Castle: A Death in the Family

A Death in the Family is the title assigned to the season finale of Castle. Well, much to my dismay, the medical examiner was back this week. Back, and in pure idiotic form. Her horrible nonsensical forensic ramblings were worse than ever. She’d have made a great fourth Stooge this week. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

It took me an entire season to figure out what is so wrong with this medical examiner character. I finally came to the realization that she’s a total wimp. A real pushover. She’s not tough and strong-willed like the female doctors I know – Marcella Fierro, the former chief  M.E. in Richmond, Virginia (the real-life Kay Scarpetta), or Sally Aiken, the chief medical examiner in Spokane, Washington.  Those two women are two tough customers. Shoot, my personal physician (a female doctor) here in the Boston area is very petite, but she’s got spunk. Yep, backbone is what’s missing in this character played by Tamala Jones.  She’d have been much better off on a show like Baywatch.

Tamala Jones as Lanie Parrish

Tamala Jones on the cover of Smooth magazine. You don’t see Kay Scarpetta doing cover shoots, so Tamala Jones should leave doctoring alone. Fair trade.

Okay, now for the show. The story opens with the usual dead body. This time the victim is found in a car with a plastic bag duct-taped over his head.

The body had been inside the hot car for approximately a week. Now, you and I both know what would happen to a piece of meat – pork chops, chicken, steak – if we left it out in the New York summer sunshine for a week, right? Yep, it would decompose. It would be covered in maggots, flies, and other creepy crawly bugs. And the smell would be so awful you’d have to wear a mask over your mask coated in perfume just to get to the box of masks.

To make this scene even worse, the dead guy was inside a hot, black car – a real-life Easy Bake Oven that would enhance odor-producing decomposition. But (cue the superhero music) psychic super-M.E. is sitting inside the car with the victim (face and nose unprotected) along with Beckett, who, incidentally is nose to nose with what should be a rotting human body in advance stages of decay. The other detective sidekicks are leaning into the car discussing the case and waiting anxiously for the pearls of wisdom that’ll soon be slipping from the lips of the medical examiner. Her first words? “From the state of decay, I’d say he’s been dead about a week.” WAIT a minute. This guy’s body is in great shape. No decomp whatsoever. In fact, his suit is still neatly pressed. This guy was a real sharp dressed man.

The M.E.’s next words were, “The preliminary cause of death is asphyxiation. I’ll run a tox just to make sure.” Well, I’m assuming she was assuming that the plastic bag over the face caused the death of this poor guy, but there was no way to make this early diagnosis without an autopsy.

For all she knew, the man could have been shot, stabbed, or poisoned. And if he had been poisoned she’d have needed some sort of idea what kind of poison in order to detect it in a tox screen. Toxicology screens are not catch all tests.

The victim’s hands weren’t bound, but his fingers appeared to be broken. The good doctor (I use both terms quite loosely) states that the fingers were broken prior to death. How could she possibly know that by looking at the hands of a man who’d supposedly been dead for a week. Of course, the hand she held up was still swollen from the injuries he’d received 7 or 8 days earlier.

I’ve grown weary of discussing this character. Let’s move on. Oh, one more thing. Castle TV execs – Please, please, please hire a consultant for the next season, or you just may be the cause of a Castleside. That’s right, if I have to stomach this crap for one more episode I just may hold a TV remote to my head and press fast forward until my credits roll.

– Beckett and crew discuss their lack of success in finding information about the victim (a plastic surgeon) in the hospital where he performed his surgeries. Castle suggested checking with the people who work in billing, because they know everything about a patient. Castle was right. This is first place to go when conducting an investigation regarding a patient.

– The victim was the lucky recipient of a mob hit, because he’d performed plastic surgery on a federally protected witness who was to testify against his former Sopranoish buddies. The surgery was paid for by the federal government who was also guarding their star witness. Here’s where the police procedure in this story gets riddled with bullet holes. Once the feds learned about this hit on the doctor they’d have started an all out effort – FBI and US Marshals – to find the killer. Organized crime falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI. It would be their case, not the NYPD. In fact, conducting a parallel investigation would have jeopardized the FBI’s case.

– Beckett demands to question the FBI’s witness (who is in the witness protection program and is under heavy federal guard). No way. The FBI would never allow it. IT”S NO LONGER HER CASE!

– Mob assasins shoot through the FBI agent’s Suburban doors with cop killer bullets (according to one of Becket’s Abbott and Costello partners).

True, that could happen. That’s what the bullets were designed to do. However, Abbot (or Costello) stated the vehicle was armored. If so, the doors would have been heavily plated, which would have prevented the bullets from passing through.

Finally, (Yes! This pain-inducing show was finally over!) Beckett storms the hospital room to arrest the killer, a mob hit-woman. She does this with an army of federal agents standing at her back. NO FREAKIN’ WAY! The FBI would have made the arrest.

The show ended with Castle getting the nerve to tell Beckett that he’d been secretly investigating the murder of her mother. He was about to reveal a new development in the case when the screen went dark. The only thing missing here was Journey playing Don’t Stop Believing and Beckett’s goofy partners trying to parallel park outside the hospital.

Well, Graveyard Shifters, what do we do on Tuesdays while Castle is on break?

Save