Castle Season 7 premiere leaves me with more questions than answers

As always, Nerd Novice is chock full of spoilers. You have been warned.

In case you missed it, I was live tweeting the season 7 premiere of Castle on the Nerd Novice Twitter last night. First off, the night started in high drama because my cable box had to be rebooted at 9:54, and it didn't finish until 10:01 and I missed the first 30 seconds of the show, holy crap. But I survived.

And, as it turns out, so did Castle (but really, what else did we really expect?). At the end of season 6, Castle and Beckett were reveling in what was supposed to be their wedding day, when suddenly, on his way to the ceremony, Castle was pushed off the road by a black SUV. Next thing we know, Beckett receives a phone call and races to the scene of the accident, where she finds Castle's car engulfed in flames. The start of the season 7 premiere opens at the scene of the fire. Beckett immediately shouts that Castle is not there, the car is empty, so we know he did not burn in the fire. Well, duh. The show is called Castle. Sure, title characters have died before (Buffy, anyone?), but they always come back. They ALWAYS return. Sometimes twice.

Obviously, Beckett, Espo, and Ryan get all cop-ified and they start to investigate the crime. They find some leads but still no Castle.

Then all of a sudden, Beckett haircut is 4 inches shorter. Wait. How much time has passed? I was confused at this point. Did they expect me to not notice her haircut?

We find a campsite that seems to explain Castle's disappearance. He wanted to disappear. He tricked everyone. There's some money from somewhere that he is caught on camera depositing in a secret location. He was seen stealing a boat.

Wait. Seriously, though, has all this happened in a day? I'm still confused.

The FBI is involved and Espo is getting all frustrated and believes Castle betrayed them, even though Ryan's like, "Dude, he's our friend." The US Coast Guard finds Castle floating in a dinghy in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He is admitted to the hospital and is unconscious. Beckett convinces Lanie to do a little checkup and investigation, and Lanie finds some weird things. A key sewn into his pants, a gunshot wound that has been healing for weeks (seriously I am so confused, how much time has passed?!), and evidence of antibodies for Dengue Fever, which is a tropical disease.

So, what? He's been shot and he was in the tropics and SERIOUSLY HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED?

Okay, at this point I realized that while live tweeting, I must've missed something. Someone casually mentions that it's been two months and I really, really did not have a clue when I was supposed to figure that out. Did it say "Two Months Later" on the bottom of the screen and I missed it?

This episode moved so quickly and didn't really feel like it fit the Castle formula; it seemed to me as if they were just trying to fast-forward through events so we could start on a new storyline with the new season. I know that traditionally, a TV show might have a character say something like "So how was your summer?" or whatever other dialogue to explain the months that have gone by in "real life."  I just felt like this particular episode could've done it better, such as using flashbacks, or showing a montage, or something to get us on track. I really didn't sympathize with Beckett when she saw him in the hospital and said, "I thought I'd never see him again," because I was mainly feeling like we just saw him yesterday.

Either way, I am completely curious about where Castle has been all of this time, especially since he does not remember a thing. I can't wait for next week, but I know that this plot will probably be dragged on for multiple episodes, if not the whole season. So I shall have to be patient and just enjoy the fact that Castle is on the air again.