that Vivien was on the verge of having a serious “heart to heart” with the deceased, who Vivien claimed had important information to impart upon her. Castle in intrigued. Beckett is holding back the impulse to roll her eyes right then and there.  How very Mulder and Scully of them.  In fact, the whole debate that rages between the two of them throughout this episode put me in mind of a Noel Coward re-telling of the classic X-Files episode “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” Is that a reach?  Anyone?

At this point, I’d like to say two things:  One, Emilio Casillas was not actually referred to as a vitamin tycoon, but the notion of a prime time drama swirling around the deceptions and bed-hopping in the cut-throat world of vitamin manufacturing delights me.  Second, I also happen to remember Bess Armstrong on a 1986 sitcom called All is Forgiven which was unfairly given the ax after, I think, less than ten episodes.  Of Miss Armstrong, I have been and always will be a fan.

Back to our story.  Castle and Beckett receive a letter from Vivien presumably sent before her death.  In it, Vivien apparently correctly predicts her impending murder.  In her vision, she sees a man in black, the number “7518,” and hears a furious pounding from far off. Castle is amazed while Beckett assumes the letter was sent by the real killer in order to keep them from pursuing more legitimate suspects and hard evidence.

At this point, I’d like to say something else.  Once in my early twenties, my friends and I were asking questions of a ouija board in my apartment, and for no reason whatsoever, my cat suddenly darted over from across the room to the edge of the board and gave it an intense stare for what seemed like five minutes.  This was immediately followed by the lights in my entire apartment flickering weirdly and wildly.  Several days later, I arrived home from work to find my bathroom faucet running at full blast and all the pictures on the top of my wall unit turned face down.  Yes, this really happened.  I have no idea why or how.

Next, Castle and Beckett hit the morgue where Medical Examiner Lanie Parish (Tamala Jones… you do so much with so little) informs our inquisitive duo that the ice pick used to kill Vivien had no scratches, indicating it was probably bought specifically for this murder.  In addition, the cell phone found in Vivien’s hands had dialed half a phone number, “1-718-5…” Wait a minute!  Those are the same numbers from the letter Vivien did or didn’t send, albeit in a different order.  How’s Beckett going to shoot down this one?  Simple.  Vivien is dialing the number, the killer comes in and stabs Vivien, drops the phone into the couch and adds the numbers on the phone’s display into the letter.  Beckett insists there’s no way to prove Vivien actually wrote the letter.  ”Until her other predictions come true!” Castle counters.

Meanwhile, Detective Ryan (Seamus Dever) comes up with a new suspect: Steve Adams, a man who went to prison for murdering his wife due to Vivien’s phoney psychic evidence, and was released under the condition he wear an ankle bracelet with a GPS, which of course reveals Steve at Vivien’s address during the time the murder was committed.  The first question I might ask here is, “Doesn’t it seem strange that a guy commits a murder while knowingly sporting a GPS ankle?” and to be honest, this episode didn’t really have an answer for me.

Nevertheless, Steve is brought in for questioning (in all black, mind you, just as Vivien predicted in her letter), but swears he wasn’t there to kill her.  He was simply there to confront her on camera for the show You’ve Ruined My Life where “people unleash their righteous fury against those who’ve wronged them” – potentially the most awesome idea for a show ever and why has no one brought this into the syndication market yet?  I’ve just written the pitch down on a post-it note.  Hands off, it’s mine!

Steve swears his intention was only to rattle Vivien enough to get her to admit she was a fraud, but he had no desire to kill her.  Given that we still have something like twenty minutes left in the episode, I’m inclined to believe him.

Up the chain we go.  Our next suspect is reality producer Cody Donnelly, a smarmy Brit I think is supposed to be a loose play on Mark Burnett.  He admits to being contacted by Vivien after shooting the damaging footage of her being confronted by Steve.   Vivien apparently offered him a deal: he buries the footage and she gives him something even more salacious – the opportunity to film her confronting an actual killer.  But before Cody could get Vivien to sign on the dotted line, she ended up being the meat in a sofa sandwich.

Detective Ryan next uncovers that Vivien had taken a cab to see one Toni Johnston, a bubbly vivacious blonde who admits that Vivien came to see her about her affair with her husband’s boss.  It turns out her husband’s boss told Vivien the details of the affair in a dream Vivien had.  And that man… was… Emilio Casillas, deceased husband of Paula Casillas, played by Bess Armstrong… you remember Bess Armstrong… way back at the start of the episode? Hmmmm.

At this point, we are introduced to selenium, a mineral naturally found in low levels in the body and often added to diet supplements and vitamins.  A little is good, but a lot, Lanie reveals, can cause the massive heart failure that did in Emilio Cassillas, who, remember, was a vitamin manufacturer – or in my world – tycoon (“Coming this fall…  VITAMIN D!  The D is for deception.  Friday nights on CBS!).

Okay, we’re almost there.  We know the killer probably isn’t the wrongly accused husband, and the reality producer was too relaxed and cocky during his interrogation to be anything more than a fun one-night stand.  Could it be Toni Johnston’s husband Nick who, as an employee of vitamin tycoon Emilio Casillas, would have had easy access to large amounts of selenium?  He’s the next suspect hauled into the interrogation room, and like his predecessors, emphatically proclaims his innocence.  He knew his wife was sleeping with Emilio, but he had no intention of losing his marriage or making it easy for Emilio to walk out on his own, so he kept quiet. Sensible guy, considering the paunch and the male pattern hair loss.

Enter dingbat daughter Penny once again who claims to have inherited some of her mother’s psychic ability and was told in a dream to “ask the Masons what happened… that’s the only way you’ll get closure.”  That somehow brings us back to Paula and Marina Casillas (not quite sure how or why), whose alibi just happens to be dinner out at a restaurant called… you guessed it… Mason’s!  Kinda hard for Beckett to come up with an argument against that coincidence so she doesn’t really even try.

The Casillas mother and daughter act make a return appearance to the Interrogation Room where the lovely Paula is confronted with the fact that Mason’s is located just around the corner from Vivien’s office, as well as a receipt that proves the bottle of wine Paula claimed to duck out of the restaurant to purchase (the restaurant was so new it had not yet obtained its own liquor license), had in fact been bought much earlier in the day, along with an ice pick. Might be able to explain away the wine, but buying a brand new ice pick at the same time? Paula might as well have written “Remember to slash Vivien’s neck today” into her day planner.

And not to ruin any chances at future rolls for her, but when you see Bess Armstrong listed as a guest star, you should pretty much assume that being the awesome actress she is, she’s gonna get the meatiest guest role, which means she is most likely your guilty party. No one else is gonna do it better.  Had she popped up once or twice more in the episode, I might have been thrown, but it’s Bess Armstrong for God’s sake.  I remember standing in line to buy my ticket for High Road to China.  If she didn’t turn out to be the murderer, I would have felt robbed.

Turns out Paula was a true believer in Vivien’s ability to commune with the dead, and upon hearing that her deceased husband had important news to share with New York’s most prominent psychic, she assumed that information would reveal her as his true killer.  So the only sensible move would be to cut the line between the dead and the living.  So vivien ends up sleeping with the lost remote control and thirty-eight cents in lint-covered pennies.

And that brings us to the end of “He’s Dead, She’s Dead,” which I rank a step below last week’s “A Deadly Affair.” Sure, we can’t always have the Castle-Beckett relationship at the forefront, but there were just too many unnecessary characters and plot points this week. Next week’s “Under the Gun” looks promising.  Sure, it doesn’t feature Bess Armstrong, but if you’re curious as to whether or not she was the “bitch” who gave birth to Phoebe Cates, you can find out here, and then here.

Tags: ABC, Bess Armstrong, Castle, Dana Delany, Nathan Fillion, Seamus Dever, Stana Katic, Susan Sullivan, Tamala Jones