Castle

Well, here's hoping they never do another "documentary" episode.

Yeah. That was painful. Especially Lanie.

I'd like to think there's a right way to do that kind of a twist, but that's probably just my general like of the show causing the bias that I want to believe the director/writers had something much, much better in mind that they utterly failed to execute.

Beckett was the only believable one, because I think her character's motivations ("This is stupid, I can't believe we're doing this") matched up perfectly with Stana's motivations ("This is stupid, I can't believe we're doing this").

I don't know.. I thought most of the cast worked well, but the whole shaky cam crap ruined it for my wife. I thought the overall mystery worked, though I expect it was a setup for C. Thomas Howell to make a return later as he is un-credited.

The documentary added nothing but a bit of comic relief, and even then the amount of funny was less than the amount that was cringe-worthy. It wasn't relevant to the investigation and the "oh-noes will Gates catch them" had zero buildup or tension. They mystery worked, but I think they could have dropped the entire documentary aspect and it would have been a better episode for it.

Also, I could not believe that they had this guitar virtuoso and they were going to make him play bass. What I couldn't believe even more than that is that even after they lost their guitarist, they STILL were going to have this guy play bass instead of, I don't know, taking over on guitar.

It seemed to me that the documentary aspect was a metajoke about making a TV show, for example the way Beckett had to explain who the Lanie was or that Lanie could have just called with the information. Another more blatant example is when they bust in on the music producer scoring the cop movie.

The thing about deliberately bad acting is that it's still bad acting. I had to spend most of the episode looking for impossible cross-cuts. I think I found some. Also, just as with every show Sorkin has ever done about something other than the show, don't show people doing stuff they're supposed to be good at unless you are good at it. That song the band was performing when they were trying out the new candidate for lead guitar was godawful.

For the money, I'll take Supernatural's style diversions.

Edit: Also, why was that allegedly sick ass bass guitar piece charted on the treble clef again?

That's just a symbol of how revolutionary and difficult it must have been to play.

agreed, the gimmick of that episode was just shitty. I get why it may have seen cool at the time, but meh, not a good idea.

Dammit. I hate when shows do stupid tech stuff... Every smart phone I've ever laid hands on allows you to make an emergency call to 911 even when it's locked or been disabled.

Drove me nuts for the entire first half of the episode. And what's worse is that they show the iPhone lock screen several times, and the Emergency Call button had been deliberately blacked out. So they caught the problem during production and just didn't care.

Yeah, it was asinine in the extreme. Especially since they even acknowledged the emergency 911 concept when Beckett was needling Castle about worrying they wouldn't be able to afford to make the call for help from that pay phone. The jokes regarding the phone were not really that funny, I'd like to think they could have replaced that entire section with something that didn't start with an idiotic premise that anyone with a cell phone would boggle at.

I'll just leave this here.

You hired Gina Torres for that? Really? I get that everybody who's been on a show with Nathan Fillion gets to take a ride, but...you couldn't come up with anything meatier? My puzzler hurts. I mean, cute episode, but....was she just in town for the day or something? On lunch break from Suits?

Yeah I was bummed out that she only got like two or three scenes. :( And no Firefly references (that I caught).

How can you have Gina Torres on and not have a Firefly reference? At least something about how she's the strong, second-in-command type, or how you think she'd have a cool head in a firefight or something.

There was an Angel reference in that one scene where maggots crawled out of her eyes.

Yeah, I also finished the episode and thought, "That's it?" I thought it was a pretty painful episode all around, though.

Just, uh, "wow".

Pretty strong ep, I thought - especially so considering how problematic a lot of their previous OMGDRAMA offerings were.

WAY better than most of the srs bzns episodes that the show has done in the past.

Sadly I have no hope that when all this is over and everyone is inexplicably safe and sound, Ms. Mary Sue will take maybe one episode to get over the fact that her incredible stupidity made this all her fault.

P.S. no one called her mom? And that last shot just made me laugh. OMG SHE HAS BEEN TAKEN!

Don't worry... Castle has a particular set of skills...

The show does, at least, make that joke in the next episode. Because he does go to there.

The past episode was really a good showcase for Fillion - he got to be a little more serious and show he could keep up. Katic seems a little unnecessary for this story (mostly unavoidable), but since almost everything else is about her, I'm cool with that.

Chances that interrogated guy actually presses charges for Ricky shoving his dick in a light socket or whatever he did? Zero? Less?

Yeah, Fillion did great. I really enjoyed his scene where he got the address from the gut shot guy. But moreso his delivery in the scene where the writers gave him the lines "Don't promise me you'll find her... because I could never forgive you if you don't." or whatever the exact line was.

I'm happy to see Fillion get a chance to show his dark side. He's generally so smiley and happy and wisecracking that his capability to be seriously uncompromisingly scary really contrasts his usual image, but because of the setup in Castle he doesn't have a good reason to go there very often. The scene last night reminded me of the few spots in Firefly where he showed why he's the captain (notably when he was about to kill Jayne and when he was dealing with the salvagers in Out of Gas).

I'm thinking specifically of one line: "You want to see the real me now!?"

Great episode throughout. I'm also really, really happy that there's a nice, healthy dose of I-told-you-so regarding Alexis' incredibly stupid video diary and everyone but Castle's reaction to it.

I mentally skipped all the "talk to your child about being a camwhore" after school special bits in previous episodes, but thanks everyone for reminding me!

On the Gina Torres episode, there was a Firefly reference in the scene where she and her husband are being kept in separate interrogation rooms where Castle suggests they interview the guy because Gina's the "strong one."

I feel like either you don't know what this term means or else I missed out on some shit-hot character development for Alexis.

Yeah. Camwhores are extremely secretive about things like where they live and what science lectures they're going to see.

Not that I would know anything about that.

What? I'm apparently the target demographic for Filipino softcore porn robots pretending to be actual humans on dating sites.

I was exaggerating for brevity's sake.

Guessing that the reveal tonight is that it is about Alexis and not her friend after all...

Jeez after a pretty strong part 1 they sure went all hurf blurf on part 2.

I did find it funny that they had this French guy all set up to be like some Liam Neeson badass and he just gets popped and hand-waived away as being out of his league. Also, I assume we are meant to imply that Castle's father was the one who brutally tortured and pulled the fingernails out of the kidnapper before putting a bullet in his head? I assume he has a license to kill and maim or something? I feel like there was the potential for an interesting moment between Castle and Beckett there, since she kinda is still the detective in charge of "solving" that murder.

As it was, there's a very Zero Dark Thirtyesque sense that the torture was implicitly justified by the end result of Alexis being rescued, and the show setting up the torturer being the good guy (going as far as to give him the line "I'm the good guy"), and an ending where it's supposed to be heartwarming to know that he's still out there torturing and murdering people in the name of justice and apple pie.

Who's the torturer in that example? Because the guy who's probably still alive is Big Daddy Castle (because you don't write him out that fast) and I don't remember him torturing anybody. I remember old Dicky there stomping on a guy's balls until he said one damn thing or another last week, but not the elder.

It was okay for Castle. Look - if Stana Katic or Molly Quinn ever actually die on the show, it will be because something has gone horribly wrong either in the real world or in the imagination universe where contracts get negotiated. That means that any time the premise is that one of them is threatened, you can probably expect the payout to be a little bit disappointing, because, spoiler alert - they're not actually threatened. My only real problem with the turn they decided to take is the premise. This dude is well over sixty, because he's supposed to be contemporary to Rick's mother. Once you get that old, your body just straight starts to malfunction in certain ways. You can compensate for it and train yourself and make the hit movie and comic book Red, but a responsible government agency is going to be moving you either into administration or into retirement. Big Dick shouldn't be in the field at this stage of his career - he certainly shouldn't be some sort of submerged universal operator responsible for flitting around the globe and tweaking the nipples of euroterrorists.

It was still an okay episode, though. The top half of the two part thing was better than the bottom, but...you know, good for the top half.

It's implied big daddy castle tortured the Kidnapper, instead of the kidnapper being killed by his employers as everyone else believes.

For my part, it is a silly episode played mostly straight, which is the thin thread that castle walks in entertaining me. Of course Castle's dad is this super secret international old man spy, because really, what else is there to do. It's like the writing room is having bets with itself to see who can out silly the original premise of the show and still make it seem like a New York procedural. To be fair, it's not any sillier than modern spy novel plots you find in bookstores.

Arise! Solid episode tonight. Castle going full on coward after the events of the two parter was a refreshing change and fun to watch. Wes Craven was really shoehorned in, though. I wonder if he's a fan of the show?

Seriously...? Bad Castle, bad.

The show has always had something of a hardon for getting professionals from writing and writing-adjacent fields (like screenwriting). I suspect that there might have been a few people ahead of him in the list that they couldn't book a first, though. Like Stephen King.

I have to admit, it's difficult for me to reconcile an episode wherein Dick is basically a twelve year old child with another episode wherein he hammers a guy's nutsack into a light socket or whatever it was we're supposed to think he did without any consequence or remorse. I don't want to say that the show should pick a goddamn consistent tone and stick with it, but maybe putting this episode this close after the other isn't the best idea. Also, somebody please explain how you screw up a power feed with a magnet you can hold in your hand before I'm forced to accuse this entire writing staff of juggalosity.

Question: why is nobody busting Ryan's balls over the fact that he currently dresses himself like Fifties Dad on the weekend?

Also, the fuck is up with all these goddamn diving shows? Some fat Danish guy (and presumably some other contestants, but that's who was featured on Weekly Wipe) does an hilarious cannonball and now every nation in the civilized world has to have its bottom third ruined with obtrusive graphics?