ABC’s ‘Castle’ season 6, episode 5 review: Nathan Fillion, Joshua Gomez rule ‘Time Will Tell’

Even though Monday night’s “Castle” may not have contained a single shocker on par with a marriage proposal or Beckett losing her job (which she now has again), it did fulfill another necessary purpose to us: Allowing us to have a heck of a good time watching an episode that is a little wacky. This was our favorite episode of the season because it combined everything that we personally want to see in a mystery on this show: A great mystery, some characters moments, and also a ton of humor.

The big humor tonight came mostly in watching Nathan Fillion work off of Joshua Gomez’s character of Simon, a man claiming to be from the future who was tied to a new death. In the end, it seems like Simon was really just psychotic and new the murder suspect from being in the nuthouse with him, but, at the same time creator Andrew W. Marlowe and the writers did just enough to make you wonder whether or not he could actually have special powers. Yes, you have to suspend belief a little bit here, but it was still a lot of fun.

We hope that this role either allows Gomez to land a new series-regular job somewhere, or possibly just appear again on the show in the future. He seems useful in an odd way, and “Chuck” proves that he has some clout in action scenes. At least his character isn’t dead or in prison at the moment, so maybe we’ll see a return.

On the more emotional end of the spectrum, we saw Pi and Alexis finally move out of her father’s loft, and into their own place. While we still have a hard time thinking that a work-study job can pay for an apartment, this was one of those “growing up” stories that is valuable to the show and to Rick’s growth as a character. Also, we just love the idea of seeing less of Pi. His character is mostly an accessory for Alexis’ growth, and there is almost nothing to him outside of just being annoying to Castle and making him want to shake Alexis awake so she can find a man that’s actually worthy of her. Alexis will likely grow out of this relationship, but she has to learn it for herself. That part of the story is what we don’t mind, given that it is pretty true to life.

In the end, we’d give the Gomez story an A and the Alexis one a C+. But, since most of the episode was focused on time travel, we’re feeling generous. Grade: A-.

Did “Time Will Tell” work for you, or were you expecting something even sillier? In addition we have a preview for next week’s episode at this link.

Photo: ABC