Castle 6x10: The Good, The Bad & The Baby

What I Liked
-When Beckett says she wants to find out where the baby came from, Castle starts explaining where babies come from. Hee-hee.
-Alexis points out that if Castle and Beckett have kids, they could conceivably be around the same age as any kids she has. I just hope Pi's not the father.

What I Hated
-Ryan says he hears a quick-pick calling his name, but then chooses numbers from a piece of paper in his pocket.
-Beckett's not a baby person. Strangely enough a whole heck of a lot of people on TV aren't.

Final Thoughts
We haven't seen Pi in a while. I hope it's because his planet needs him.

This episode teaches us one thing: Greed is bad. Not that The Pardoner's Tale didn't teach us that already, of course. Anyway, had the thieves been willing to part with some cash, I'm sure they could've paid off the ball-choosing lady and no one would've ever found out. But their lust for gold was too great and it became their undoing. The same thing happened to Yukon Cornelius.

Castle is obviously supposed to be about the same age as Nathan Fillion, but I wonder if Beckett is the same age as Stana Katic. The characters are talking about having babies, and they're not even married yet, so the clock is ticking no matter how old Beckett is. But it's ticking faster if she's 38 than it would be if she were 32.

I'm not a big fan of baby-centric TV episodes. They've been completely mined out for content. There's the guy who loves the baby and the guy who doesn't like babies and the guy who thinks he's the master of babies who gets puked on. Sometimes those guys are all the same guy. The women -at least the ones who have more than a few lines- tend to be career-oriented and have no interest in the baby. That's probably a by-product of the fact that most women on TV have time-consuming jobs. Beckett sort of broke away from that mould, but not really.

Castle 6x09: Disciple

What I Liked
-Castle doesn't think romantic and Hobbity need to be mutually exclusive. I'm not sure many women would agree.
-Tech lady's still on the show. Maybe one day she'll get herself into the opening credits. And maybe one day I'll learn her name.
-Hey, it's Rack Bauer. Nice to see that she's getting some work.
-Ryan gets Esposito to share his feelings. It can't be all 'Brah' all the time.

What I Hated
-Lanie and Esposito are still banging on the sly. Exactly how long can two people be friends with benefits without finding other people to legitimately date?

Final Thoughts
So, 3XK may still be alive and may have multiple people working for/with him. It's a terrible shame that Castle and Beckett didn't shoot him in the face when they had a chance. Always shoot the super-genius bad guy in the face, kids. It's the only way to be sure.

The thing where there's a thriving business somewhere one day and there's nothing there the next day has been done to death. As has the thing where they have the killer in custody, then let him/her go instead of tossing him/her into a cell for 24h like they do with every random street punk they pick up.

Considering that there's at least one deranged maniac out there with a grudge against Castle and Beckett, you'd think that they'd consider retirement. How many Nikki Heat books does he really need to write?

Castle 6x08: A Murder is Forever

What I Liked
-They brought back tech officer whatshername. She's on the show a lot, but she's still not a very good character. It's not entirely her fault, though, the dialogue she gets isn't so great.
-Esposito considers taking the diamond and making a run for it. That's what I'd do.
-Castle makes a pun that would've made even David Caruso groan. They can't all be winners.

What I Hated
-The dudes who try to steal the diamond from Ryan and Esposito are wearing clown masks. That's so 2008.
-The cleaner has a magic shredder and a magic computer. It's really hard to permanently delete files quickly, and it's impossible to just shred something so it can't be reassembled... at least not with any technology you could fit in a portable device.

Final Thoughts
A diamond heist isn't this show's typical fare. Sure there was a murder, but they spent the bulk of the episode dealing with a big, shiny rock. Although it was somewhat novel, it ultimately didn't work for me, simply because most of the episode just didn't make any damn sense. You can't unload machine guns at two cops in the middle of New York and get away with it anymore. Bloomberg outlawed that.

Castle 6x07: Like Father, Like Daughter

Alexis is still angry with her father, but she needs his help to clear a death row inmate.

Lanie helps, too, by getting all of the trace evidence retested.

The guy's brother is a potential suspect. The guy already knows and thinks his brother did it. But he blames himself for causing an accident that severely injured his brother, and he won't turn him in.

The real killer was this guy, though.

The inmate gets set free, and the Castles head back to New York so Alexis can thank her future stepmom for all her help.

What I Liked
-Castle wants to get married in space so he won't have to go look at wedding venues. There are worse places to get married than space. When you get married on Earth, only the prices are astronomical.
-The screen saver on Castle's computers says "You should be writing" I should probably set mine to do the same thing.
-When he accidentally lets it slip that he knows about Alexis' case, she asks him how he knows.

"Yeah... how?"

-Alexis and Castle say the same thing at the same time, which is something he normally does with Beckett. Ew.

What I Hated
-Alexis' suit.

C'mon, really? The wardrobe department needs a swat upside the head.

Final Thoughts
So they're doing that thing where there might have possibly maybe been some interpersonal conflict between Alexis and her father's new wife, but it ended before it even began. Considering that Castle and Beckett have known each other for years and dated for a whole year before they got engaged, it seems a bit strange. Fortunately, the problem lasted all of one episode. Now the stupid, made up conflict that only one of them even knew about won't trouble them anymore.

No Pi this week. He'll be back, though. They always come back. I'll never believe that we're rid of him until Castle and Beckett investigate his death.

This was a better episode than the last couple. It's possible that my intense hatred for Pi has been clouding my judgement. In fact, I'll admit that it may even be likely. I've written enough about him, though. He's a bad character by design; he's just not having the proper effect. Maybe they'll send him to a farm out in the country to live with Sully.

Now that Alexis has totally moved out, she's become a very ancillary character, and I don't expect her to be around all that much. Maybe after Pi is horribly murdered and her apartment becomes a crime scene, she'll move back into the loft, but until that happens, there really isn't much reason for her to be on the show. Most kids don't really see their parents all that often during the college school year, even when they live in the same city. She'll be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but other than that it doesn't really make sense for her to be around. Anyway, it was nice to see Molly Quinn get some screen time for once.

The plot was kinda silly. I'd think that a team of college students, a professor, and some lawyers would be at least as good at digging through evidence as a mystery writer. Also, the identity of the real killer was very convenient. Nevertheless, I still thought it was an okay episode.

Castle 6x06: Get A Clue

There's a whole Da Vinci Code/National Treasure thing going on, and the secret is through this mouth.

Also, Alexis is pissed at her dad, and refuses to forget her troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream.

What I Liked
-"What colour is it?" "Free" Ha!
-Castle screams when he sticks his hand in the mouth and Beckett falls for it. They always fall for it.
-The anagrams for Theodore Rose. Deer Shot Oreo was my favourite.

What I Hated
-Pi hasn't yet been spun off into a show where he lives in an apartment with two sexy ladies.
-Beckett makes a Felonius Monk pun. Boooooo.
-There are sounds of a sword fight going on and it still takes Beckett two minutes to get back to Castle. No wonder the AG fired her; she's awful.
-They never explained how the hell the guy got his dead cousin out of the church without anyone seeing. Sure, it was late, but it's not like the place was abandoned, and he would've had to drag her corpse a pretty fair distance, plus get her in the trunk of a car somehow. All without being seen and leaving no blood trail. Seems implausible, which is probably why the writers didn't even try to think of an explanation.

Final Thoughts
The whole 'secret treasure' thing was dumb for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that finding a big sack of extremely rare coins isn't all that great since the relative scarcity is part of what makes them valuable. Anyway, the really stupid part boils down to two things: The handle to open the secret door was hidden inside a widely visible and easily accessible mouth, and the secret treasure room had multiple windows that led to the outside. The second one isn't that much of a big deal, since I suppose it's possible that the church hadn't had its windows cleaned in 220 years. But the first issue just completely overwhelms my ability to suspend disbelief. That mouth hole would've been filled with two centuries worth of gum wrappers and cigarette butts, and every jerk-ass teenager who visited the place on a field trip would've stuck his hand in it. The treasure would've been found about two minutes after it was hidden.

That's part of the reason why I didn't like this episode very much. They spent half of it running around the city trying to solve a series of riddles, only to end up back exactly where they started with the most obvious of clues staring them right in the face. While Castle showed off relative brilliance by figuring out that the symbols fit together...

Look! They make one big symbol!

...he still had no idea what it mean, and he and Beckett look like morons for not immediately sticking their hands in the mouth the moment they first saw it. Maybe I've seen too many movies, but even though it was sort of in the background, I could tell that it looked out of place. Either it was going to be important to the story, or the set designer did a crappy job. I chose to believe the former. But that just means Castle and Beckett are idiots. As is the guy who murdered his cousin.

It was fun to see Castle all giddy over the chance to hunt for treasure, but small bursts of giddiness from Nathan Fillion aren't enough to carry the show. There needs to be more than that, and they need to get rid of Pi already. I don't know anyone else who really watches the show, but I can't believe anyone out there -including the writers- could possibly think that Pi is an interesting or compelling, or even likeable character. He's terrible, and his very existence makes the show worse. It's all right to have a character who people hate if he's an antagonist, but Pi's just there Poochie-ing it up. Everything about him is bad, and only his horrible, horrible death could possibly redeem him.

Castle 6x05: Time Will Tell

A woman is dead... and smoking.

Her step-brother is angry because he warned her that being a parole officer would get her into trouble.

The suspect is the guy who played Morgan on Chuck.

He has a PKE meter for some reason.

Castle loves the case because the guy says he's from the future.

He got sent back to stop a tragedy that would kill billions.

The dead woman's watch was stopped exactly when the future guy said it would.

A local bartender saw the dead woman getting frisky with a hooker.

The hooker doesn't know what happened. She was just supposed to steal the woman's keys and give them to a scary guy.

Meanwhile, future man has disappeared.

And scary guy has murdered Tim Russ, who turns out to be a famous physicist. His wife says the guy kept asking him where "the child" was.

Scary guy sure is scary.

Beckett and Castle track him down, but he's big and scary and nearly kills Castle before future guy shows up and scares him off.

Turns out he wasn't looking for "the child" but rather for "Deschile"

Who is a physics genius who helped foil a bombing that got scary guy locked up for five years.

Beckett interrogates him, but he refuses to say anything.

Future guy says he has to go back to the future, then disappears.

Beckett spills coffee on a letter that Deschile wrote to Tim Russ and makes it look exactly like the copy that the scary dude had.

At the Castle compound, Pi still isn't dead.

Castle wants him out, but Alexis gives him the eyes.

Then she decides to get an apartment with a guy she's known for three months.

What I Liked
-Castle gets giddy when the guy says he's from the future. Wacky cases are the best cases.
-The timeline diagram Castle draws was very BttF-esque. They should've gotten Christopher Lloyd to guest star. Or at the very least had the killer drive a Delorean.

What I Hated
-It's October 7th-ish on the show and yet Alexis hasn't gone back to school. Do New York universities work on some strange, alternate time schedule? Was the man from the future right about the past being changed?
-The dead guy's wife doesn't seem terribly broken up about her husband's death. I know people deal with death in different ways, but her husband was murdered right in front of her and she barely seemed to care.

Final Thoughts
Did Sully get fired because Beckett came back? I was just starting to not want him to die horribly.

Everything that Alexis has done in relation to Pi has been completely out of character for her. He must have magic mind control powers or something. At least he's gone now, and we won't have to see him in every episode. Although, one does wonder exactly where you can get an apartment in New York that you can pay for on a part-time work-study salary.

One also wonders how anyone in the entire Castle universe would be able to deny the existence of time travel after Beckett spilled coffee on the letter and made it look exactly like the copy the scary dude had. There's really no way around it. In the world of Castle, time travel is real.

The whole episode was just dumb. I expect better from this show.

Castle 6x04: Number One Fan

A woman wakes up in her apartment with her boyfriend dead on the floor and the cops at the door. She bails out the window and takes hostages at a local dentist's office.

She asks specifically for Castle to come down to negotiate because she's a big fan of his work and wants him to clear her name.

Beckett's there, so she gets to help, too.

Although the guys don't appreciate being ordered around by someone who's not their boss anymore.

Turns out the lady is crazy and has killed before, so Castle's in trouble.

And the hostages are getting antsy.

But Castle still believes she's innocent.

And has an epiphany after he's accidentally shot: He knows who the real killer is.

This lawyer bribed a clerk to unseal some court records.

Because this, rich, powerful dude is the woman's father, who put her up for adoption when she was born.

The lawyer is also his son-in-law, and didn't want the woman coming after his wife's inheritance, so he framed her.

After the lawyer confesses, the rich guy convinces the Commish to rehire Beckett, and everyone is happy.

What I Liked
-Sully points out that Castle should be happy he didn't get hobbled.

He's a funny guy, that Sully. I hope they kill him last.

-A meaty chunk falls from Sully's desk and Castle thinks it was once a bagel. Hee-hee.
-Esposito and Ryan give Sully the stink eye for laughing at Castle's bad jokes. He still has a lot to learn.

What I Hated
-Beckett doesn't know what to do with herself since she says she hasn't been unemployed since she was 15. That's not true. She turned in her badge at the end of season four. Albeit for like three days. Which iS probably about as long as she was unemployed this time.
-Pi is still on the show.

I would've sworn that his home planet would've needed him by now.

Final Thoughts
Hey, Lanie got some screen time. She's been on the show less than Pi so far this season.

At the beginning of the episode, Beckett no longer has a job, and Castle doesn't work as a consultant for the police anymore (for reasons that haven't been explained) and yet they both get to hang around the station all the time and solve murders anyway. That seems a bit strange. Not that it really matters, since at the end of the episode she gets her job back and he gets to come back and consult, thereby restoring the status quo after a mere four episodes. I'm beginning to wonder what the point of having her take the job in DC was in the first place. Maybe the writers were friends with TV's Lisa Edelstein and she needed some work.

So that's twice now that Beckett has left the NYPD at the end of a season, only to come back at the beginning of the next one. The show's only been on for five seasons, that's not nearly enough for them to be repeating plot points already. Not that there's any undoing it now, but it would've been nice if they'd given Beckett a good six-episode arc in DC before she got fired. There was no doubt in my mind that she'd be back in New York at some point, but I didn't think it would be so quick and so clean. Detective Beckett is fine, but we've seen her. Unemployed Beckett or Consultant Beckett, or back to law school Beckett could've been fun. Or they could've sucked. TV shows don't really take chances these days.

As for this particular episode, it was way too convoluted for my tastes. The killer unsealed the crazy hostage-taking lady's adoption records so he could frame her for murder, so there was no chance she could come after any inheritance from her wealthy father, who also happened to be the killer's father-in-law. That's pretty complex, which makes it all the more strange that they managed to solve the case in one day. The whole #1 Fan thing was a neat idea, but it was a bit underdeveloped because they had a whole lot of stuff to squeeze in to try to semi-explain the plot. After the initial phone conversation, she could've been any run-of-the-mill hostage taker and it wouldn't have made much difference at all.