The Crazy Ones 1x01: Pilot

I figured I'd add a new comedy to my viewing schedule to replace the two I dropped after last season. This one seemed to be one of the least offensive offerings of the year.

LewisRoberts+Roberts is an advertising agency run by Sydney Roberts and her father, Simon. They do big, national TV ads for companies like McDonald's. Executives for which have come into the LewisRoberts+Roberts office to fire them. If they lose the McDonald's account, the company would be in big trouble, so Sydney has to rally her father to get into the conference room and wow them with some of that good, old-fashioned Roberts charm. But he's lost his nerve, and he's busy fighting his giant Rock'em Sock'em Robot.

I'd get one myself if they were reasonably priced.

Sydney knocks the robot's block off, then spends a minute convincing her father that the pitch they have is good and that he's still the Simon Roberts. He doesn't quite believe it, but it's still enough to get him to agree to go into the room. Sydney recognizes that he'll still need a little help, so while she, Zach(a prettyboy copywriter), and Andre(a not-so-prettyboy art director) get things started, she has office assistant Lauren stay behind to make sure Simon actually follows them... and to inspire him by getting him to smell her hair, which can awaken a man's eternal whatever.

The pitch is based on authenticity: Real beef, real potatoes, real milk, etc. It doesn't go so well. They're still going to get fired until Simon starts getting nostalgic about the days when he used to take his young daughter to get a Happy Meal, and decides to switch things up a bit.

Everyone looks really nervous.

Simon's idea is to update an old McDonald's commercial from 1972 and let everyone know that 40 years later, they still deserve a break today. He's going to need someone famous to sing the jingle, though, and the McDonald's folks want her by tomorrow. I say "her" because every singer they go after is female. Unfortunately, JLo's demands are unreasonable, Mariah's out of the country, and Adele's British. But, daddy dearest comes through and gets a meeting with Kelly Clarkson.

With Zach along as eye candy, Simon makes the pitch to Kelly. She's not interested in doing a jingle, though. She wants to remake her image. She wants to sing about sex. Now, McDonald's is no stranger to sex, but that's not the pitch that Simon sold to them, so the next day as Zach and Kelly do a sexy duet, Simon needs to figure out a way to pivot her back to the original idea.

Before Kelly has an orgasm in the recording booth.

Kelly's been in the business far too long, though, and they can't fool her. She sees that she's being pivoted, which is not cool with her, so she storms out. Simon's despondent, and that means it's up to Sydney to salvage things. She tracks Kelly down and bothers her at a family lunch until she agrees to do the jingle... IF Sydney will sing it first. In the restaurant. Sydney's not a singer, but she sucks it up and does it anyway. Kelly does the jingle, LewisRoberts+Roberts keeps the account

What I Liked
-Robin Williams does some good riffing. He's been doing it for 40 years, so he'd better be good at it by now.
-Instead of Old Kelly, they call her Kelly Classic. Which is how I'm going to refer to myself from now on.
-"Nothing's too unsexy for the new Kelly." Hee-hee.

What I Hated
-Simon and Zach try to write a sex song for the McDonald's commercial. It went on just a tad too long, and was pretty awful.

Final Thoughts
At one point in the episode, Simon goes on a classic Robin Williams riff, and Sydney tells Lauren not to encourage him. That's really kind of a mixed message, since I'm sure they're constantly encouraging Robin to do his thing on set. While at the same time, I'm sure that David E. Kelley wants to rein him in just a little so that he doesn't go too far off script or spend too much time breaking up the other actors. It's a fine line.

The last time I can recall seeing Kelly Clarkson in any kind of acting capacity, it was in From Justin to Kelly. This is better.

The episode seemed to run a bit short, so they stuck an outtake of Robin Williams breaking Kelly Clarkson over the end credits. Something tells me that they're going to have a lot of those kinds of clips if the show lasts. And I hope it does last. This was a pretty funny first episode, and it's nice to see Mork back on TV again. It didn't break new ground or anything, but it delivered a solid number of laughs and it didn't make me want to punch anyone in the face, and really, that's all I need from a sitcom.

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 1x02: 0-8-4

The team is just flying around, minding their own business when a huge hole is blown in the side of their plane for no apparent reason. Coulson struggles not to get sucked out. Then it's 19 hours earlier, and I guess we'll have to wait to see what happens.

Against May and Ward's objections, and with Fitzsimmons(especially Fitz's) approval, Skye is coming on board as a consultant. Since she lives in her van, she doesn't have a lot of stuff, which is good, because there isn't as much storage space on the plane as you'd think. Her first assignment will be to join the team on a trip to Peru to check out the titular 0-8-4, which is an object of unknown origin. The last one SHIELD found was Mjölnir, so whatever it is could be pretty neat.

When they get to Peru, an archaeologist shows them a thingy embedded in the wall of a pre-Incan temple. It's at least 1000 years older than the temple itself. While Coulson, Skye, and Fitzsimmons take a look at it, May and Ward try to secure the area.

They don't do a very good job.

The guys in camouflage are Peruvian military police and their leader, Camilla Reyes, is conveniently an old pal of Coulson's. She gives him a peck on the cheek, and everyone puts their guns down. As they head off to chat about old times, some rebels attack and start blowing things up. There isn't enough time for proper examination and excavation, so Ward just rips the thing out of the wall and puts it in a bag. Coulson and Reyes put up a decent fight, but most of the team is pinned down inside the temple. So, Ward pulls out some kind of technological force projection thing and it shoots out a wave of energy that knocks the rebels down... for about three seconds.

Even so, they manage to make it to their vehicle, and everyone beats a hasty retreat to the mobile command unit. When they take off, they're heavy four Peruvian MPs, but that's better than leaving someone behind. As they're getting airborne, Fitz explains that the thingy is powered by tesseract technology and is spitting out a bunch of gamma radiation.

Probably not the best idea to keep it in a bag on the floor.

On the trip home, the team gets into a fight because, quite frankly, they don't like each other very much. But Coulson plays daddy and tells them to sort it out. Skye takes the wise approach and uses booze to try to smooth things over with Ward. At the same time, Reyes is in Coulson's office trying to seduce him.

It's a good try.

Fortunately, Coulson has seen TV, so he knows that she's just trying to distract him while the rest of her guys take over the plane. He manages to fight her off, and Ward disables two other guys, but one of the MPs gets into the lab and holds a scalpel to Fitz's throat, so they're forced to surrender.

Reyes sticks the team in the cargo hold and threatens to open the doors unless Coulson gives the authorization codes to SHIELD when they call and ask about the course change. May is hardcore, so she dislocates her wrist to slip out of her restrains and then knocks out the guard. Then it's action time. They bust through the door to the lab, grab their gear, and then strap themselves to the wall. Fitz uses one of his little drones to remotely activate the thingy, and it blows the hole in the wall.

So, I guess it's been 19 hours.

The sudden change in pressure allows the team to get the drop on the MPs, and gives Coulson the opportunity to tie up Reyes in a non-sexy manner. May retakes the cockpit, Ward beats up some dudes, Fitzsimmons and Skye retrieve the thingy, and then Skye uses an emergency life raft to seal the hole.

When they finally land at the secret base where they were headed, SHIELD launches the thingy into the sun, the team drinks beer, and Skye gets a secret message from the Rising Tide people. She tells them she's in.

Whatever that means.

Then Nick Fury shows up to tear Coulson a new one for blowing a hole in a brand new plane. And tries not to call him a motherfucker.

He's trying really hard. You can see it in his eye.

What I Liked
-Reyes explains to Coulson that he's having a mid-life crisis. If more people would just straight-up tell middle-aged men what's going on, the world would be a better place.
-Nick Fury talks about how nice the bar is on the plane. They really should've tried to get Samuel L. Jackson as a regular character, or at least a frequently recurring guest star. He's so much fun.

What I Hated
-19 hours earlier. Create the tension normally, dammit! Not with flashforwards.
-Bad ADR. I hear it so often on TV that apparently it is freakin' rocket science.
-Skye claims to have searched every data stream for evidence of the thing. What does that even mean? As fast as SHIELD's wireless network probably is, I can't imagine it's possible to search the entire internet in less than a minute. This show totally is NCIS.
-Ward's fancy force blaster is practically worthless. Seriously, it takes him longer to use it than it keeps the rebels down.
-Fitzsimmons spout pointless tech babble that makes no sense. I know they're supposed to be nerds, but I know nerds, and no nerds are actually that nerdy. They also say things that actually make sense.

Final Thoughts
This was better than last week's episode. The ADR was worse, but the acting and special effects were very much improved. Which is weird, because this is a marquee show, so I would've thought that Disney would've sunk a tonne of dough into the pilot to get people interested in the series.

The script was better, too, although they're still not really mining the source material. This week they fought the Peruvian military. That's not exactly something that requires fancy space technology or a specially-outfitted airplane. There are hundreds of obscure supervillains in the Marvel universe that they could be fighting, and instead they're dealing with South American rebels. That's not even really something you need a secret organization to do; you can just use the actual military for that. Sure, there was a fancy blaster thing, but a normal bomb-disposal unit could've handled it just as well and as easily. The show could still be Image Comics' Agents of SHEATH (I found out that SWORD is a real thing in Marvel), and there would be no difference. Why have a licence and source material if you're not going to use them?

All in all, I liked this episode more than last week's, but I'm really not seeing much reason to continue watching the show. Most of the characters aren't terribly compelling and the plots aren't that interesting. I'm still willing to give it a couple more weeks to find its footing, but there just needs to be more to it than what we've seen so far if I'm going to stick around for the long haul.

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 1x01: Pilot

After the events of The Avengers (and Iron Man 3) the world now knows that there are super-powered dudes out there, running around doing super stuff. J. August Richards is one such super dude, with the amazing power to climb the side of a building in an incredibly slow and unconvincing manner. When the top floor of a building in East Los Angeles inexplicably explodes (as they are wont to do), he gets to put his worthless power to use. He climbs the building, saves a woman from the fire, then jumps out a window and poses heroically while people take videos of him on their phones.

They don't have the proper angle to get the heroic pan around shot, but that's okay because the TV show gets it for us.

Even though he's a black guy in a hoodie in LA, a young woman looks him in the eye and figures out who he is before he runs off. We'll get back to that later.

Meanwhile, in Paris, SHIELD agent Grant Ward is using fancy technology to retrieve something from a secret vault in some guy's apartment before members of the Rising Tide can get to it. His skill in kicking the crap out of two generic goons proves to us that he is, indeed, a badass. Which is something they need to get out of the way early, because this is the pilot and it's heavy on character exposition.

Meanwhile, this random model proves to us that she does, indeed, have boobs.

Back at Agent Hill's field office, Ward delivers some SHIELD-based exposition, and is introduced to the presumed dead agent Coulson. After spending a few weeks as a corpse, Coulson decided the Rising Tide was a good enough reason to come back, and he's putting together a team to work out of a mobile command unit.

Each team member is delightfully quirky in some way. Coulson may be a zombie or a Life Model Decoy, but doesn't know it. Ward doesn't get along with anyone and has a shadowy family history. Fitz and Simmons are British tech weirdos who everyone calls Fitzsimmons. Melinda May is a pilot who doesn't want to go back into the field for some reason. And then there's Skye.

At a coffee shop in LA, the woman who locked eyes with J. August Richards tracks him down and introduces herself. Skye is totally not a superhero groupie, and she thinks he's in danger and wants to help him out. She lives in a van around the corner and is really super-good with computers. He's not impressed, so he blows her off. It turns out that she's the real deal, though, and possibly also the Rising Tide, although that's a little unclear. She's been posting superhero-related stuff on the internet for a while now, so the new team's first job is to find her van and put a black bag over her head.

Mission accomplished.

The SHIELD team wants Skye to lead them to the hooded hero so they can protect him from nefarious types. Naturally, she's a bit sceptical, what with all the head bagging. To earn her trust, Coulson gives Ward a dose of truth serum and then lets Skye interrogate him for a while. He basically spouts lines from True Lies.

At the same time, May and Fitzsimmons are looking for clues at the site of the explosion. And J. August Richards is trying to get his factory job back. His old boss is unsympathetic to his current plight, so he uses his super strength to beat him to half to death. When Skye sees the report of the beating on the news, she agrees to help and heads back to her van to get some data they need to repair a video they picked up from the site. The video shows that the explosion was caused when a man who had been injected with Extremis exploded, a la Iron Man 3. This is bad news, since J. August Richards has kidnapped Skye, and he's ready to blow, too.

He also has a nasty case of rosacea.

He gets her to drive him to the local train station and erase his identity. But she also sends a signal to SHIELD and the team arrives to take him in. Obviously, he's not going to go quietly, so he kicks the crap out of the van's door, then heads into the station to start busting heads. A thrilling fight/chase sequence ensues with the SHIELD agents trying not to kill him and the people who gave him the Extremis trying to shoot him in the face.

Fortunately, they have bad aim, and he takes it in the shoulder.

Eventually, Coulson uses the power of talking to distract J. August Richards while Ward shoots him with a tranquilizer that Fitzsimmons developed. The team takes him in to get the junk cleaned out of the system and Coulson offers Skye a job.

What I Liked
-Ward comments on the dumbass backronym. SHIELD has stood for a number of things over the years, all of which have had to really stretch to fit the letters.
-Agent Hill's assessment of Ward's people skills is a little poop with knives sticking out of it. Hee-hee.

What I Hated
-J. August Richards climbing the side of the building. It was seriously some of the worst wire work I've seen.

I can't really convey how bad it was with an image. But it was bad.

-J. August Richards (whose character name was unimportant) severely damaged the pavement when he landed. The window jumped from was maybe 15m in the air. He could've been made from solid steel and the pavement would've taken less of a hit in reality. I realize that it's not reality, but it just looked really stupid.
-The title screen is silly. You can see it at the top.
-Explaining storytelling tropes. It's all well and good to make fun of the fact that Coulson only died in The Avengers so the heroes would have a reason to work together, but this show uses enough tropes itself that the explanation makes it seem like it lacks self-awareness.
-Weird lighting.

Seriously, what the hell is that? Sideways lens flare?

-May beats up a man who's twice her size without taking a hit. Gee, a tiny woman who can beat up much larger men... that's something we haven't seen in a Joss Whedon show before.
-Brett Dalton, who plays Ward, is not a very good actor. There was a lot of not very good acting, but his was especially not good.
-Bad special effects. It's just a TV show, but Disney really should've coughed up a little more dough. Coulson's ridiculous flying car looked like it was straight out of Back to the Future.

Only not as cool.

Final Thoughts
There was a hell of a lot to hate about this episode and not all that much to like. All the hype told me that MASHIELD was going to be the best new show of the season, but if that's the case, the bar certainly wasn't set very high this year.

The script could've used a couple more drafts. There was far too much dialogue alluding to shadowy pasts and whatnot. It was a pilot, so there certainly needed to be some character exposition, but it was done very poorly.

Honestly, there wasn't very much to differentiate the show from others of its ilk, either. They had a super-hacker, a hard-nosed agent, a master of waif-fu, a couple tech nerds, and an avuncular head cheese. Take away the super powers and fancy gadgets (which barely featured in the show) and it was basically NCIS.

If this show's going to be a success, it needs to focus more on what makes it unique and draw more inspiration from the 50 years of backstory they have access to. They could be fighting Dr. Doom, but instead they're fighting generic shadowy organization #24127. That's no fun. What's more, it makes the Marvel licence completely superfluous to the show. They could've told the exact same story if this were a new IP called Agents of SWORD or something.

I'm going to give it a couple more episodes, since I've enjoyed some of the Marvel movies and some of the shows that have come out of the Whedon Enterprises conglomerate. But, based on this episode, I don't have high hopes.

Hawaii Five-0 4x01: Aloha kekahi i kekahi

When last we left our heroes, a couple of them were on their way to Asia on a boat, a couple of them were trying to find love, and McGarrett was trapped in an ultra-secure facility with Wo Fat while some guys were trying to break in to kill them. Despite the fact that they managed to kill their way through a dozen guards in body armour and cut through a ludicrously thick metal door in mere seconds, McGarrett manages to kill the guys who came to finish off Wo Fat in less than a minute.

Well, I suppose this one was actually killed by friendly fire.

Inexplicably, one of the guys is still alive, so McGarrett has Chin and Danny secure Wo Fat while he drags the guy back to HQ. They run his prints and discover his name is Ricardo Cosi and that he's both a member of the National Liberation Movement (who the team screwed over in the previous episode) and the nephew of NLM leader 'El Condor'. Which is bad news for everyone, because before McGarrett can even really get started on the interrogation, half a dozen NLM terrorists break into Five-0 HQ, strap C4 to the front door, cut the hard lines, block all cell phone service, take dozens of hostages, hack into the database, and shoot the awesome Microsoft Surface table they had in their office.

I guess it's time for an upgrade.

A ridiculous number of HPD officers show up a few minutes later, including Duke, Max, and SWAT team leader Captain Grover, played by Chi McBride. Since all the entrances are wired with C4, there's no good way in, and it looks like the terrorists are going to be hanging around for a while. Especially since Danny and Steve have moved Cosi out of the interrogation room and are dragging him around the building, trying to stay hidden.

On the outside, Catherine's superior officer tracks her down on the beach and tells her what's going on, and Kamekona provides some comic relief as he tries to bust through the police barricades so he can get in and kick some ass. While on the inside, Chin is seriously pissed that some people have broken into his office and shot his computer, so he sets a trap for one of the flunkies, punches him in the jaw, and then drops him with a sleeper hold.

Don't ever touch an Asian man's computer.

Cosi's still bleeding from his gunshot wound, so the guys need to find a way to patch him up before he dies. It doesn't go so well, and McGarrett has to pound on his chest to keep him alive. Which is a little redundant since a few minutes later he pulls the whole Die Hard 4 thing and shoots through the guy's shoulder to kill a terrorist. With another one of his men out of contact, the lead terrorist, Jefe, is tired of this shit and stars shooting hostages until Danny and Steve bring him Cosi. Jefe then gets McGarrett to draw Chin out, and once he's firmly in control, he predictably shoots Cosi in the heart. The remaining terrorists then surprise everyone by immediately surrendering.

You can see the surprise in the back of McGarrett's head.

After turning the prisoners over to HPD, the team starts trying to figure out exactly what just happened. But before they can even get started, Steve gets a call from Catherine's phone that turns out to be from El Condor. He wants to trade Cat for his people, and if he doesn't get them back soon, she's going to be in for a world of pain. Danny tries to talk him out of it, but McGarrett's not about to lose someone else he loves to international terrorists, so they tear off after the SWAT prisoner van.

When they catch up, they run it off the road and order everyone out at gunpoint. Grover says McGarrett's career is finished, and he's probably right. Meanwhile, Jefe and the gang take the SWAT team's guns and Danny's Camaro.

Kiss it goodbye, Danno.

El Condor is a man of his word, and after commending McGarrett on his good judgement, he tells him where he can pick up Catherine. When they get there, Cat chastises Steve for letting the terrorists go free, but he thinks he has an ace in the hole: Chin has been tailing them. Unfortunately, they're not idiots, so they notice him, and as they round a corner, they jump out and unload their machine guns into Chin's car. Then El Condor picks them up in an SUV and as they leave, Jefe tosses a grenade in the Camaro for good measure.

Seriously, kiss it goodbye, Danno.

Chin isn't dead, so he pops off a few shotgun rounds as they escape, but it does no good. They're gone.

The rest of the team, a pissed of Grover, and Duke roll up a few minutes later. Grover wants to arrest everyone, but McGarrett convinces him that they still have time to catch the terrorists. Duke remembers that a new helicopter was stolen earlier in the day, and they figure that the terrorists will be using it as their getaway vehicle. With only one place in the near vicinity where it could take off and land, the cops set up a quick roadblock. El Condor and his men try to run it, but the car flips and most of them are killed in the ensuing gunfight.

So that's what happened to Desmond after he got off the island.

El Condor's a wily one, though, and he makes it to the helicopter on foot. But McGarrett's even wilier, and he manages to grab onto the chopper as it's taking off. He tosses one of El Condor's men out the side, then in a struggle, he shoots the pilot in the head, then finally puts one in El Condor's gut and shoves him out. Steve lands the helicopter in the parking lot, then everyone goes out for beer.

Later, McGarrett goes to visit Wo Fat before he can be transferred to a supermax prison on the mainland. He won't say exactly why McGarrett's mother came to visit him before she left, so Steve smacks Wo Fat's head against the bars of his cage and takes a blood sample so Max can run DNA and find out once and for all if McGarrett and Wo Fat are brothers.

Back at HQ, Danny has Toast dig through the busted hardware to see if he can figure out what the terrorists were doing before they wrecked everything. It takes him a minute or two, but eventually he finds out that they were stealing satellite data, which they then uploaded to a third party. The data was the location of Adam and Kono's satellite phone. They've been compromised, and the Yakuza are coming to get them.

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn!

What I Liked
-There's a terrorist leader named 'El Condor'. That's what sets this show apart from other police procedurals. Ridiculous stuff like that.
-Random, surfboard-based hijinks.

Why shoot in Hawaii if you're not going to show it off every now and then?

-Danny talks about his relationship while Steve gives Corsi CPR. It's always time for banter.
-The terrorists actually notice that they're being tailed. That happens so infrequently in TV and movies that it was a really welcome surprise. Generally, I notice if a car's been following me for more than a couple blocks, so I figure professional criminals would be able to spot a tail much more easily.
-The lead terrorist underling was played by Henry Ian Cusick, so Desmond and Jin got to hang out again. They didn't get much screen time together, but they never really did on Lost, either.


What I Hated
-The guys sent to kill Wo Fat expend a lot of ammo on his bulletproof cell wall, even though they have an explosive device. The stupidity of master criminals strikes again.
-The terrorists had everything planned out meticulously, until it came time for them to finally escape. If they'd just switched cars again under an overpass or something, they would've gotten away clean. Instead they stole a helicopter, which wouldn't even have been able to carry all of them anyway.

Final Thoughts
I was wondering when they were going to get around to upgrading all their stuff. It's been three whole years now, so Danno needs a shiny new car, and the office needs some kick ass new computers. My guess is that everything will run Windows 8.1 somehow.

This was a pretty good way to start off the season. Although, with the way it ended, I really think it would've made a better finale for last season. The way that one ended with unknown entities cutting through the door just seemed random. Kono and Adam in mortal danger makes more sense from both a story and an emotional standpoint.

That being said, I still liked what they did here. There were explosions, gunfights, random girls in bikinis, fast cars, this shot of a guy hang gliding:

What more do you need?

I would've liked the terrorists to get away and live to fight another day. I think they could've made good long-term recurring antagonists. The show could use some, too, now that Wo Fat is more or less permanently locked up, and Sang is free and living the sweet life. I guess they wanted to finish off the NLM once and for all, though, since they killed them all in a profoundly stupid manner. That's why I can't say this was a great episode. But it was still pretty good.

Castle 6x02: Dreamworld

Castle's been poisoned with a toxin that'll kill him in 10-12 hours, but thanks to a solid dose of pralidoxime and atropine he won't be feeling any ill effects until just before he drops dead. So he's both available and highly motivated to help the secret AG team find out just what exactly Dreamworld is. Beckett's boss agrees to let him help, but only from within the HQ, which means it's up to Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein to save the day.

They start by tracking down a reporter who tried to publish an article on Dreamworld that was quashed by the government over national security issues. Bronson (the guy who dropped dead in the previous episode, not the actor) was one of his sources. He didn't give out a lot of information, but the reporter says that just after he talked to Bronson, the Secretary of Defense called his editor personally, to kill the story. Since they're already in DC, the agents take a quick jaunt down to the Pentagon to talk to the man himself.

And he is in no mood!

According to the Secretary, Dreamworld is a myth, but if such a place did exist, then allowing an article to be published about it would damage national security. The Secretary's a reasonable guy, though, and he admits off the record that Bronson ran one mission out of Dreamworld: Killing Al Qaeda's number two man, Anwar Zawahri. There was talk about a possible response, but it never materialized, unless of course they're about to kill a bunch of people with the stolen toxin. While everyone else searches for Al Qaeda associates who may be in the area, Castle has what may be his final conversation with his mother and daughter.

And Pi, who really should be on his way. His planet needs him!

The attack killed five of Zawahri's cousins, and another one, Waqas Rasheed, was both in Jalalabad at the time and was caught on camera following Bronson out of a café. The agents quickly find him and arrest him, but he doesn't have the toxin or the antidote on him. So it's interrogation time. Rasheed swears that he has no idea what's going on and has nothing to do with it, then he tells a story of how on the night of the air strike, he saw Bronson carry a dead woman's body away from the rubble and had to swear on the lives of his family that he wouldn't tell anyone what he had seen. He wasn't following Bronson. Bronson was following him.

The DoD sends over the documents related to the mission, but they're so heavily redacted that they're almost useless. Castle manages to find a way to determine that the documents contained the word 'Valkyrie' but that doesn't help since there's not enough context. Fortunately, the tech agent, Richmond, did a year of work as the CTO at Bagram air base, and he thinks he can get the data from the audio recorder from the F-16 that performed the actual air strike.

He's a resourceful guy, that Richmond. I hope nothing bad happens to him.

When they listen to the audio, they find that 'Valkyrie' wasn't the codename for the mission or even for Zawahri, but for an American intelligence asset who was killed in the strike when she couldn't get out in time. The Secretary of Defense had Bronson cover it up. Beckett's boss won't let her go after the SecDef without concrete evidence, but she goes straight to his house, anyway. He's not talking, and when he calls up the AG to try to get Beckett fired, they know he's not involved, either.

Things look pretty bleak until they get a photo from Rasheed that shows 'Valkyrie' and they determine that she was the reporter's fiancée.

It's a real shame. They were a cute couple.

They can't track the guy down, but they can sure bust through his apartment door, looking for the antidote. Since Castle's damn near dead, he gets to go along. They find blueprints for the office where the toxin was stored as well as press credentials for an event where the Secretary of Defense is giving a speech. At first, they think that's he's going there to kill the Secretary, but when they find out he hasn't checked in at the press desk yet, they realize that he's going to kill the Secretary's wife.

Castle collapses on the Secretary's lawn, but Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein manage to capture the reporter and get the antidote in time to save him and the Secretary's wife. Beckett's happy that everything turned out all right, but when she finds out that the Secretary's going to get off scot free, even though he withheld information to cover his own ass, she starts having qualms about the job.

This is her qualms face.

What I Liked
-TV's Lisa Edelstein refers to Castle's impending death as an acceptable loss right in front of him. That was funny, if a bit harsh.
-Castle's ringtone for his mother is the opening of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The song itself is not necessarily evil, but it's been used in horror movies, which is what makes it a good choice. I, too, am horrified whenever my mother calls.
-Martha knows something's wrong because Richard didn't make any smart-ass quips when they spoke on the phone. The key with lying is to act naturally.
-Castle does the whole Dorothy waking up thing in the hospital. Beckett was there and Alexis was there and Martha was there...

Pi was there, too, but one picture of him per review is enough.

What I Hated
-The little info box on Rasheed identifies him as a dual US-Afghan citizen in the country on a student visa. US citizens don't need student visas to study in the US.
-The whole ticking clock, Oh My God, Castle's Gonna Die! thing. We all knew he wasn't going to die. Having him collapse at the end was just pointless. Admittedly, the characters didn't know that he wasn't going to die, but aside from Beckett and Castle, none of the main characters even knew he was sick. There was very little drama to be squeezed out of that particular trope, and they didn't really do a good job of it.

Final Thoughts
They've been really reaching to get Esposito and Ryan into the show. It looks like Castle will be back in New York next week, and Beckett will probably quit her job before the end of the sixth episode. Nevertheless, I really hope they find a better way of getting those guys some screen time. Heck, the Cap'n hasn't been on the show at all yet this season.

I still hate Pi. He's a caricature, and the show already had plenty of comic relief. There's a tiny chance he could grow on me, but I really hope he's killed in a horrible manner soon and Castle and the team have to investigate his murder. I mean, what happens to him when Alexis goes back to school? Is he going to move into Castle's garage with Fonzie and Boner?

The episode itself was pretty standard fare -beyond the Castle only has 24-hours to live thing, of course- and was far less of a departure than I was expecting after Beckett took the job in DC. Aside from a change of scenery, the show is essentially the same. Not that I'm saying I disapprove. I've quite enjoyed Castle for the past five years, and I'm quite happy to keep watching them do what they do best for a couple more. But they have an opportunity for them to break out of the mould for a few episodes, and they just don't seem to be taking it.

Castle 6x01: Valkyrie

When last we left our heroes, Castle had just proposed marriage to Beckett. Then we waited four months to find out her answer. As cliffhangers go, it was no 'Who Shot JR?' but it was better than nothing.

Just like me, Beckett thought Castle invited her to the park to break up with her and is somewhat taken aback when he drops to one knee. Things are complicated by the fact that she got the job with the fancy secret spy agency in DC. But he didn't propose to her just to get her to stay in new York, so she agrees to marry him and he puts a big, fat rock on her finger.

It pays to date a rich guy.

Ten seconds later, we skip forward two months, and Beckett is in DC running training exercises with TV's Lisa Edelstein. Meanwhile, Castle is in New York, having just returned from a 12-city book-signing tour. Alexis is back, too, having returned from Costa Rica a week early. And she brought a little surprise with her.

His name is Pi.

Castle's a little nonplussed, and when Beckett calls him to tell him she's just been put on a priority case and won't be flying to New York for the weekend, he's a little bummed. So he does the only logical thing and flies to DC for sexytimes with his ladyfriend. She still has to work, though, and since now she works for shadowy government types and he doesn't have clearance, he can't help.

But threats of long-term imprisonment and getting his fiancée fired aren't enough to stop Richard Castle, and when Beckett accidentally drops a photo, he begins his snooping. Under the guise of researching his next novel, he calls Ryan and Esposito, and after bribing them with Knicks tickets, he gets them to look up the serial number of a blown transformer. Using the awesome powers of tech lady Tory Ellis, the guys determine exactly where the transformer was. When the gang in New York discovers that the feds are actively investigating the explosion, Castle quickly pretends he's going into a tunnel and hangs up the phone.

Recurring guest star Maya Stojan as the NYPD tech lady who I didn't think would be in more than one episode.

As it turns out, the transformer was destroyed to momentarily kill the power at a cyber security firm that held a super-secret spy satellite access module. The awesome power of millions of dollars worth of government expertise and equipment leads Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein to a golf course, where they think the thief escaped to after leaving the security firm through a drainage tunnel. The awesome power of 15 minutes on the internet led Castle to the exact same conclusion, and TV's Lisa Edelstein is not at all happy to see him interfering with their case.

Not at all happy!

After a thorough dressing down (and not the sexy kind) from both agents, Castle tells Beckett what he knows, then promises to go home and stay out of it. The security guards saw a guy snooping around the day before the explosion, and the video from the golf course leads the government guys to an ex-military dude. They bust down his door, but he's not home... because he's busy kidnapping Castle off the street and forcing him into a car. The two of them go for a little ride and after briefly questioning Castle about 'Valkyrie', the guy says he's going off to Dream World and drops dead. The ensuing car accident attracts federal attention, and Beckett and TV's Lisa Edelstein are not at all happy to see that Castle was involved.

Not at all happy!

The feds arrest Castle, and Beckett's boss gives him an overly harsh interrogation to make sure he tells them everything he knows and learns once and for all to keep his nose out of federal business. While the rest of the team tracks down the dead guy's girlfriend, Beckett tells her gentleman friend to go back to New York.

Reluctantly, Castle hops the next flight back home and has a heart-to-heart talk with Pi while the young man prepares a fruitarian dinner for the family. It's a short talk, though, since Castle needs advice from more worldly people, namely Ryan and Esposito. Kevin offers up relationship advice, while Javier tells them that Dream World isn't where you go when you're taking a nap, but rather a secret US military base in the Persian Gulf. Beckett's into some serious stuff.

Meanwhile, back in DC, the feds have used magic facial recognition software to track down the girlfriend. They arrest her at Union Station as she's pulling the access module out of a locker. The girlfriend says it was all a setup, and Beckett believes her because the whole thing was just way too sloppy. So, she looks into what other businesses were in the same building as the security firm, and the one occupying the top floor is so classified that even she can't see what it is.

Later, some guys in suits drag Castle out of his apartment and take him back to DC where Beckett tells him that the secret upstairs offices held a chemical laboratory, and that he's been exposed to a super-secret toxin and only has one day to live. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

What I Liked
-Castle's full name is Richard Edgar Alexander Rogers Castle... or REAR Castle. Hehe- butt jokes.
-Nathan Fillion's face acting.

He's the best at what he does.

-The shadowy government computers can't magically enhance a licence plate. I think that's the first time I've ever seen that on TV.
-"It's papaya steak. It's the juiciest steak there is." They really wrote Pi as the ultimate hipster douchebag.

What I hated
-Pi. As a character, he's a weird stereotype that really has no place on this show. Beyond that, I'll admit that I don't keep up to date on the love lives of fictional characters, but didn't Alexis have a boyfriend? And a hipster douche doesn't really seem like her type, anyway. I guess he must give excellent moustache rides.
-The whole 'You have 24 hours to live' thing. The show is called "Castle". They're not going to kill him off. Without Nathan Fillion, the show would lose all cohesion, so unless Richard has a long-lost twin brother, there's no chance of him dying, and everyone knows it. You can't have dramatic tension if every already knows the outcome, so why bother trying?

Final Thoughts
It's been a while since I last saw TV's Lisa Edelstein in anything. It looks like she's mostly been doing occasional TV guest appearances lately. That's a bit of a step down from being the female lead on one of the most popular shows on television, but I suspect that she socked away enough House money that she never needs to work again if she doesn't want to.

They'll probably sort it out in the next episode or two, but I wonder how they're going to keep everyone involved in the show if Beckett's in DC and everyone else is in New York. While Castle's untouchable, they could potentially write out Beckett. The odds on that are pretty slim, but I'm really not sure what else they can do, other than having her get fired from her new job. But that would make me wonder just why the hell they bothered to give it it to her in the first place.

Pi is basically Poochie. I hope he dies on the way back to his home planet.

The first episode back is always a bit of a wash as they resolve cliffhangers and set the tone for the rest of the season. Apparently, this year Castle will make funny faces, and Beckett will be serious business lady. That's not really an improvement over last season.