When the body of an up-and-coming rock star is found with his skull bashed in by his favorite guitar, Castle and Beckett begin to probe tensions within his band and his connection to a fanatical religious cult. Meanwhile, a documentary crew that had been following the band around take an interest in their crime-solving partnership and gets permission to record the investigation, prompting everyone—except Beckett—to try to get as much publicity as they can by being the one to solve the case.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- The Band Minus the Face: James Swan, the Victim of the Week, is the lead guitarist of a band called Holy Shemp and the focus of most of the positive reviews about their music. A man making a documentary about the band expresses belief that without Swan, the others are yesterday's news and that no one will care about his documentary unless he gets some good footage about the hunt for Swan's killer. When it looks like Swan was planning to launch a solo career, Castle suggests that the others killed Swan due to fear that he'd steal away all of their fans and reduce them to obscure footnotes in his career. Ultimately, things end on an optimistic note for the band, minus the bassist, who is arrested for Swan's murder. They hire replacements for their lost members, including Swan's childhood friend (who taught him to play the guitar so well in the first place), suggesting he'll be able to replicate Swan's popularity.
- Bait-and-Switch: Gates calls Castle and Beckett into her office because she saw something very inappropriate in the documentary video. The couple thinks the crew caught them together... but the video is about Gates talking about the maturity of NYPD while Castle goofed off in the background.
- Everyone Can See It: The cameraman thinks Castle and Beckett have something.
- Foreshadowing: The band is called Holy Shemp as a reference to Curley's replacement in The Three Stooges. The killer turns out to be Holy Shemp's bassist, who killed James as revenge for getting replaced.
- For Want Of A Nail: If it hadn't been for documentary, James wouldn't have thought to get Buck out of the cult, which meant that the bassist never would have had reason to kill James, although it also would have caused Buck would have remain an unhappy cult prisoner instead of a potential rising rock star.
- I Owe You My Life: Buck owed Swan his life for saving him from the vicious cult he spent years in. Swan himself thinks the reverse since Buck's guitar lessons were the true starting point of his success.
- Karma Houdini: The cult leader is not the murderer which unfortunately means he can go right back to mistreating his followers.
- Large Ham: Esposito and Gate invoked this to make better impressions of themselves on camera.
- Papa Wolf: One of the suspects attacked Swan so that he could get his wayward daughter, Butterfly back.
- P.O.V. Cam: The entire episode's perspective is from the footage the documentary crew is filming.
- Rage Breaking Point: The motive. James was planning to bring Buck into the band as he was his music mentor. The bassist, however, didn't appreciate the news since he felt like all the hard work he done for the band went down the drain for some mere roadie replacement and killed James for it.
