ABC’s ‘Castle’ season 6, episode 11 review: Did Ryan and Esposito escape from a burning building?
“Under Fire” was more than just your typical “dangerous situation” episode of “Castle”; it may be one of the better standalone episodes that the show has put together over the course of its six-year run. There are times still where there was a slice or two of cheese, but the real meat of this story was powerful, almost tear-worthy, and focused on people who are clearly capable of a lot.
Seamus Dever and Jon Huertas completely knocked it out of the park this week, as we saw Ryan and Esposito each struggle with the fact that they could die from a massive fire that they were trapped in. There were so many beautiful little moments as they fought to survive, from Esposito saving Ryan to Ryan telling Jenny over the phone that if the kid was a boy, they should name it “Javier.” (Even near death, Esposito found this to be funny given that the kid will be both white and Irish.)
There was actually even a little bit of a fear that we had about the characters dying, which is rare for a crime drama, where you just assume that a series regular lives every week. The reason that they made the drama interesting was that ABC hadn’t really released much information about the rest of the season that featured either one of these characters, which made it possible that one of them could really be gone. Seeing them live was still the expected ending, but there was at least some high stakes, and a story that really was not so much about who the killer was as it was about how they killed, and if there was a lesson to take from that so our heroes could find a way to survive their current circumstance.
On the Castle / Beckett front, really the only news to take from this is that there is no wedding date, and their moments about each other were only slightly longer than that little moment Lanie and Esposito had after he was rescued by fireman.
Overall, a great episode, and if the rest of season 6 is on this level, we will be beyond thrilled. Grade: A-.