This week’s episode of Castle was the sort that test some viewers’ patience, diving as deep as “fantasy-augmented” Rick did off the deep end of reality. But if you, like me, are the kind of longtime fan who allows the show a lotta leniency those one or two times a season, you had to appreciate how this episode went all in with the “magic lamp” tale.

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The victim was part-time tomb raider Lars Cross — which in and of itself is a wonderfully shameless riff on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Lars lost his head, literally, after returning to the States from a job in Turkey, conspicuously rich. When Rick sees that Lars in his side gig as a tomb raider had uncovered “Aladdin’s lamp,” both he and the show were off and running — setting the stage for multiple instances where Kate would amusingly dread every next theory tumbling out of her husband’s mouth, and aided in great part by a mysterious blonde whom Rick came to believe was a genie.

The first (and almost always dismissable?) POI is Lars’ ex-boyfriend Mark, who contributed a whole $20,000 to Lars’ schooling at Columbia University. (Talk about magic!) Next we take a look at one of Lars’ coworkers on the drilling rig, who goes by the alias “Al Addin.” He says that Lars recruited him to help with a dig, which was ultimately backed by a mystery financier. Once they found the tomb of Solomon, though, it’s been all bad news since.

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Tracking the covert shipment of Lars’ found artifacts leads the boys to Yuruk, a (non-magic) carpet importer who has been freshly killed and rolled up in his own wares. Snooping around Yuruk’s lot, Rick winds up held at gunpoint by the people possessing the lamp — but the “genie” shows up to KO the baddies and save Rick… and then vanish.

Though the “genie” had passed herself of at one point as a reporter working a story, she is eventually ID’d as Genevieve Sutton, a fixer who was hired by the dig’s financier, “Mr. X,” to mind his goods. She leads Beckett’s team to the truck with the stolen cargo, but it is deduced that none of that crew could have been the killer. Instead, the perp turns out to be the kindly female professor/author Rick consulted with earlier in the hour, and who was jealous that onetime student Lars had found the tomb she never could.

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Things then segue from fantasy to harsh reality when Ryan’s wife Jenny goes into labor and meets complications — an amniotic fluid embolism that renders her unconscious. Rick’s remaining two wishes, though, perhaps do some good, as Jenny pulls through and gives birth to li’l Nicholas Javier Ryan. Afterward, Rick says what we all knew had to be coming at some point, that he has no need for a genie since he already has everything he could wish for. (Though Kate’s suggestions of a working light saber or Star Trek transporter sure are tempting! Maybe a time machine? “Only to go back and fall in love with you all over again.” Someone will be getting more negligee action; call first, Martha!).

What did you think of the Aladdin-themed episode “Death Wish,” which happened to lead out of a Disney-themed Dancing With the Stars? #CorporateSynergy