Castle – Season 2 Review

Shows

I have a man crush, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

In my dreams, Nathan Fillion and I hang out, talk about women, sports, and everything in between. I ask if Stana Katic is really that hot, and he winks at me, as if to say “you’ve only seen half of how hot she is” and we laugh.

Seriously, if there is any kind of justice in this universe, someone, somewhere is penning a pilot that will feature Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris. It doesn’t have to be anything. They can just sit there for 22 minutes a week. I’ll watch, it’d be the coolest show in TV history.

Ever since I was first introduced to Captain Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly I was hooked. He had me at “god won’t let us die because we’re just too good looking”. So when I heard he had gotten a new show following his stint on Desperate Housewives I was practically giddy, Finally, Someone on a major network has gotten the sense to give him a proper show, where he could display his many talents. But then, I heard it’s a detective show, and a good part of my excitement went up in flames.

As a general rule of thumb, if there’s one thing I don’t like, its TV cop shows. The entire genre is beyond worn out, with 3 spin-offs of CSI and 2 more of NCIS. God only knows how many Law & Order and Criminal Minds (which, if I heard correctly, also has an upcoming spinoff) are on every week. Do we really need another cop show?

But, in a miraculous twist of fate, someone realised that Castle can be different if Fillion is used properly, and 2 seasons in, I am happy to report that he most definitely is! Make no mistake, Castle is, first and foremost a star vehicle for him, and just slightly below that, it’s a vehicle for how ridiculously good looking Stana Katic is. Thirdly, it’s all about that age old “will they or won’t they” tension that’s entirely palpable with every scene they share.

As with my review of American Dad, I will just go to say that there’s an initial problem in reviewing “cop shows”, as there’s very little in the way of repeating plots. Though, Castle, in that sense does very well in developing it’s little plots and progressing things at a snail’s pace in almost every single episode. That’s fine by me, because if history has shown us something it’s that once the sexual tension is resolved, the show goes down the drain.

Castle like most cop shows follows a set formula: murder happens, Beckett and her team are called in, the usual suspects emerge (business partner, husband, nanny etc.). The team is sure that one person is guilty, but alas, after a brief investigation it turns out that said suspect has some kind of alibi. This could also lead the team to the “big picture”, or whoever is actually in charge since they’re just a little cog in a big machine. Rick then has a little discussion with his daughter or mother, which of course helps him realise who the real guilty party is (in scenes that are often eerily reminiscent of House‘s flashes of brilliance) and the murder gets solved.

But where Castle is really good as a show is two fronts. First, the above mentioned sexual tension between two lead characters and those little moments at the end of nearly all episodes, moments that with 20 to 60 seconds manage to say so much. From Castle’s understanding that he doesn’t just have “the hots” for Beckett, he may actually like her to her starting to see Castle as less than of a womanizing over indulged buffoon just hindering her job, to an actual member of her team, there to assist her. Which in turn could quite possibly give her insight she does not have, and possibly be someone she’s actually interested in as a man.

For a while there, I thought the Demming Character (Michael Trucco of Battlestar Galactica fame) would hang around for much longer than it did. I guess they can always bring him back for season 3, but if he’s not the 3rd wheel on the Castle-Beckett bike it’s rather pointless.

Another interesting storyline, that I sincerely hope will continue is the hunt (if we can call it that) for Beckett’s mom’s killer, which if judging by the amount of times it was mentioned in season 2 is turning into what “Red John” is for The Mentalist (another show that lives and dies on its lead actor and his suave charm). It’s a very slow build, but it does appear to be going somewhere.

For now, I’m just a happy camper, because I know that for at least 1 more season, TV gods willing, Nathan Fillion will be on my TV screen once a week.

(Until someone gets wind of my Pilot idea for him and NPH)

Up next week…my first reality review: The Amazing Race.

Funniest line of the week, this time, from sports:  I was watching an Angels – Red sox game a few days ago when Benji Molina, notorious for being about as slow as molasses hit for the cycle, completing it with a triple to which, the ecstatic angel’s commentator said “Pigs have flown in Boston Massachusetts!!!”