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Recap / Castle S 6 E 16 Room 147

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What starts out as a straightforward murder case takes a turn towards the perplexing when three people all confess to the crime – and while all three know details of the murder that only the killer could know, each have alibis that exonerate them. Meanwhile, Alexis struggles with her guilt and her newfound independence after her relationship with Pi breaks down.


  • The Atoner: Alexis initially declines going back to her father because she feels she doesn't have the right after how poorly she behaved towards him when he tried to warn her against moving in with her boyfriend too quickly. Somewhat deconstructed by Beckett, who points out that Alexis is just punishing herself by trying to pay off her apartment lease on her own, and assures her it's okay to accept her father's help.
  • Blended Family Drama: Subverted. After Castle mentions that Alexis has another undisclosed reason for not wanting to move back to his loft, Beckett worries that it has something to do with her presence there and arranges a meeting with Alexis to clarify things. As it turns out, Alexis feels bad for disregarding her father's advice against moving out and wants to atone for that by doing whatever's needed to pay off her lease herself. Beckett reassures her that it's not necessary to keep punishing herself that way and Castle would be more than happy to help with the lease situation.
  • Church of Happyology/Evil, Inc.: Downplayed but EHI has done terrible things to the patients. After uncovering their deeds, the company is shut down.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: The three suspects are cleared of all charges and became good friends in the end.
  • Foreshadowing: Beginning with Anita, we start to see that people are having trouble remembering things clearly.
  • Gone Horribly Right: An EHI experimental therapy involving "shooting dead" one's problems, represented by Justin, in a video while under the influence of medication worked too well when the test subjects started to believe they'd literally killed Justin.
  • Misplaced Retribution: Angry at her brother's death due to EHI, the killer targeted Justin, whose only connection was being hired to act in the company's therapy videos, which he couldn't talk about because he was under contract (and likely didn't know about EHI's shady practices). She knew his death would bring police attention to EHI and believed he was "one of them". This is also probably why the killer didn't care when three patients of EHI like her brother who were subjects of Justin's original video became triggered to make false confessions.
  • Not Helping Your Case: Bauer defends himself that his company's treatments were meant to help the patients by using memory-altering drugs and manipulative videos, but Castle and Beckett retort that is the same as using them as guinea pigs.
  • Offscreen Breakup: Alexis and Pi are confirmed to have broken up and he has since moved out.
  • Spotting the Thread: Castle solves the case by uncovering a detail about the murder scene. The memory where the witnesses thought they murdered Justin had a fridge with a door that opened in a manner that would let the visitors see the bottles of water inside it, but the room where Justin died had a fridge door that opened on the other side, which would hide the bottles.
  • Triple Shifter: Castle is concerned Alexis is wearing herself out with her college classes, work-study job, and extra tutoring gigs.
  • You Killed My Father: The killer's motive is to avenge her brother who died from EHI's experiments.

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