Castle Season 6 Premiere: And the answer is…

Had it not been for a pesky little thing called word minimum, this review would consist simply of several “OMG!” read in different tones of voice, with a few “awwwww!” thrown in to spice things up and one final, very loud, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW”. Courtesy of Rob Hanning (“Demons”, “Swan Song”) Castle’s sixth season premiere aired last night, in an episode that was choked with humor, romance and tension in spades.

Let’s get this out of the way first: she said yes! Five seasons after deciding that Richard Castle was nothing more than a “nine year old on a sugar rush, totally incapable of taking anything seriously”, Kate Beckett agreed to marry him, in a scene hilariously packed with a succession of ‘nots’. Castle supports her decision to move to DC for her important – and mysterious – new job, and the happy couple kisses after deciding to make the long-distance relationship work.

Cut to Washington DC, two months later. Beckett is still acclimating to her new role as a federal agent, under the mentorship of the brilliant Agent McCord (House MD’s Lisa Edelstein), and is not completely pleased with the results. Not completely pleased rapidly grows into irked when an important case comes up right in time to put a damp on her plans to travel to New York and visit her fiancé.

Castle is not happy either: not only is he missing Beckett, he’s also dealing with Alexis’ new boyfriend, a hippie of the fruitarian variety, who’s crashing on his couch. So Castle takes matters in his own hands and shows up in Beckett’s apartment, where he spends the majority of the episode trying to rekindle their working relationship – except that this time, should Beckett share the details of the case with him, she’d wind up fired and he in jail. A pretty logical motive to keep one’s curiosity in check, if you think about it – which Castle did not, and thus ended up being abducted at gun-point, crashed into a phone booth, arrested by the feds and side-eyed by his fiancée.

Curiosity killed the writer, if you will. Literally, in this case: Castle was infected with a chemical agent when he was abducted during his research of Beckett’s case. He has, she then proceeds to inform him, less than a day to live. (I told you there was a loud “ARE YOU KIDDING ME” moment involved.) Tune in to ABC next Monday at 10 p.m. to watch how this arc unfolds.