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A week without murder; how refreshing. Or rather, a week that doesn’t follow the tired formula that Castle has fallen into over the last season and a half.

Pulling at threads from over-arching storylines when struggling, and dropping poorly-written and uninteresting episodes as a default, the writers and producers of the show have clearly been slacking.

Throwing the viewers for a loop and proving (for now) that they have not completely lost the show to a standard recipe, the writers start the show with a hold-up at a bank. No introductory familial interaction, no phone call from Beckett (Stana Katic), no murder – at least not in the traditional fashion. Castle (Nathan Fillion) accompanies his mother to the bank to get a loan, which she insists he not sign for as she wants it without his help.

On the phone with Beckett, asking for about a murder, he is met with robbers instead.

The robbery quickly turns into a hostage situation, and Castle is forced to be clever in his observational skills and adapt to the situation.

Beckett on the other end, estranged from her partner, tries to negotiate with the robbers in scrubs who threaten to kill the hostages.

Without spoiling too much, tensions and stakes are high, and the ending actually leaves the viewer with a slight smirk of surprise unlike the prior episodes’ predictable plots and time-based suspect reveals.

Though the bank hold-up story itself is quite clichéd, it works well to wake the viewer up and assure the audience that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully the episode “Cops and Robbers” will serve to provide a breath of fresh air and ensure that future Castle episodes will include some of the fresh witty dialogue that originally rocketed it to the top of the Nielsen TV ratings charts.

Castle airs on Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.