This week’s episode stays fairly light-hearted, with the team having a little rivalry over a talent competition while looking into the murder of a famous personal injury lawyer.

***** SPOILERS BELOW *****

Beckett and Alexis are sharing a bonding moment in the beginning scene, going over the differences between legal terms.  This week’s victim is Richie “The Pitbull” Falco (Scott Broderick), a lawyer who is known for his personal injury commercials on TV.  His office assistant, Annie Klein (Nikki DeLoach) tells Beckett and Castle he had been acting weird the last few days, as if he thought someone was watching him.

Castle gets roped into making a celebrity appearance at a charity talent competition hosted by the police department, so naturally he drags Beckett into it, too. Castle is planning on a bit of friendly competition between his team and Ryan and Esposito’s talent routine.

The team comes across security footage that shows Falco arguing with NFL player Derek Bolt (Roshawn Franklin).  They bring Bolt in for questioning, who had gone into bankruptcy after Falco won a suit for his client against Bolt.  It turns out Falco was representing Bolt in a private manner, and the day before had bailed on a meeting he was supposed to take with him.  When confronted by Bolt, Falco apologized and said he had urgent business to attend to and asked Bolt for a ride to a meeting at a diner.  Esposito updates the team with information that the only call Falco made the day of his murder was to his ex-wife, Elise Resner (Meredith Monroe).

The waitress at the diner describes Falco’s meeting to Ryan as more of a fight, and identifies the other person as Archie Bronstein.  Bronstein and Falco had a rivalry, and Falco’s assistant says Bronstein promised he would put an end to Falco stealing his clients.  When Castle and Beckett talk to Bronstein, he denies killing Falco and says the arguement at the diner was just a continuation of the one they had at the hopital. Bronstein caught Falco talking to a client of his who had been in a car accident and ended up with 3 pieces of metal very near to her heart. Then Bronstein points them to some possible “extracurricular activities” Falco may have been participating in.  Searching Falco’s apartment, Ryan and Esposito find a bag that contains items, including some schematics, night vision goggles and chloroform and it looks like Falco may have been involved in a break and a possible abduction.  The night vision goggles belong to Sampson Investigations; so the team goes to talk to Mr. Sampson (Brian McNamara).  Sampson said that he sometimes did work for Falco, and recently Falco got the goggles from him and jokingly asked what the best way to get rid of a body was.  The tech team triangulates Falco’s location when he made the call to his ex-wife and find he was in the parking lot of Montrose State Park.

Castle and Beckett go to check it out, and Beckett gets onto Castle for signing them up for the talent competition before asking her about it.  The pair locate a fresh grave, so it appears Falco was into something pretty deep!  Just as they uncover the body, they get held up at gunpoint by a masked man.  The man locks them in zip ties and escapes with the body.

When they return to the station, it looks like Beckett has lucked out on having to perform, because the person Castle was filling in for is able to perform after all.  It also appears that Sampson lied about his involvement, motion cameras picked up images of him in the forest where Beckett and Castle found the body.  When the police get to Sampson and find the “body” in his trunk, it ends up being a crash test dummy.  It looks like Falco knew the dummy was part of a cover up involving a case his rival Bronstein was working on.  Apparently Falco knew about the cover up of an airbag defect by the auto company Modesto, and he wanted to reveal the truth.

The woman in the hospital reveals that Falco’s ex came to visit her, coincidentally, she works as lead council at Modesto.  It turns out the call Falco made to his ex was actually to warn her that he was about to come out with the truth.  They bring in the ex for interrogation and she denies involvement, but says she saw Sampson and Bronstein talking outside of the hospital the night of the murder.  Turns out Bronstein knew about the cover-up and wanted to blackmail Modesto to give the dummy back, and when Falco got in his way he killed him.

What did you think of the episode?  Comment below!

Castle airs on Mondays at 10/9c on ABC. Watch full episodes on ABC.Go.com, Hulu and Amazon Instant Video.