Castle - Season 3

The last show got a stay of execution, but there is no such luck for Castle. I mean, for me, anyway. The show is going strong in the ratings and is coming back next year, but I won't be watching it. Having your show star Nathan Fillion will only get you so far before it has to be able to stand on its own, and after three years Castle is still just a mildly charming yet otherwise totally standard cop procedural, one that just doesn't do enough to keep me interested anymore. I don't know if the mysteries are actually getting lazier or if I'm just used to all of their tricks, but the cases each week are much less likely to be surprising, or even just passably entertaining. I swear there were two episodes in a row where the killer was the obvious suspect's assistant. With the episodic stories no longer being as thrilling, and the serialized elements reduced to a joke at this point, there's simply no reason to keep watching.

Obviously we're coming back to the sexual tension thing - how long can you have two characters who obviously dig each other but don't hook up for various flimsy reasons before it becomes irritating? I definitely prefer for relationships between characters to actually develop and change over time, but I think if it's just part of the story, you can keep it going for a while. The problem is that the will they/won't they crap between Castle and Beckett is the only thing the show has going besides the periodically boring crimes to solve. The other cops in the station are mildly likable to the point where a scene with them isn't a total drag, but they don't actually ever have anything interesting to do. Castle is pretty much the only character who is ever seen even having a life outside the scope of an investigation, and that stuff is extremely boring. His mother pretends to have an active social life and his daughter has teenage girl problems that always seem to have an extremely convenient thematic link to the case, but there is nothing close to entertainment to be derived from any of that stuff. So you have a show that exists only to come up with new ways and reasons to murder people and keep its two leads apart, and it doesn't do either of them very well.

Sometimes the show will go out of its way to have special events in certain episodes, two-parters or season finales that deal with especially high profile investigations or further the unfolding mystery of the conspiracy behind the death of Beckett's mother. These don't really work either though, because they often shift the focus away from the peppy tone that makes the show watchable in the first place, sideline the main character, or just expose the fact that the writers aren't very good at coming up with those kinds of stories. The show already has an entirely laughable premise it has to stick by, with a writer being partnered with a homicide detective for three years now. But when they try to do something like a nuclear bomb threat... it's supposed to be big and series, but it's just goofy. This year's finale was particularly egregious, ruining a perfectly serviceable supporting cast member for the continuation of a mystery that still doesn't make any sense. And then they had the balls to try and pull that final scene with the sniper. I don't hate watching Castle, but I am indifferent enough to it that it just isn't worth the hour every week.

Castle - Season 2

Castle's second season picked up pretty much where the first left off, as Nathan Fillion and company make some pretty good jokes and solve some pretty interesting cases. Not every episode is a winner, and sometimes the real killer is just too obvious, but usually it's a solid, well paced mystery. The show gets heavy every now and then, like with the excellent two part story about a serial killer who's obsessed with the character Castle based on Beckett, though for the most part it's good, clean fun. I wish just once that a murder would be unsolvable or that the obvious culprit would be the actual perpetrator (this one would be easy to pull off; if you feel the need to have 40 minutes of hot cop action, just solve the first murder quickly and have it lead to another), but its goal is certainly to entertain and not to accurately portray homicide investigations, so it's just something my brain will have to deal with. The chemistry between Castle and Beckett remains strong, the rest of the cops continue to become some of the more likable characters, and Castle's subplots with his mom and daughter remain cute.

All that said, I do have to say something about the Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST or URST depending on who you ask) that supposedly drives the show. That thing being, it doesn't. The two leads have a good repartee and I'd like to see them together. But I don't watch the show because of the will they won't they dance, I watch it because the whole cast works well together and the cases are usually interesting. Let's be honest, the show's basic premise is flimsy as hell. After a murderer mimics a character from one of Castle's books, he is brought in to assist a homicide detective and then sticks around to tail her for a bit of inspiration on a new novel. Okay, I'll buy that... for a few weeks. But at this point the duo have investigated and solved 33 separate cases over the course of two years. It's obvious that it's only still going because they're attracted to each other, but because a couple shows have mishandled actually putting its two romantic leads together, it's now considered a bad idea and the gods of ratings conspire to keep them apart. The problem is not that people don't like to see a developing romance pay off, it's that writers often handle it badly by forgetting to make the actual relationship interesting or trying to make it interesting in ill-considered ways. So instead of letting the characters take their natural course in the season finale, a wedge gets driven between them out of left field with little justification, and the show's premise continues to weaken. It was just poorly done and disappointing from a pretty good writing team. I'll be there for season three, but it won't be because of their clumsy handling of that aspect.

Castle - Season 1

I only started watching Castle because of Nathan Fillion, the funniest actor I know who doesn't come off like he's really just a comedian saying lines. I became a fan of his through Joss Whedon stuff like Firefly, and thought the promos that played when I was watching Lost (Which he's also appeared in!) looked decent enough to check it out. It's a pretty standard procedural cop show with romantic tension between the two leads, though thanks to me being relatively fresh to the genre and some fairly witty banter, I ended up enoying it enough to hope for it's renewal.

Fillion plays a famous writer in New York who begins shadowing a detective who happens to be a fan for "research" on a new character, and each week they investigate and solve an unusual murder. I don't remember Stana Katic despite her apparently being in several things I've seen, though she has a decent enough rapport with Fillion to keep me from getting tired of that angle too quickly. Some of the cases are better than others, and apparently several of the plots aren't exactly new for the genre, although I didn't notice since I've never watched many shows like this, and the cast was likable enough to keep me entertained. There are some vague strains of continuity like Fillion's daughter's crush on a classmate and the death that caused Katic to become a police officer, but it's really mostly a self-contained mystery every week good for a couple twists and some chuckles. Definitely not breaking any new ground, but fun.