Castle's Late Night Wars-Inspired Episode
Did it live up to the hype? No, but they did kill Tom Bergeron and got Fred Willard to play the Leno-type. They also worked in the greedy network executives and of course—the intern. More Inside.
Find out more about Castle at ABC.com.
When Castle goes on a Late Night talk show, he meets the "Conan" of the story, who swears to him that "They Want Me Dead!" Who "they" is, at this point, is a mystery to the audience.
He was right.
Here, we're introduced to late night successor to the show. As Gary (aka Craig Eshericks Mustache) described it to us this morning, saying "Bergeron's character was a rather hilarious mashup of Carson (six blonde bombshell ex-wives, elderly white sidekick played by Fred Willard who's been with him for 35 years) and Leno ($80M penalty to cut him loose, because the network wanted to go younger)."
Meet the Evil Network Executives (who are not happy they've been scooped!
And of course, given David Letterman's scandal, how could they not include a tryst with an Intern?
Like any good crime drama, a gratuitous shirtless scene was included.
Finally, a lead: recordings of the executive talking about contracts and negotiations—and how it'd be nice to get rid of him. After an "intense" interrogation, we discover that the network exec is off the hook—he'd been banging the same actress that Castle had been earlier in the episode (slide #7.)
The Dramatic Conclusion: It was Fred Willard all along!