"Recoil": Of Monsters and Mirrors

I feel somewhat bad about continuing to put off part three of my Sherlock cameras/characters case study, but I can justify this because a) I still really want to talk about Beckett, b) those Sherlock posts take an exorbitant amount of time to put together and c) this is my blog, and I can do whatever I want because no one is reading this anyway.

So "Recoil" then, finally. I keep talking about this episode without actually talking about it, and the truth is, I hadn't actually seen it since initial viewing. I know I'm going to continue mentioning it, so it was time I give it a second look, try to reevaluate my opinions and see if they've changed. And the truth is, they have, but they haven't.

"Recoil" really does present an extremely interesting scenario. I'll be straight here: on realizing the premise, I was ecstatic. I thought that this would be the episode in which Beckett, finally, begins backsliding, starts to go dark and becomes, in essence, well, s1 Jordan. I paused several times to imagine possible paths Beckett could take, the consequences that would befall her once she began following one. It occurred to me that she might choose the path of the righteous and the just, but I just didn't want to believe she would, so when she did I was crushingly disappointed. Honestly, I was devastated. I was so disappointed in her, I couldn't move from my couch for a full twenty minutes after it ended, staring in disbelief at my frozen screen. I couldn't stop asking her why, couldn't figure out what could possibly motivate her to be so...morally spotless and annoyingly incorruptible. I quickly started to blame the writers for not being brave, for choosing once again to not allow Beckett to follow a darker, more interesting arc, and while part of me still believes that, the rest of me has come to realize something very important about Beckett that I had managed, up until very recently really, to blind myself to.

“Now I'm protecting the man who murdered my mother.” - Kate Beckett

And that is, Kate Beckett is not Jordan Cavanaugh.

"No witnesses. I pull this trigger, I get off in self-defense." - Jordan Cavanaugh
not pictured: Kate Beckett

This is a hard pill for me to swallow. It always has been. I desperately, more than anything, want Beckett to be Jordan, only worse. I want her to do the things Jordan did and almost did, I want her to be the loosest of loose cannons, free-falling from a place of moral superiority and do-goodery to the bottom of the pit, covered in somebody else's blood and liking it. "Recoil" was impossible for me to choke down up until an hour ago, because in that episode's premise I could see my dreams coming true, and yet they didn't. I think it's very, very possible that the reason Beckett is not Jordan is because of how popular Castle is, that it's advertised as more a comedy than a drama, that character progression as black as an unlit basement for the lead character would probably drastically impact the show's demographic, and I'm not, for two seconds, going to live under the delusion that this isn't something which impacts how the show is written. And while I hate this, I need to accept it, and, having more or less accepted it, I need to look at Beckett on her level -- without Jordan's shadow passing over her -- because doing so reveals some things which do make her more interesting to me, and can make her not-being-Jordan-ness matter less.

"Recoil" throws Beckett into an extremely delicate moral position, one in which any decision she makes is going to result in heavy consequences, and while everyone has on opinion on what course she should take (including me), no one can make the choice for her. Beckett connects very, very deeply with her identity as a cop -- we know this because in many episodes, not just "Recoil," she can be found making statements like "I'm a cop. This is my responsibility." and believing it as she says it -- yet her life since 1999 has been utterly driven and directed by a deep-seated need for revenge, justice, and closure over her mother's murder. By s5, Beckett more or less has found the answers she's sought for well over a decade, but has found no relief in them, and she has to live every day not only with the emotional and physical bullet wounds resulting from her pursuit, but with the knowledge that the man responsible for them is safe, sound, and viewed more or less favorably by the general population (including her boss) instead of as the monster she knows him to be. We know she wants Bracken dead, and Bracken knows it too, because she's told him so point blank, multiple times. And not only do they know it, but everyone else within Beckett's circle knows or at least suspects it too -- Castle has even seen her letter to Bracken, in which she "dotted the 'i' on 'kill' with a little heart." Yet, when Beckett is placed in a situation in which she can finally act as executioner, not only doesn't she choose to do so, but Bracken chooses to remain under her dubious protection (because, let's be real, if Bracken had wanted to, he very easily could have found a hundred justifiable reasons to get his case reassigned to a different detective; in fact, he's a senator; he wouldn't even have needed to explain himself).

How does Gates and the aid not feel that tension?

Bracken's not an idiot -- he's completely aware of Beckett's position; that by becoming his bodyguard, she in affect holds his life in her hands. But he chooses to let her keep that power, and he chooses to take every opportunity to remind her that she has it, pointing out from the get-go that him being in the crosshairs "must be a dream come true" for her. And I think he does this precisely because he's not an idiot. I think he drew the same conclusion about Beckett that I've been forced to accept, that she's too moral of a being to allow herself to be ruled by the flash heat desire for revenge, and that this driving need of hers for revenge would in fact, paradoxically, serve as his ultimate protection (at least, in this instance).

I came to this conclusion because his decision reminds me a lot of two characters who made a similar, strategic choice in the Crossing Jordan episodes "Ockham's Razor" (2.10) and "Jump, Push, Fall" (4.21) --which I am now going to spoil in minor ways, so be warned. In "Ockham's" we see Dr. Ben Hothorne, Garret's bitter rival, decide to murder his wife within Garret's jurisdiction. Garret eventually comes to realize that Hothorne did this "because he knew I hated him, that I would go out of my way to believe [in his innocence] because I hated him." And this is exactly what Garret does (at least until he figures this logic out). He refuses to accept that Hothorne is guilty because he can't help but suspect his reasons for coming to this conclusion -- if he truly believes him guilty, or if he just wants it to be so. In "Jump," Jack Slokum (Ph.D., M.D., J.D.) makes a similar gamble: in his witch hunt to bring down Garret, he employs Jordan as his partner, Jordan who considers Garret her closest, most trustworthy friend. Garret, on learning this, points out that it's "smart" because "that way, he can't be accused of railroading me." Slokum enlists Jordan because he knows she will choose to pursue the truth, despite of, and, perhaps, because of, the position she's been placed in -- between loyalty to her friend and loyalty to her moral convictions (because Jordan so outspokenly serves the truth for the victims she speaks for).

Of course, Bracken's decision doesn't completely parallel those of Hothorne or Slokum, but I believe the analogy can still be drawn: Beckett can't let Bracken die on her watch despite her overwhelming wish that he would, because if she gives in, and he does, then that makes her as much a monster as he is. I think Bracken had the arrogance (and the cajones) to bet his life that this is the moral dilemma Beckett would find herself ensnared within -- and she is. Letting him die would betray both the person she's set out to be (a morally righteous officer of the law) and the person(s) for whom she works (the victim, and, by extension, her mother).

I think that this is something which is recognized by everyone on Beckett's team, especially Castle, which is interesting, given his fears in "After the Storm." I'd venture to posit that it's because of her actions in "Storm" that Castle, throughout "Recoil," never shows any true concern that Beckett is going to let Bracken die. We know from previous episodes that Castle has in the past been concerned over her ability to retain her humanity, yet here he makes no attempt to call her off the case, in a situation where Beckett could so easily (and nearly does) bring about an extremely fatal end to her greatest enemy without the threat of detection or legal ramifications. I can't believe that this is because he wants Bracken to die himself, because, again, of his actions in "Storm." More to the point, I can't for a second imagine that he's okay with Beckett living with blood on her hands, that he would be able to stand by and allow her to lose herself in such a dark decision. Castle does nothing to prevent her in her course simply because he believes in her, for the same reason Bracken does, even after he sees her playfully psychotic heart in the 'i' of 'kill,' even after she admits to having almost burned the letter and letting their shooter go.

This quality is at once what makes Beckett so interesting and so frustrating to me. She seems to be caught in a flux, struggling in times of moral conflict to orient herself between what she wants and what she can live with. She's long since decided who she is, long since invested in her identity as a cop, yet when her darker impulses flash to the surface, that faith in herself almost seems to evaporate. This is why she has a history of seeking independent counsel (as her current shrink is at least her second), why she finds herself running to the breakroom, terrified that she's going to lose herself off a precipice, why she tells Castle, "I've gotta make this right. I've gotta save Bracken's life." Throughout the episode, she's presented with opportunities to indirectly kill Bracken, opportunities which increase in their potential effectiveness even while costing progressively less from her to see realized (at first, she must decide to destroy evidence, then to let McManus go; by the end, all she has to do is literally, as Castle points out, stand there and watch). But as the episode progresses, we see her faith in herself steadily increase, until she makes the choice to risk her own life to save Bracken's, by shielding him from the bomb with her body.

It's hard for me to understand the strength of Beckett's moral convictions sometimes, and I think this is a sentiment shared by her team. Esposito wonders at her ability to work the case, remarking to Ryan on several occasions that he would have let Bracken die. Castle tells Bracken he wouldn't have done what Beckett did, that he would have "stood there and watched." And I? I sat on my couch, knees to my chest, begging her aloud and often to let him die. But I think what this opinion fails to realize is the thing that Ryan quietly reminds Esposito, the thing which Beckett struggles with the most: that she has to live with it once it's done. For someone like Beckett, who's constructed her selfhood on the strength and sincerity with which she believes in truth and justice and rightness, having to live with herself after making such a call would probably trigger an extreme crisis of faith.

Of course, this is precisely why I did (and do) want her to kill him, because seeing Beckett experience such a thing would provide me so much mental fodder that I would probably literally gain several pounds. I want more than anything for her to struggle with her (professed) rage and grief, over the death of her mother and over the near loss of her own life, and lose; for her then to have to look at herself in Jordan's mirror, and, perhaps, want to shatter it too.

I don't know that I'll ever see this wish granted, but I don't think I'll ever stop hoping for it (though, if I'm honest with myself, I know this will likely never come to pass), because the stronger the steel, the more satisfying it is to see it finally crack. "Recoil" does an excellent job of showing us the strength of Beckett's internal, moral steel, which I appreciate now more than I did yesterday, so now I can only hope that's it's merely a set-up for her eventual fall from grace.

You know you want to, Beckett.