Castle Season 4

A reset of sorts. But clarity is given to the Becket/Castle situation. The doctor boyfriend is gone, which is just as well. It's good enough for now. As they stretch out the mystery.

I like seeing Cassidy Yates as the new Captain. Nice contrast she adds, no nonsense. And Worf as the police psych, interesting. Sorry for my Trek references.

I liked the new captain, too. She acts more how I believe a real captain would act, professional and with no small amount of by-the-book CYA. Things were getting too cozy toward the end of last season.

Having had a father go through massive emergency heart surgery, however, I can tell you that nobody mere hours off the operating table would look like Beckett did. She should have looked AWFUL. The first time I saw my dad after he came out, I thought he didn't make it through surgery, because I didn't think anybody alive could look that terrible. And she should have been hooked up to a lot more machines and tubes. But that's my only nitpick.

I liked seeing Alexis furious at Castle for diving back into this world that came literally inches away from killing him. That seemed like a very real reaction a kid would have to that situation, especially a kid who's effectively grown up with a single parent like her.

I didn't think it was a reset at all.   In the final scene in the meeting with the psychiatrist (nicely played by Michael Dorn) she pointed out "I remember everything..." so I'm assuming she means she now absolutely knows Castle loves her; she's just not prepared to go down that road.

 

I thought that was a nice play that made it clear to us nothing was reset, it's just one character isn't prepared to change things.. and I"m betting that was a big part of why she broke up with the doctor.

The fact that Beckett knows for sure how Castle truly feels but doesn't acknowledge it to him will add an interesting spin on all of their dealings for the season. It may not reset the show's dynamic but it adds an interesting new wrinkle.

Honestly, the revelation at the end that she remembered anything seemed pretty obvious to me at the beginning, the way she looked away from Castle before the commercial break as she claimed to not remember it.

That being said, I enjoyed the episode. Not sure how I feel about Sherry Palmer as the captain. I mean, I guess I'm not supposed to like her that much (at least at this point), which is working so far.

Yeah, but that kind of character is so common now and very offputting. The shippers all die for Castle and Becket to be together, so here comes this nasty wedge character to keep them apart. It'll probably be alright here, but I understand such a character helped destroy the second season of Human Target. We've all got enough stress in life without having the "character who brings grit" horning in on our escapism.

"if you two are finished with your superhero fantasy..."

Great line delivery! They keep adding bits of common interests between Becket and Castle.

Regarding the plot, It looked they may have been about to go down the same path of an original Hawaii Five-0 where the killer follows the same path of a comic book by killing people who are giving trouble to the hero.

Love, love, love, love, love that Alexis didn't get into Stanford. She's such an angelic, perfect creature that it was nice to see a real setback come her way. I wouldn't want to see her doing drugs or sleeping around, but there needs to be a LITTLE conflict in that storyline. Plus, it opens the door for her to stay on the show by attending college a little closer to home.

Early enrollment is normally a big honor.  This should be real encouragement for her to double down her senior year with extra circulars etc.   Or maybe she stays local.   Either way, you're right, I thought that was a really great piece of writing.

Molly Quinn is such a fine actress that I'm happy to see her stick around as long as possible on the show. I agree that letting her be rejected for early admission by Stanford was a wise decision.

I think it is a real positive that they keep Quinn as long as possible since she and her character really add to the show.

That said anyone who knows anything about Stanford would be amused by the rejection because in reality someone with her pedigree would have sailed in no problems.

I'm tired of Iron Gates and her, "Is that all you've got, detective?" crap. She's a captain. She should know that every clue is not just dumped in your lap like on the TV.

They shouldn't have made the deal with the cryogenics guy to keep the head. They should have said, "Look, you either give us the body, or we put a huge Jiffy Pop in your house and light it up with a laser from an airplane!"

Ok, major credit for the Real Genius reference.
 

 

Have to agree that the captain is a bad add to the cast. The team concept is not flowing. When the series started it was Beckett that opposed Castle being around and everyone else was happy. Now they bring in a captain that can't be pleased and Beckett kind of having to defend him. Not working.

I kind of like that about the character. Most procedural characters fall into the trope of being a hero or villain. She's neither. Here we have a woman who made her career in Internal Affairs, is driven by her personal ambition rather than a thirst for justice, and at the end of the day is really too green for the job. She's never been a beat cop, or a detective on the streets. Her whole career up until now has been inside the force. It brings a different element to the table, and it creates conflict on a show where everybody had gotten way too chummy.

What I mean is when Beckett comes in and says, "The body is missing, but we have determined the victim is a male." And she comes back with, "Great, a male. That narrows it down!" And scowls like it's Beckett's fault. In the real world, a lot of murders go unsolved. Beckett has a pretty amazing record. I'm not saying it's not realistic for a captain to be overbearing and demanding, but it's still kind of annoying. They have kind of set up her "wet behind the ears" status that you mentioned by her constantly worrying about what the DA wants. Montgomery would have said, "Tell the DA to be patient and let my detectives do their work, or go to hell."

The captain "Sir" has got to be the most unlikeable television character I ever recall seeing. I certainly hope she falls victim to a slow, violent, tortorous death at the hands of a serial killer sometime during the season.

A lot of the cop procedurals, especially NCIS and its knockoffs have had these "power bitch" characters, but nothing like this woman. Does she ever have something positive to say or is it always some snarky negative comment?

I'm to the point where I just fast forward past her scenes, regardless of what dialogue or story point I may miss. Completely ruins the fun factor of this show.

I know the "hostage in a bank robbery" storyline is a total procedural trope, but "Castle" pulled it off better than most. It was nice to see Castle being smart on his own again, since they've mostly wrote him staying the obvious in witty and or punny ways so far this season. When Alexis showed up at the crime scene, my heart just broke.

I was waiting for Alexis to go up to Beckett and say "damnit, he loves you.. "   :)

The "inside man" angle was pretty obvious, but the surprise end for the "robbers" was not. As soon as they mentioned a "son-in-law," though, I figured it all out.

I didn't catch on as fast as you guys did when the guy was freaking out about needing air and getting out that he was the inside man. The explosion was a surprise!

But for me, the main thing that was big was how Beckett reacted when she saw Castle was okay. And I liked how Castle's mother had to remind Becket that she was there too!

Poor Alexis, she did the right thing and broke it off with the bum.

Oh, I didn't figure the guy panicking... until the explosion, which caught me off guard.  I was waiting to hear that they had faked it and one of them was dead and they escaped or something.. I thought that was a good twist.  

I figured the guy was not a legitimate hostage before the fake seizure, but the merc double-cross was a complete surprise. That was Keyser Söze devious.

It was pretty fun seeing Castle paired with Ryan and Esposito. Elvis Castle was fun, too, but too brief. Somebody sprayed some WD-40 on "Iron" Gates, because she wasn't as crabby here. She finally gave Beckett a little respect and some backhanded respect for Castle by saying she wanted to see if Beckett could still do it without Castle's help.

I wonder if the sniper thought Beckett was about to bust out her cans in an effort to save her life. Haha.

Those scars were WAY too small for the kind of open heart surgery she supposedly had.

Yeah. They even cut in a frame of them slicing her in two, so we're not going to buy the "minimally invasive laser surgery" excuse they might throw at us.

Patrick, your mind is sick to have even gone there during such a tense, serious episode. I wondered the same thing. "Whoa. What kind of cop are you? No, keep going, keep going!"

This was just about a benchmark "Castle" episode for me. An hour of Castle and Beckett bantering with each other, with super creepiness along the margins. And I've got to say, the scene with the woman in the cage where she starts smiling after they move in too close, is one of the more unnerving images I've had introduced into my brain in a while.