Donna Kauffman recaps that '70s show Castle

Hello, Castle! It's good to be back in the precinct this week! Of course, after three weeks over at the Dancing With the Stars recaps, I still have glitter and sequins in some uncomfortable places, but it was good times tripping the light fantastic during the Castle hiatus. (And I'll be back for the two-part finale May 19 & 20!)

So, tonight we're promised a fun and frivolity episode. Those are my favorites, so thanks, Show! We're taking the Way Back Machine to the '70s (which I personally remember, unlike, ever so sadly, some of you do not, youngsters that you are).

We open with Castle and Beckett heading out of the bedroom intent on making breakfast, only to encounter Mom Martha, who is excitedly waiting to show them what she's come up with for the floral arrangements for their wedding. It involves a Tunnel of Love worthy of a Rose Bowl Parade float, topped off with a life-size portrait of the happy couple, all done in flowers. With Beckett's fingernails digging into his back, Castle stammers that perhaps it's a little ... much. Ever the theatric, Mom Martha exits dramatically stage left as we segue to the crime scene, where the two ruminate over how they can involve her in the planning without it turning into a Vegas showpiece. Good luck with that, I say.

The crime scene is a building slated to be demolished, until a body was discovered buried in concrete. I opt to type this paragraph rather than look ever again at the grossness that is Dead Concrete Corpse Guy. Yee. Medical examiner Laney (yay!) says she's pretty sure the dead body was there since the building concrete was originally poured in 1978 and that's when Castle recognizes the victim. I really (really) don't want to have to look at the thing again as he gasps with the, "I know who that is!" then starts to describe the blue polyester suit that didn't decompose (sadly, unlike the body that was in it), the big pinkie ring and oversize wristwatch that were apparently well-known stylistic pieces of ... Vince Bianchi, a major crime family don who mysteriously disappeared in ...? Yes, 1978.

We learn that Gates, who was front and center in our last episode outing, will be absent from this one, apparently at an anti-terrorist seminar. So the case is being overseen by a Detective Boyle, who was on the force way back when and part of the original case. There was speculation that another crime family did the deed, as well as the possibility it was someone from within his own crime family, so we spend some time looking at old photos and listing names like Louie the Lip and Mickey the Blade.

The focus of the investigation ended up on Frank Russo, the guy who eventually took over for Dead and Decayed Polyester Guy, who swore he had dinner with the guy then dropped him off at home, quite alive, thankyouverymuch. There was a photo taken of the two at the Last Supper and Beckett notes that Dead Polyester Guy is wearing a suit of a different shade of polyester. So off they go to speak to Russo, suffer through a brief but awkward marital spat moment between him and the overly-hair-sprayed missus, before he defends himself and repeats his claims that when he left DPG, he was still alive and kicking. However, if the dearly departed family don had gone out again that night, Frank points them in the direction of the person who would know, Harold, his personal adviser.

Turns out that Harold sort of drifted into obscurity after his boss died, was never a suspect, so Beckett has to do a little digging, but they finally find out where he's living. Only to encounter a woman out front washing the car wearing some Foxy Brown sort of dated get-up. She informs them she's Harold's caretaker and he is suffering from pathological grieving, meaning he's never gotten over the passing of his boss and closest friend. In fact, Harold thinks it's still 1978. His home, his car, even his caretaker, are all still trapped in the '70s. Anything that yanks him out of that world makes him go a little nuts.

Oh boy.

The caretaker warns Beckett that he might be a little inappropriate where she's concerned and that proves to be true immediately. His house is a throwback shrine to the late '70s, Archie Bunker is blaring from the TV, and he comes out in his sleazy lounge lizard leisure suit finest and immediately assumes Castle must be in charge and comments on how fine Beckett's butt is and how he's all for women's lib if it means getting to work while looking at that all day long. Or, you know, words to that effect.

Beckett starts to set him straight, only "Captain" Castle interrupts, commenting that, well, she does have a pretty fine — yeah, let's talk to Harold, shall we? Beckett puts on her "seriously with this?" face, but plays along. They ask if he knows where DPG went the night of his murder in his blue polyester suit and Harold not only knows where DPG went ... he knows who killed him.

Cue theme music! Plunging pen! Me pretending I never wore anything polyester with pointy collars like the caretaker has on!

Harold won't give them names unless he gets protection, certain that whoever killed his beloved buddy Vince will come after him, and Beckett makes the mistake of saying that is unlikely given they're all dead. This throws Harold into a dither and he's pretty sure they're playing some trick on him, so he demands to see DPG's face, to prove he's dead, before he'll reveal anything more. Beckett is trying to explain it's impossible (given DPG's face is, well, pretty badly D'd, and wouldn't have been back in 1978) when Castle breaks in and says, "By the powers vested in me by the NYPD, I promise we'll get you a viewing of Vince's face." Harold tells "Cupcake" that the "Captain" is a good man, to which Castle rolls his eyes and says, "Rookies," which is when Beckett has had enough and pulls Castle outside for a little chat.

Beckett gets a call from Laney prompting Castle to mention that Laney does have a lot of bodies there in the morgue and perhaps they can get one that looks enough like the deceased to fool Harold. "Don't even go there," Beckett fumes, then adds, "Cupcake," before climbing back into the squad car.

Cue Ryan and Espo ... Ryan catches Espo watching a documentary on the real Starsky and Hutch, complete with a clip showing their jive, good-old-day ways. "They see this old red rocket here? They know a serious head-cracking is coming their way." Ryan smiles. "Ah yes, the good ol' days of police brutality." Heh. And I die a little inside, knowing that the scene isn't even a little overdone. We really looked like that. Back in the day.

Back to Laney, who has discovered that DPG was shot multiple times, first time in the back, then in the head. Beckett is surprised she could figure all of that out given he's basically bones wrapped in polyester now, and Laney reveals that when the cement was poured on him, it formed a mold of sorts, so they filled that cement mold with a liquid rubber and made a mold of what DPG looked like when he died. A very excited Castle looks at Rubber DPG and realizes that would work perfectly for fooling Harold.

Oh, you see where we're going with this.

After a few detours while Ryan and Espo track other leads, we cue to Castle and Beckett, dressed in their '70s finest, bringing Harold into the morgue's back entrance (no word on how they got him from his place to the morgue without him seeing modern life outside). Beckett is grumbling and Castle is just worried that Laney didn't do her part ... until they open the door to the morgue and when I said Foxy Brown before? Yeah. No. This is Foxy Brown. To be exact, it's Laney in her Foxy Brown Halloween costume and girl ... she can wear that dress. Harold thinks so, too. After a little retro inappropriate banter, Harold gets a look at Latex Vince and the crew holds their collective breath. He finally asks Foxy Laney if she found anything else on him. She shows him the pinkie ring, the watch, and a pressed penny from Coney. Harold leaves the morgue and Beckett follows him out commenting that they kept their end of the bargain.

Harold seems to finally be accepting his friend is gone, but before he can say anything else, a guy dressed in scrubs at the end of the hallway pulls out a semiautomatic and sprays the corridor. Beckett screams for them to get down while she returns fire. We return from commercial break to discover that no one got hit and Castle has Harold back at his place under police protection, when Espo comes around the corner, then swallows his tongue when he gets a look at Foxy Laney.

They use street cams to find the shooter as he leaves the building. He takes his scrubs mask off, but no one at the precinct can ID him. So it's back to Harold, who is mighty upset with Captain Castle for letting him almost get whacked. Castle persuades him to tell what he knows, but he'll only agree if he can give his statement officially, at the precinct.

Oh yeah. We're totally going there.

After much resistance by Beckett, who is in charge with Captain Gates being conveniently away, Castle gets his way by using the leverage of letting his mother stage the theatrics, thereby making her happy and keeping her hands off their wedding plans. And voila! '70s Retro Precinct is born.

Of course, Mom Martha can't just retrofit the precinct. There are makeup artists, actors hired, costume assistants, a script ... but what did you expect? Harold is ushered outside by a very dapperly polyester-clad Castle into a '70s era squad car and told to keep his head down so no one can see him (which answers our previous question). Cut to him entering the precinct ... and HA! In addition to having iconic '70s television cops all working the 12th (hello, Kojak!) and Beckett in her Janis Joplinesque detective togs, we get Espo and Ryan coming — no, strutting — down the hall in a complete and perfect re-creation of Starsky and Hutch. Then Harold refuses to go to interrogation, wanting Starsky and Hutch to take his statement and Castle panics, thinking he'll see the parts of the precinct that weren't converted.

Oh, Castle. Did you really think your mother wouldn't do the complete transformation? She enters stage left, chastising her arresting officer, claiming it was consensual, as Castle spies the bullpen has also been completely redone, up to and including his daughter being there as a teenage runaway wearing a skimpy little halter top. "They wore peasant blouses in the '70s. Couldn't you have worn one of those?"

It's officially official. Best. Episode. Ever.

Everyone has scripts on their desks. Except, of course, Starsky and Hutch, who are having to wing their interview with Harold, despite not really knowing anything about the '70s, given they weren't even born then. Just when they have Harold rightthere, largely due to Ryan's suddenly becoming the Spirit of Hutch, Espo — er, Starsky's cellphone goes off and Harold gets discombobulated and loses his train of thought. All they got out of him was that the murder had something to do with a club named Glitterati. Which happens to still exist, as a retro '70s disco. Ryan and Espo want to take Harold clubbing and Beckett is drawing the line in the sand ... just as Captain Gates comes back into the precinct. Um ... yeah. About that, boss ...

Beckett scoots Ryan and Espo out with Harold to the club as Castle inches sideways and exits, stage left. While Beckett and Castle tap dance their way around a very angry Gates, we get the "red rocket" screaming around a city corner and squealing to a stop in front of the disco. Espo tries the Starsky slide across the hood thing, but, well, let's just say he doesn't stick the landing. Heh. While they're getting down with their bad selves, Beckett has the morgue shooter in interrogation. They found his weapon, but before she can get a confession out of him, Castle calls her out to show that he's found photos of DPG at the disco back in the '70s and he's always wearing the same blue polyester. "His designated disco suit," quips Castle. So that is likely where he went the night of his murder, but Castle has more. The disco is owned by none other than Frank Russo. See, it all goes back to the First Interview Plot Twist!

Beckett calls Espo to warn him that Russo owns the disco — then and now — just as he discovers that Harold has wandered off. We find he's gone upstairs, where he takes out Russo's security with a champagne bottle to the head, takes his gun and smoothly points it at Russo. I can't tell if he's thinking it's still the '70s or if it was fake or ... what, exactly. He orders Russo to admit he killed DPG just as Espo and Ryan find him and point their weapons at him, telling him to drop the gun.

We come back from commercial to find Harold is in interrogation with a now normally dressed Beckett and Castle. She pushes Harold to admit he knows what year it is, that he's always known. He stumbles, but claims he's just believed it was the year he needed to believe it was, back when his friend was still alive. He says he figured it out when they told him DPG died in his blue disco suit, that he knew then it was Russo.

He tells them that DPG asked to meet with him after his dinner with Russo, but he never showed, so Harold went looking for him. He even went to the disco, but it was closed for a private event ... which he now realized was Russo killing DPG. Beckett asks if he was playing them the whole time, but he said the bubble popped during the morgue shooting, that it all became real then. So his reason for making them bring him to the precinct for the statement was in hopes of finding out what Russo looked like now, so he could track him down.

Cut to Espo and Ryan interrogating Russo, who still claims he didn't kill DPG. They tell him they know about the private event, ask him if he's saying he didn't know anything about that, either, and he finally breaks. He tells them that it was DPG who had rented the disco that night. Russo knew he had someone in his life, though he didn't know who, and figured he was proposing or something. There was even a romantic record — Donna Summer's Last Dance — on the turntable when he came in the next morning. Then when it became news that DPG was missing, he wasn't about to reveal that he'd rented the club to him that night, so he just kept it quiet.

Castle and Beckett wonder if it was the significant other who whacked DPG. Then Beckett realizes after looking through Harold's personal effects, taken off him when he was arrested at the disco for trying to kill Russo, that the significant other wasn't a woman. It was … wait for it! Harold! He admits they were in love, so Beckett assumes he did it, angry over DPG proposing to a woman and leaving him. Only Harold tells them it was his idea for DPG to marry a woman, willing to play second fiddle and keep his lover's secret safe to the world. The reason no one knew about the woman or the pending proposal was because DPG was going to marry the sister of a rival crime family, merging the two together.

Castle asks who his sister was ... but we already know, don't we? The overly lacquered witchy wife of ... Frank Russo! And indeed ... we go to her home where Castle explains that she thought DPG was going to propose that night to "... cement, as it were, the union between the two families." Oh, Castle. But DPG couldn't go through with it, and so Hairspray couldn't take the rejection and shot him. Her brother buried the body in his cement and hitched her star to Russo instead so no one would ever be the wiser. She listens, but claims they got nuthin' on her. Well, the morgue shooter rolled on her, saying she hired him to off Harold when she found out he was talking to the cops, afraid they'd put it all together. Castle tells her if she'd left Harold alone, they'd have never figured it out, just as Beckett cuffs her.

She passes Harold at the precinct, and he tells Beckett and Castle that he wishes DPG had gone ahead and married her, that maybe he'd still be alive. Beckett tells him that the reason DPG wanted to see him that night was to probably tell him he wasn't going through with it, that he was going to stay true to his feelings for Harold, which is a good thing. He agrees, smiling wistfully. She asks him how it feels to be fully in the current times and he says he's OK with it, that it's time to finally bury the past and his former love.

Castle perks right up at that. He knows exactly how to do a proper send-off! At the disco!

And, yes, we end with everyone back in 1978 at Glitterati. We get Ryan/Hutch doing the Travolta splits on the dance floor, Espo/Starsky putting the moves on Foxy Laney, and even Gates shows up in the spirit. We end with Harold doing a slow dance in the middle of the floor as Last Dance begins ...

Oh, Castle. It's good to have you back.

Ah, yes, it was good to be back at the precinct this week! (Although I do miss my sequined and spray-tanned DWTS recaps! I'll be back for the two-night finale special!!) So, let's keep the smiles going, shall we?

Last week I put up a special giveaway prize to celebrate the release of my new book, Half Moon Harbor, which hits the shelves on April 29. One short week away! Thank you all for such an enthusiastic response! So, who wins the special Half Moon Harbor canvas tote bag and signed advance copy of the book? Well, come on down, Denise Melonas!! Woo hoo! Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with an address, and your book and tote will be winging their way to you shortly.

The New Release Celebration continues this week! Since next week's column coincides with the actual release day, let's really Do This! I have another happening Half Moon Harbor canvas tote bag, and the winner will receive that filled with signed copies of book one in the Bachelors of Blueberry Cove series, Pelican Point, AND book two, Half Moon Harbor. I know! It's like a little slice of coastal Maine in a tote bag!

To enter: Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with "I want Maine-in-a-Tote!" in the subject line. That's it! I'll announce the winner here in next Tuesday morning's Castle recap. Go forth and enter!

Then drop on over to my Facebook Fan Page, where all the daily jocularity and happening goings-on are, well, going on. I'll see you back here next week! Now ... where did I put my love beads and bell-bottom pants ...