47 Seconds | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Season 4, Episode 19 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Air date | March 26, 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Written by | Shalisha Francis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Directed by | Paul Holahan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Episode guide | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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47 Seconds is the nineteenth episode of the fourth season of Castle.
Summary[]
When a bomb explodes at a protest rally killing five people, Castle & Beckett realize the key to solving the case is to reconstruct the 47 seconds prior to the explosion. Using video and witness accounts, they uncover the shocking truth about who planted and detonated the bomb.
Recap[]
Promo[]
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle
- Stana Katic as Detective Kate Beckett
- Jon Huertas as Detective Javier Esposito
- Seamus Dever as Detective Kevin Ryan
- Tamala Jones as Dr. Lanie Parish
- Penny Johnson Jerald as Captain Victoria Gates
- Molly Quinn as Alexis Castle
- Susan Sullivan as Martha Rodgers
Guest Cast[]
- Christine Woods as Leann West
- Tim Guinee as Andrew Haynes
- Walter Perez as Bobby Lopez
- Matthew Carey as Mr. Levine
- Michael Rose as Agent Johnson
- Samuel Child as Jesse Friedman
- Gilbert Owuor as Malik
- Lorin McCraley as West Side Wally
- Nikki Novak as Corinne
- Ann Reilly as Val Brookstone
- John Ruby as Mark
- Kate Siegel as Nadia
- Michael Alperin as Beethoven
- Wil Bowers as Male Reporter
- David C. Scott as Host
Quotes[]
- Bobby Lopez: I swear I don’t remember!
- Beckett: The hell you don’t remember! Do you wanna know trauma? I was shot in the chest, and I remember every second of it! And so do you.
- Castle: All this time... you remembered?
- Beckett: Why didn't you just tell me the truth from the start?
- Bobby Lopez: And what, admit to a cop that liked me for murder that I'm a thief? Amnesia seemed like a better plan.
- Castle: Yeah.
- Beckett: Why didn’t you come forward once you realized what you had done?
- Leanne West: I thought about it, but what good would that do? I kept quiet for Jesse. I wanted to protect his memory.
- Castle: Well, that’s what your friend Jesse would call sinning by silence. It’s not smart, it’s not brave. It’s just cowardly.
- Castle:I think she's warming up to me!
- Gates: No, I'm not.
Featured Music[]
- "Sinning By Silence" - Kim Planert
- "Bomb Attack" - Kim Planert
Trivia[]
- A bomb stuffed in a backpack and Jesse's guilt in planting the bomb, only to try to stop it when it was moved, is similar to the suspicions placed on security guard Richard Jewell when evacuating people during the Centennial Park Bombing, which was really committed by Eric Rudolph.
- Two episodes before, in Once Upon a Crime, Castle tells Beckett, "Secrets are like bombs". Beckett replies, "Eventually, they explode." This foreshadows the current episode, where the point is illustrated both figuratively and literally.
- Castle has now learned Beckett's secret (that she remembered him admitting his love for her), though she does not yet realize this. Meanwhile, Beckett has still not learned Castle's secret (that he is restraining her from investigating her mother's case in return for protection for Beckett from Mr. Smith).
- The Richard Castle website was updated after the initial airing of this episode; his next book was changed to be a return to the Derrick Storm series, A Brewing Storm, rather than another Nikki Heat novel.
- Castle has walked away from his police work twice before. Both times were when he felt that Beckett had definitively chosen another man over him. Each time, he decided to return only after Beckett and the other man had broken up.
- This time, although he believes that Beckett has rejected him, Castle chooses to remain on the job. Ostensibly, Castle works with the NYPD as research for his Nikki Heat series, though this has always been an excuse to pursue Beckett. With both reasons gone, this time he has decided that he'll still do it, to make a difference and accomplish something important and good.
- The "Takeover" protests are a thinly veiled reference to the Occupy Wall Street movement. As in their real-world analog, some of the protestors proved to be less than ethical. Jesse Friedman set off a bomb to attract attention and gain sympathy for his political movement. Leann West set it off to jump-start her career as a TV reporter. Bobby Lopez used the protests as a venue to pursue his own criminal activity, pickpocketing. Ironically, the only activist shown whose motives and methods were "pure" was the counter-protester, Andrew Haynes.
- The premise of this episode closely follows the first-season episode "Ghosts". There also, political activists attempted to make a point by setting off a bomb. In both cases, no one was supposed to be hurt, but accidents lead to people dying anyway. In each case, one bomber gets cold feet and gets caught in the blast while trying to defuse the bomb; however, in Ghosts, Susan Mailer is severely burned and fakes her death, whereas Jesse actually dies. In both cases, they had a more ruthless partner who attempted to use the media to their advantage. Both episodes emphasize the human cost of violent political extremism.
- The show was first aired on March 26, 2012, the 185th anniversary of the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, who, in image and music, plays a key role in the case. In the episode, when questioning West Side Wally, Esposito mentions that Beethoven has "been dead for 200 years".