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| Castle in on ABC. |
Written by Janyce Denise Glasper
An avid fan of most Whedonverse alums, I started watching Castle in the middle of the fourth season to see the charming charismatic Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Buffy, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing- Along Blog) play the title role. Stana Katic–although a new actress to me, is a fantastic choice to play Detective Kate Beckett, a strong, independent, and very smart cop with a ferocious attitude and deliverer of humorous quips and handcuffs to the bad guys.
After Castle’s season five finale in which Beckett has to choose between a great promotion to D.C. and a marriage proposal, it raised a lot of questions about the summer hiatus. Why should she risk an opportunity to enhance her talented skills on a chance to become wife number three? Why are fans outraged and painting her selfish if she chose the power move over love? Most importantly, how did her relationship with Castle get to this point of wedding bells?
In television, there are far too many serials where the two leads get together–often at the workplace. This simply showcases that men and women cannot work in close quarters without “love” getting in the way. It leaves writers to play too much on the “will they or won’t they?” device which can muddle an entire episode. More often than not, they get the answer wrong (Mulder and Scully still comes to mind). Chemistry is a good thing to have, but why must it always be addressed as a sexual one? Why can’t men and women be friends at the workplace? Kate has beers with her male colleagues before and after Castle shows up. Why can’t he just be one more face across the bar?
Now I’ve finished watching the first two seasons of Castle–all 34 episodes over the course of a weekend and can honestly say that I’m not quite buying a passage on the “Caskett” train yet. Banter between the leads is fun to watch, and Fillion has an intriguing engagement with Katic.
And the opening premise isn’t hard to swallow.
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| Castle (Nathan Fillion) is a little too enthused over being interrogated by Kate (Stana Katic). |
Famed crime novelist Richard Castle is a man surrounded by women. He lives with Alexis, his teenage genius daughter, and Martha, his mother–a Broadway actress who has to stay at his humble abode because an ex spent her entire savings. One of Castle’s former wives (he has two) happens to be his publicist and Alexis’s mother. He is at a point in his life where things are coming to a mundane standstill. Until Detective Kate Beckett, a secret Castle book fan, has a few questions for him. After getting a taste of helping the police aide in a case, thanks to a friendship with the mayor, he gets to stick around much to Beckett’s displeasure and announces that he plans to pen a book starring his new inspiration–Detective Kate Beckett.
That’s already two strikes in many of Castle’s interferences.
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| Kate (Stana Katic) flashes her badge of honor. |
While Castle is surrounded by women, emotionally guarded Kate is nestled in a man’s world. Her boss is Captain Roy Montgomery, and her two buddies are partners Detective Kevin Ryan and Detective Javier Esposito. She decided to become a cop because her mother was violently murdered, and for years she had run her own private investigation but ultimately decided to stop. She is drawn to strange cases, gets them solved in a matter of forty minutes with help from her friends and even Castle, who frequently spins his writer fictions yet shows off an incredible knack for crime resolution.
Castle does, however, add innuendo to conversations and is often too suggestive, but Kate doesn’t seem to mind lighting his fuses. Still not seeing the “love” here. Maybe it’s too early. Just a humorous camaraderie between a cop and a man that annoys her for fun. He brings charming wit and coffee into her gritty life, but it doesn’t change who he is at the end of the day–a big kid. He plays games with his daughter and sleeps around frequently, but every time a man shows interest in Kate, his bear claws come out. “No one touches my muse,” his expression says to these men who then always ask Kate–“Is there something going on between you two?”
At the end of season one, Castle coordinates his own investigation into Beckett’s mom’s murder (which she strictly forbade), and it angers her so much that she wants him gone.
Strike three.
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| Everyone wants Beckett (Stana Katic) to date Castle (Nathan Fillion) because he follows her around like a puppy. |
However, Beckett’s friends just want her to be with Castle (because she’s beautiful, young, and lonely yadda yadda yadda!), and he gets compliments aplenty all around the precinct. Medical examiner Lanie Parish often tells Kate to give Castle a chance although it’s not clear why she does, having barely shared a few scenes with him. Also, I don’t think I would ever advise a friend to date a man staring hard at my cleavage and having conversations with them. Plus, why is it so wrong for Beckett to stay single? Lanie is too!
“Why do you think he keeps following you around? I’m sure it’s not to watch you be with another man.” –Detective Javier Esposito
Yet Beckett should continue seeing Castle flock to his women? Ugh!
From A Deadly Game, season two’s finale, Detective Javier Esposito says the above statement. It’s insensitive considering the fact that Kate has started dating a nice someone–a former co-worker and friend of his, Demming. It gets nastier when Castle keeps asking Kate to spend the summer at his Hamptons home knowing this. By the end of the episode she dumps Demming (who sadly doesn’t understand why) and is shyly on the verge of asking Castle out, but bam! He springs out his ex-wife, saying that she is his Hamptons last-minute companion. Kate is left embarrassed, and her nosy friends are watching through the glass.
This irksome moment defined Castle’s selfishness and vanity. Prior to the finale, in the episode Overkill, his ego wanted to win a case and went to battle with Demming in a disgusting showing of oversized macho testosterone. The finale further revealed just how vile his intentions were and made him pretty much unlikable for a strong woman like Kate.
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| Use us all: Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Roy), Susan Sullivan (Martha), Molly Quinn (Alexis), Nathan Fillion (Castle), Stana Katic (Kate), Tamala Jones (Lanie), Jon Huertas (Esposito), and Seamus Dever (Ryan). |
Castle has such a diverse cast, but creator Andrew Marlowe barely uses them all in one episode because he’s spending too much time building up Caskett. Yes. It’s a difficult challenge dealing with a large amount of actors, but each character is important in every aspect of the story–from the murder scene to the morgue to the precinct to Castle’s house (weird fit but this is his point of view). Here’s hoping that in the next three seasons of catch up that stories utilize characters outside of Castle and Beckett and, of course, answer the big question of whether I hop on the Caskett train or the casket bus. Male and female friends can work together. It’s just in the television world they seem to always want more.
It seems inevitable in TV that when you have two leads, a man and woman working together that the show tends to resolve around whether or not these two will get together. Sadly they inevitably do which I feel takes away from the plot of the show. To me this is the Kiss of Death for these shows. The show becomes something else; the drama between our two lovers. Sadly the audience is usally taken for that ride and are just as eager to see the leads get together. One of my fav shows that just recently came to the states has been ABC’s ‘Motive” The show is low tech (no CSI gadgets or elaborate story plots here), and straight to the point; police officers doing their jobs. The partners do their job and THATS IT!!!.We aren’t given too much backstory on any of the characters which for me works. Its been a great reprieve to build on my own idea of who these people are.
Exactly! Yes! What I love about “Castle” is the mayhem, the jokes, and the mysteries, but I feel awkwardly uncomfortable with the Caskett stuff at times. It comes full force with extra cheese. When things start becoming too romantic/overly fluffy, less funny, and one episode characters tell them to get together, it’s sickening. In the fifth season, their relationship completely took too much focus and lost a lot of integrity founded in earlier seasons. Audiences certainly love their portmanteaus, but I miss the show being about WORK! I did watch the first episode of “Motive” by the way and will definitely watch more of it! Pretty intriguing.
Vile? Oh please, I’ll be the first one to say Castle was wrong in taking off with Gina – but hey, Beckett shot him down many times and he was certain she’d be enjoying her summer with Demming. Tell me, was he supposed to mope around like a lovesick idiot? And how could he know Beckett was about to ask him out? The man doesn’t have a crystal ball! He went to the Hamptons with Gina to lick his wounds and deal with Beckett’s constant rejection. Both of them did stupid things in this finale. But saying Castle’s vile, vain and selfish show that you’re not paying attention to the show – at all. Hopefully you will understand more about Caskett as the show goes on.
Glad to hear you will be tuning into Motive. I would love to hear your thoughts. Its been getting mixed reviews. Totally agree with you about Castle. It has loss something since putting the two together which was my fear. It just changes a shows dynamics.
Let’s face it, Castle is just Taming of the Shrew as a detective story. Kate has to get tamed–that’s how the story goes.
That’s exactly what happened to her in this past season. She became extremely mild.
I wasn’t saying that Castle should mope over Beckett. And Castle is completely all of the adjectives and more. Sometimes he’s very likable and other times he’s not. The point of the piece is about office relationships and trying to understand why the writers had to pair them up together because I enjoyed the dynamic of their charismatic relationship. Now it has simply turned into an overused cliché for television; stating that chemistry between male and female characters are catalysts for sexual partnerships and nothing more.