CASTLE: Andrew Marlowe Previews ‘Like Father, Like Daughter’

When I asked CASTLE creator Andrew Marlowe to tease tonight’s brand new episode of his show, he was able to sum it up quite simply: “It’s awesome.”

Of course, I had to prod him for a little more info than that.

“How it differs is that the focus of the episode is a little different than the standard Castle/Beckett case,” Marlowe teased. “Alexis ends up being our entry point for the case; she’s been working with a place called The Innocence Review — it’s kind of like The innocence Project — where they deal with death row cases. She’s been volunteering for her law professor, and in the opening scene, we discover it has not gone well. But she really believes this guy is innocent.”

“And she’s in a challenged place with her dad right now after last week’s episode,” he continued. “But she finds herself having to go to her dad and saying, ‘Look, I’m still mad at you, but I need your help on this case.’ And it focuses on Alexis and Castle working together in a really wonderful, charming way. And it serves in a big step to repairing their relationship.”

While Alexis and Castle are working towards fixing their strained relationship, Beckett is becoming increasingly aware of her disconnect with the already-established family unit.

“It also brings up big issues for Beckett in terms of how she fits into this family,” Marlowe acknowledged. “She’s engaged to this guy, but when you’re engaged to someone who has a family, you’re also sort of engaged to the family. So she’s struggling with what is her role in Castle’s life and Alexis’ life? So it’s a great dramatic story, but we also think an interesting relationship story as well.”

And though Marlowe teased “Like Father, Like Daughter” will help with many of these conflicts, viewers should expect for some of these arcs to have more of a long-term impact.

“Some of these issues don’t go away,” Marlowe noted. “We’re in a significant moment of growth for all of the characters as Beckett comes to a period of growth over not necessarily being alone in the world and having to do everything herself, Castle is in a point where he kind of is challenged by growing up in a moment Alexis is growing up. So I think that we can play around with all of that, because it’s part of a relationship, and we have this moment where they’re engaged and they kind of have to deal with the unintentional consequences of being engaged that they may not have seen: one of which is the way Alexis is behaving. And there are certainly others. And I think we have this moment [to explore those] before we have the pressing issues of when are we setting a date, when’s the wedding, what are we doing with the wedding, going wedding dress shopping, and who we’re going to invite — all that stuff becomes more pressing in the spring. So it felt like we had time to play with this other stuff and we really enjoyed it.”

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CASTLE airs Mondays at 10 PM on ABC.