Castle 5.10 ‘Significant Others’ recap: A new storyline is born

As soon as I read the blurb of this episode, I knew “Significant Others” would become a favorite. Not only did it seem hilarious and the relationship equivalent of a minefield, it was written by Terence Paul Winter, the man who wrote “The Third Man” and “Secret’s Safe With Me,” among other stellar episodes of Castle, and directed by Holly Dale, responsible for “Head Case.”

“Significant Others” covers the murder of a prominent divorce lawyer, Michelle Twohev, who only ever represented women. Needless to say, there’s a very long list of resentful ex-husbands who would have loved to see her bite the dust. The question is, did any of them commit the crime in question?

After slowly making their way through a long, intricate list of suspects, the team manages to find the trail of Billy Piper, a man whose wife disappeared during a boating trip to the Caribbean, a man who claims that said wife got drunk and fell of the boat. Twohev had a client who disappeared from her boat, too: Leann Piper herself. Beckett and Castle begin to suspect that Twohev may have found substantial evidence to back up the murder accusations that have been pending over Piper for years. What they do discover, however, is something that neither of them had expected: a very much alive Leann Piper, with a different face, hair color and identity. As it turned out, Leann was not willing to let everything she had done to escape her husband go to waste simply because an attorney found it immoral. And she was desperate, desperate enough to kill.

Entertaining though the case may have been, the real emphasis of the episode was put on the relationship between Castle and Beckett. Meredith, Castle’s first wife and mother of his daughter, temporarily moves in to the Castle residence, presumably to take care of a sick Alexis. Beckett is, let’s leave it at less than thrilled to have her boyfriend’s ex living under the same roof as he… and she. Because Beckett also moves in while her apartment is being fumigated.

Like I said: relationship equivalent of a minefield.

Beckett isn’t the only one who thinks Castle is out of line: there’s a hilarious succession of scenes in which all Lanie, Ryan, Esposito and Martha tell him in no uncertain terms that he’s on the wrong side of The Big Relationship Boundary. However, he isn’t fully snapped out of his how-bad-can-it-be mode until Meredith calls Beckett and invites her to go out for dinner. This sends him into a state of full blown panic in which he wonders what they will talk about, panicking over the possibility that his ex-wife might speak ill about him to his girlfriend, and by the time Beckett and Meredith return to the loft, he’s ready to drop down to his knees and beg forgiveness for any past misdeed. They feed his fear for a few minutes, before bursting out laughing and making it clear they were just kidding- apparently, over the course of dinner, they discovered just how well they get along.

But things are not so easy for our favorite couple. Before Meredith leaves, Beckett asks her why she and Castle divorced. The answer is not to Beckett’s liking: whenever she asked him something personal, like how he felt about never knowing his father, Castle would say something witty and change the subject. And here I’d like to take a detour and point out that, however true this might be and however much relationships don’t fail simply because of one person’s mistakes, Meredith conveniently left out the part where she cheated on him with a producer. Oh, well. The comment makes Beckett realize she doesn’t know her boyfriend as well as she first thought, opening the door for a new stage in their relationship. The episode ends with Castle making a hurt-looking Beckett breakfast while she looks on, obviously pondering what this lack of communication means to them as a couple.

I’m going to go right ahead and say that this was one of my favorite episodes of the season. The humor was classic Castle, something we have come to expect from episodes written by Winter, and I’m ridiculously excited about the upcoming storyline. Like a friend pointed out while watching last night, we as viewers hardly know anything about Castle’s past, and it’s high time we dive into his background the way we have been diving into Beckett’s all these years. So yes, I personally can’t wait to watch how this arc unfolds.

What did you think of this episode? Leave a comment below and let us know!