I remember wondering if the elevator malfunction was another prank when Beckett touches the floor with her foot and makes the elevator ding. It apparently wasn't, though. I'm still not sure if the dog attack was a prank or not. Montgomery's reaction seemed to indicate that it was. Poor Castle. Some of the pranks were verging on the cruel, though it does show that he's been fully accepted as a member of the team. I remember other episodes where he pranks the guys as they did him.

I bet Alexis IS a little disgruntled at how much time Castle spends with Beckett and the police force. It represents a big change in her life. Her dad is around less often and she has more to worry about when it comes to his safety. When Meredith came to pull her out of school in the first season episode, Alexis's first words to the headmaster were 'Is it my dad? Did he get shot?" That was just a few months after Castle started working with Beckett and she was already worrying about what could happen to him. I wonder if she knows he signed away any right for his family to sue if he gets killed in the field? But her scenes are too brief to really develop that arc. I do wonder if Alexis will end up working for the police in some capacity after watching her tomato splattering scene. Maybe she'll be a CSI.

Here we have Castle seriously considering his own mortality in a way he apparently didn't when he signed away his rights and started going into danger with the cops. It's funny that it's a mummy's curse that makes him consider it and not any of the other situations he's put himself in. Meredith is apparently out of the question, since Martha is apparently the designated guardian in Castle's last will and testament. Gina must not have been close enough to Alexis to be considered as a backup to Martha, even though she must have been Alexis's stepmother for a couple of years. Maybe Castle had no other options, since he has no father and at least one of Meredith's parents is dead. I think he's asking Kate to be an unofficial mentor for Alexis, not a formal guardian. It says a lot about how much he trusts Beckett at this point and also how few real friends he really has that he has asked someone he's known less than two years to fill such an important role. Even though he's concerned, it's not enough to stop him from risking his life or taking the chance that Alexis will lose her only stable parent. What Castle is getting from the police involvement — real friendship, a sense of purpose, fun, self esteem — is far too valuable to him.

Castle's relationship with Martha still has some cracks, since he asks Martha to look after Alexis better than she looked after him. He believes she was lacking as a mother. Martha once again dismisses Castle's complaints — "You turned out fine."