Last year the show ended with a bang.  Seriously.  A bullet bang.

The first part of the episode is just Beckett trying to survive and watching how all the people around her react.  We see Castle and his family, her fellow offices, her boyfriend and her Dad.  They scrap, they fight and mostly they worry.

Then we jump three months.

Beckett is back off disability, she’ healed her wounds, she’s passed her psych test, and she is ready to start solving crime but things are now like they used to be.

New Season new rules.  This is how things work

So we break this episode into small pieces.

Shot to the heart and Castle’s to blame.

That’s Castle’s part of the story.  He feels guilty for pressing the case of Kate’s Mom.  Now he’s also pissed at Kate.  She told him she needed a couple days then didn’t call him for the next 3 months.  He published his next Heat book and aided the case of Beckets shooting until he was kicked out of the station.

To tops things off Kate told him she didn’t remember anything about the shooting and that includes he proclamation of love.

This hurts

There’s a new sheriff in town.

With Captain Montgomery gone the show had a hole that needed replacing.  This is filled by Penny Johnson Jerald (24) as Captain Victoria ‘Iron Gates’ Gates.  This new character is a firm by the book.  She doesn’t like Castle, she doesn’t like Beckett, and they don’t seem to like her.  Gates keeps comparing herself and Beckett, their past, their history, their records, and Beckett keeps winning.

Jerald is a nice addition to the cast.  She is firm and strong.  Montgomery was very accepting and one of the gang.  Gates is the opposite.  She is not a leader like Beckett but a boss.  So far she seems distant and orders from afar.  She is the boss and she likes everybody to know it.

Back in on the Saddle again.

So I said it earlier, Beckett’s back and she ready to charge headfirst but at what.  Kate Beckett story is the best aspect of this episode.  The premier was a weak episode when dealing with the mystery.  The entire case could have been a fifteen minute webisode but the episode wasn’t about the case, at least not the debutant murder.

This episode focuses on Kate’s recovery and return and the fragile emotional state she is in after her near death.  She has pushed everybody away including Castle and Lanie, and those emotional walls inside of her has grown.  Kate is not the detective she was, she is hesitating and even freezes when a gun was pointed at her.  This reminded me of the newly released Batgirl comic.  Both are gunshot victims and have suffered horrible from it.

The second aspect of Beckett’s returns is her diving into a dark place she left years ago.  She had gone head first into her mother’s case.  She had no leads, she had no evidence, she has no witness (they’re all dead), she has nothing but she’s not willing to give up.  To make matters worse Castle has been given a warning that if she continues her search she will die.

It wasn’t a bad episode, better than their last year’s premier.  This has what I have been wanting for a while, a strong jump in character development and growth.  People are changing, Beckett wants to become emotional and the whole show we know is growing.  Also Michael Dorn has joined the cast as well.

It’s about time.

The episode wasn’t perfect.  Castle says he loves Beckett, she feigns amnesia of the subject, and now we have to beat around the bush for a bunch of episodes until the truth comes out.