Recap of the "Castle" season finale, with comments from very, very happy fans. http://tvline.com/2012/05/07/castle-season-4-finale-post-mortem-recap/#more-327048
I like this show a lot. I've even gone so far as to buy the DVD collections of the series, because you never know, the day may come when I don't have satellite TV anymore, and while I am certain it will be syndicated, I like all the people involved so much that I relish the special features.
"Castle" has so much great mystery source material behind it - I see everything from "The Thin Man" to J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas series - that, if there ARE any mystery readers out there who do not watch, I would like to smack them. Just a bit.
Here are some things I like about the lead character.
Rick Castle: the rich guy, with the actress mother, who made his fortune as a mystery writer. That is, I think, a unique character as the protagonist of a TV series. What are his defining qualities?
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He is smart. He does his research. He is capable.
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This is not the funny sidekick who has to be rescued all the time - he's made real contributions to solving various cases, through the expertise he's accrued from research for his books. He is also quite acute psychologically: he doesn't misunderstand people very often, and he communicates well.
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As expertly played by Nathan Fillion, charm and wit are the FIRST things we see in Castle, closely followed by intelligence, imagination, and a willingness to say what other people might be thinking but are afraid will sound goofy.
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He's brave. He goes into situations that scare him in order to support his team. And he takes the notion of "team" quite seriously, always respectful toward his official counterparts.
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He's consistently kind, patient, and generous with his sometimes flighty mother and is an involved, loving, and insightful parent. These are not characteristics many male TV characters share.
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And finally, while assertive, Castle is not bossy: he treats his partnership with Beckett as just that - a partnership.
So, there's my little appreciation of a great TV character. I'm glad the show runners finally brought the Castle-Beckett romance to a consummation. That relationship was not one of those that is confected by writers merely to add something for the characters to do when they are not fighting crime; it was built quite naturally over time, and the characters have been so consistently engaging that fans like me wanted it to work.
Beckett has been a less engaging character in part because of the through-story's structural limitations: the underlying conflict storyline of her mother's murder, which will clearly be a big part of season 5, established character conflicts that pretty much precluded Beckett's being open to a real relationship. The push-back has been almost entirely from her side. But thanks to good writing, she has never come off as an irrational harpy.
I am quite interested to see what the writers do with the team now. With Beckett off the force (at least temporarily - unless she decides to fight crime as a lawyer, I can't really see her staying out of the street side of law enforcement), Esposito suspended, Castle giving a crap primarily to the extent that he can work with Kate, and Ryan left all alone, there are lots of possibilities for extralegal investigations, operations, and complications.
I am hoping for a nice juicy pair of episodes dealing with the "second couple" of Ryan & Esposito. Those two good actors have had a lot of different stuff to play, but mostly in small bites. I'd like to see a storyline that puts them front and center.
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