(S02E11) Don't you just love it when a series uses a tired cliche, only to take it in a completely different (and fascinating) direction? That's what Castle did in this week's episode, and it turned out to be one of my favorites of the season so far.

As soon as J walked in with amnesia, I groaned. Amnesia? Really? When it turned out that he was also a shooting victim and that, in a Theodore Roosevelt-like twist, it was a book that had saved his life, it became more interesting to me. However, I still thought I knew exactly what was going on -- and it's a testament to this episode that I was so very wrong.

A good-looking, friendly guy with amnesia? He's obviously evil, right? I honestly thought he was faking it the entire time, and he had shot the book himself in order to look like a victim. As soon as his ex-wife showed up, I automatically thought she was his accomplice. She is Cut-Throat Bitch after all, how could she not be involved?

As we went on, I became fixated on this guy being a liar. He was a big reader, so he obviously read about how to fake amnesia. When they arrested him for murder and he said, "it's almost like I tricked you," I thought that any minute he'd give a creepy Primal Fear smile and the jig would be up. But that never happened.

Instead, it turns out that J really was just a nice guy who had something crappy happen to him. He wasn't faking, and he didn't miraculously get his memory back at some key moment in the plot. He got his dog and his ex-wife -- in other words, he got a happy ending. It wasn't what I was expecting at all, and for that, I loved it.

My only complaint is that we didn't get enough Alexis in this episode, but since she was such a big part of the last one, it wasn't so bad. We did, however, get some nice moments with Martha. I'm glad that they've stuck with the high-school sweetheart storyline, instead of having it just be a one-episode gimmick showing the perils of old people using Facebook.

Like the rest of the cast, Susan Sullivan is brilliant, and I would love to see her in a relationship. The episode was about second chances, so I'm glad that at the end, she decided to give her long-lost love a second chance. I'm just hoping that we get to meet him soon.

[Watch clips and episodes of Castle at SlashControl.]