Castle Review: The Blame Game (Season 8 Episode 12)

Richard Castle always thrives when put in impossible situations.

Let me start by saying this: yet again, we’ve got another solid episode of Castle that really feels like Castle. It has just about everything I want from this show, yet it still offers up something new.

Rather than offering the traditional case-of-the-week, it’s Castle and Beckett who both find themselves in danger. It’s the sort of thing that seems to happen to both of them far too often, and it doesn’t even have anything to do with Locksat or any of that. It’s something entirely separate.

Even Alexis points out how often her father ends up with his life in danger, but as its pointed out to her, he always comes home safe because he’s good at what he does.

And also, importantly, because he has Beckett has a partner.

Beckett and Castle both find themselves in the middle of an upsetting, deadly psychological experiment. Castle is locked in a room with three other men, where they’re forced to participate in a twisted game. Then they learn that in another room are their partners. Well, for most of them, anyway.

That means Beckett is in that other room, and it strikes me here more than ever how equal Castle and Beckett’s partnership can be. Both are leaders, both are smart, both know how to get out of impossible situations. While Castle pulls the men together to come up with a plan, that’s precisely what Beckett is doing with her group.

When they finally end up together and are eventually able to escape, it isn’t because Castle saved his damsel in distress. Kate Beckett isn’t a damsel who needs saving, and we’ve seen that time and again. But it’s also not Beckett saving Castle. They get out of their situation by working together as a team. That speaks volumes about their relationship, but I think it’s also a dynamic we need to see more often on television. Castle actually manages to subvert our expectations of gender roles in this way quite a bit.

As for the actual psychological game (if that’s what we want to call it), everything about it is both intriguing and disturbing. These people, including Beckett and Castle, are put in impossible situations and forced to make terrifying choices. How very pointed for the man who decides to use the gun to kill the others and save himself to have it literally backfire and kill him instead?

It’s fascinating to see how different kinds of people react — particularly when they realize they have to work together.

This is an episode that can stand on its own as well. In true procedural fashion, everything gets wrapped in one episode, and we don’t necessarily need to talk about what’s happening with Castle and Beckett’s relationship. It simply makes for an enjoyable hour of television.

Other Thoughts:

• I love that Alexis plays such an important role in finding her father.
• Who else wants to know what a collaboration between Stephen King and Richard Castle would actually be like? Because I’d totally read that book.
• Hayley has officially grown on me, thanks in large part to her interactions with Alexis in this episode.

What did you think of this episode of Castle? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Castle airs Mondays at 10/9c on ABC.

Ashley Bissette Sumerel

Ashley Bissette Sumerel is a television and film critic living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is editor-in-chief of Tell-Tale TV as well as Eulalie Magazine. Ashley has also written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Insider. Ashley has been a member of the Critics Choice Association since 2017 and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her work as an editor and critic, Ashley teaches Entertainment Journalism, Composition, and Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.