Not quite Forensic Linguistics (or maybe it is?)

[oloriel]

So we were watching Castle yesterday. Surprisingly enough, German TV is for once reasonably close to the original run, so we're actually in Season 4. Woo hoo.

Anyway, it was the episode with the Bank Robbery that Feels Fishy. Something beyond the bank robbery felt fishy to me.


Potential Spoilers ahead.

So at some point during the bank robbery, this guy panics "because he is thinking of his family". Castle tries to talk him down and succeeds. He asks for the guy's name, who says it's Sal Martino.
He then asks about the beloved family and learns that Sal has a son.
"What's his name," Castle asks.
"Connor," Sal says.

"Connor", says I, "that's odd. Connor's not the sort of name you'd expect for the son of someone called Sal Martino."

Then I told myself not to be a bloody bigot. Sure, it wasn't the first name that'd come to mind, but maybe Sal's wife was Scottish or Irish or something. Perfectly possible, after all. On a TV series where you aren't likely to learn more about random people's background you'd expect something more straightforward, but... never mind. Ok, Connor son of Sal. I'll go with the flow for the moment.

Of course, later on it is revealed that Sal isn't who he seems to be, and his "real" name is Ron, and he actually does have a son named Connor.

At this point, it starts bugging me because

A) would someone who plans a hush-up bank robbery as meticulously as Sal/Ron use the real name of his son? Particularly if it clashes so badly with his alias?
B) why didn't Castle, who is a writer after all, pick up on that? He figured out everything else quick enough.

Of course, the reply to A) might be that Sal/Ron didn't really need to worry: Should someone actually go "Huh? Connor? That's an odd choice of name for a guy named Sal Martino!", he could always play the righteous indignation card: "What are you, some kind of goddamn racist?" Which people would be scared of, so they'd keep their surprise to themselves if they noticed.

The thing is, that still shouldn't prevent B) from happening. Moreover, PC concerns wouldn't stop a foot-in-mouth fellow like Castle from talking, let alone thinking. And for fuck's sake, he's a writer. If he wrote about a guy named Sal Martino, he'd know better than to give him a son named Connor. If he wrote about a kid named Connor, he'd give Connor a father called Robert or Brian or Kevin.
Or Ronald.
But not Sal.
So we're back at Why didn't Castle pick up on that? Oh sure, he was a hostage at the time. But he still figured out what was going on in the SDB room. He figured out about the C-4. He realised that C-4 wouldn't blow up randomly. He repeatedly came up with excuses for breaking the bank robbers' rules. He managed to morse information out to Beckett, for heaven's sake! And he wouldn't be given pause by Connor son of Sal?

Beyond that, if a day later Connor's mom in Ithaca reports the abduction of her son, and that makes the news, wouldn't that sort of compromise the whole hush-up thing even if nobody wondered about Sal's son Connor at the time? Unless Sal/Ron was planning for Trapper John to kill Castle. I mean, he was there when Castle figured out most of what was going on. So he could've guessed that Castle was kind of endangering his plans. And... nothing?

Huh.


Anyone else have that problem? Or am I linguistically hypersensitive?
(Rhetoric question. I know I'm linguistically hypersensitive. OR MAYBE EVERYONE ELSE IS HYPOSENSITIVE! [/fëanor])