BWW Recap: CASTLE 'Driven' to Distraction: Has Beckett Lost Faith in Castle?

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy episode.

Season 7 of CASTLE picked up exactly where Season 6 left off, with bride-to-be Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) looking down at the fireball that used to be ill-fated groom Richard Castle's (Nathan Fillion) car. After making her way down the slope, dirt kicking up on her mother's wedding gown, she reached toward the car, only to have the flames slap back her hands. The look on her face, thinking her beloved was gone---heck, even I teared up and I knew he wasn't dead.

So kicked off the episode appropriately named "Driven." Once the firemen's hoses decimated the blaze, and Kate saw the car was empty, she went into full-on detective mode, driven to find her beloved (See how well that title works?).

What happened to Richard Castle? Clues lead the team to a junkyard where they think he was in an SUV when it went to the car crusher (Whoever took Castle really wants everyone to think that he drove to that big parking lot in the sky.). An FBI agent named Connors is called in to help with the investigation. At first he implies that Castle's disappearance is connected to Kate, and she's faced with the horrible thought that she's the reason he's been kidnapped. (Check out our TV Critic, Matt Tamanini's conversation with Lanie, Tamala Jones, and see what she says about the season premiere, and potential good news for "Esplaine" fans.

"Driven" strains credibility when it starts down the road that Castle was in on his own disappearance. When Beckett asks Agent Connors why Castle would do that, he gives her that look that says, "Some men will do anything to avoid commitment." Sorry, Agent Connors, not Richard Castle. He's wanted to be committed to Kate Beckett for six years, there is no way he left her at the altar. And shame on Javi for thinking differently. Maybe he's holding a grudge since he wasn't chosen to be Castle's best man.

The plot thickens when Castle is found two months later adrift in a boat---a little switcharoo in the show's car theme. He's alive, but unconscious, which sends Kate and Co. off to question the owner of the boat, who fingers Castle as the guy livin' large off the land nearby.

When Castle wakes up, and believes he went straight from the pre-wedding car accident to the hospital, Beckett is still suspicious (why, Kate, why?) and she won't even kiss him (cold, Kate, cold). It takes Castle all of 30 seconds of investigating his own disappearance to discover that he was set up and there's a real conspiracy afoot, something Kate, Javi, Kevin and the FBI couldn't figure out in the whole rest of the show.

Right at this moment, barely 10 minutes from the end of the episode, CASTLE finally feels like CASTLE. Richard Castle is back, alive and as ruggedly handsome as ever, especially for a guy who was shot, exposed to tropical disease and left unconscious in a boat. But here's the part of "Driven" that will drive CASTLE fans to distraction: Kate is still unsure. While she believes that there's more to his two-month disappearance than she originally thought, something has changed for her. Maybe she feels she can't trust him, maybe she feels she can't trust herself enough to trust him, because she trusted facts over faith---it's complicated, and it will take a few episodes, if not the whole season, for her to figure this one out.

Saint Richard, however, is willing to give her the space she needs. Deep down, Richard Castle knows that their coupledom will never be a Sunday afternoon drive; it's more like a traffic jam with lots of starts and stops.

But no matter how many speed bumps they hit along the way, we know that they'll eventually get to their destination, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.

What are your thoughts? What drives you to watch CASTLE? Let me know in the comments below.

Sitings:

Guest star Matt Letscher is an actor whose frequent forays to the stage include a farce he wrote and directed called SEA OF FOOLS which had its world premiere at Jeff Daniels' Purple Rose Theatre in 2007.

The actor playing Agent Connors is Jon Lindstrom, best known as Dr. Kevin Collins, Lucy Coe's beloved Doc from GENERAL HOSPITAL. Hmm, maybe this is why he broke up with Lucy: he had to join the FBI.

Check out a promo for next week's episode titled 'Montreal' below:

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