Rating the TV Romance, Part 5: Castle and Beckett

O.k., we are now at the final entry of my "Rating the TV Romance" series of blog posts.  Castle (2009 - present) is actually the show that prompted me to start this entire series of posts to begin with - specifically the finale of season 4, which just aired in May.  It was an episode that I kinda loved immensely but also felt conflicted about.  My brain was like "Wellll ..." but my heart was like "WOOT!!" 

Castle is a show that I actually didn't even start watching until this past season.  The show has a very similar tone to Chuck in that it's basically a dramedy.  The premise is a mix of Murder She Wrote and a lighthearted/comedic version of any typical cop show - Katie Beckett is an NYPD detective and Rick Castle is a mystery novelist.  Caste is brought in to help Beckett on a case of copycat murders modeled after a couple of his books.  In doing so, he gets the idea to base his next series of novels on Beckett herself.  The show follows their hijinks in solving wacky cases from that point forward.  Till recently I never knew anything about this show and I've never been into cop procedurals, so I didn't watch any of the first 3 seasons.  But then I saw a couple things online about the season 3 finale after it aired, and the cliffhanger of that episode sounded like it would rate highly in one of the two "soap" categories I'm using in these "Rating the TV Romance" blog posts: The Danger Factor (dun dun DUUNNNN!!).  If you read any of the previous posts then you'll see that I'm a huge sucker for this - put the fictional couple into perilous situations and it puts you on the edge of your seat and ratchets the drama up to 11.  So the info I heard about this season 3 finale suddenly made me say, "Ohh, what's happening on this show, this looks exciting!"  Haha, I am ridiculous.

I then tuned into season 4 when it started to check the show out, which worked out well because Chuck had moved to Fridays in its last season, so I no longer had anything to watch on Monday nights.  And, in watching season 4, I was conflicted.  The structure of the show kind of weirded me out because it's extremely formulaic, focusing like 90% of every episode on its murder case of the week.  I HATE case of the week shows and I hate formulaic shows.  And on top of that, the way the cases were solved often resembled Scooby Doo - kind of predictable and hokey at times.  On the bright side, I did see a spark of something in the Castle/Beckett "will-they-won't-they" pairing, I liked the comedic aspects of the show, I liked all the characters and actors, and I saw some potential in some of the ongoing dramatic arcs.  So about 10 episodes into season 4, I finally gave in and went back and watched the pilot episode to fill in the background.  Then I told myself, "o.k. lemme check out one more ep.  O.k. now just one more."  I ended up devouring the entire first 3 seasons over Christmas break from work.  I was hooked like crack.

Watching the first 3 seasons completely changed my entire mindset of season 4 because I now had the whole backstory of the characters, the romance, and the series.  Castle and Beckett are just frakking cute as hell together, and damn Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic have insane chemistry.  I suddenly became extremely invested in seeing them finally get together as a couple on the show (despite my lack of interest in the case-of-the-week stories), and I had a feeling it would happen in season 4.  So naturally, they are the next (and final) couple in my "Rating the TV Romance" list.  Let's get to the ratings now (WARNING: Major show spoilers ahead):

Danger Factor: 8/10

The interesting thing about Castle is that I think the "danger factor" was actually fairly low the first two seasons.  We had the ongoing storyline of Beckett's mother Johanna's unsolved murder, and in season 2 we started to see a conspiracy behind it.  But we never saw concrete evidence that these characters could really be in danger related to this situation until midway through season 3.  That's when we got a great ep called "Knockdown", which starts off with Castle and Beckett having coffee with a former detective (Detective Raglan) who had been the lead investigator on Johanna's murder case.  Right as Raglan is about to give key info on the conspiracies behind the case, he is fatally shot through the window by a sniper right where he sits.  As if that's not jarring and freaky enough, there's a moment where Castle thinks Kate has been hit, because she's wearing a white sweater, and a decent amount of Raglan's blood has splattered onto the middle of her chest, with the bright red blood popping out vividly against the white sweater.  It's only if you watch the series in a "backwards" fashion like I did that you immediately see what a heavy and obvious moment of foreshadowing this is.  The amount of danger these two are in only escalates as the season progresses, ultimately culminating in their police captain being killed in the season finale, and Kate herself being shot in the chest by a sniper in the final scene of the ep at Captain Mongomery's funeral (hence the foreshadowing bloody sweater from like 10 eps prior).  Needless to say, Kate almost dies, but survives.  Season 4 covers the year of aftermath of this, with Kate working to recover physically and mentally, and with Castle doing everything he can to keep her from touching the case again, to avoid having the "bad guys" come back and finish the job.

So the "danger factor" on Castle is pretty high these days, given that they already killed one major character and put Kate on her deathbead for a couple eps.  It also made for a relatively dark season 4, which in some ways was a bit of a bummer, but was kind of intriguing to me as well.


General Soap Factor: 6/10

While the "Danger Factor" for Castle is pretty high these days, the other soap factors don't come anywhere near the levels of Chuck or Alias.  We don't have people coming back from the dead, discovering long-lost family members, getting in crazy situations on the romantic front, turning from good to evil or vice versa (not major characters anyway), or getting secretly killed and cloned into evil doppelgangers.  What we do have is the following:

• Several love triangles and rectangles over the course of the series with Castle and Beckett
• The family drama might ratchet up next season given a hint in season 4 about Castle's absentee father - Does he work for the CIA?
• The Johanna Beckett murder conspiracy seems to be reaching slightly ridiculous heights of nameless faceless "eevviil" these days, and this season it served mainly as a barrier between Castle and Beckett, which no one was thrilled about.  It was quite clearly used as a tool to make the Castle/Beckett storylines as dramatic as possible this season, and in the end I still fell for it hook line and sinker.  :-P

Just to elaborate on the last point there: As mentioned earlier, in the season 3 finale, "Knockout", Beckett is shot by a sniper while she's speaking at Captain Montgomery's funeral.  Castle tackles her in an attempt to stop her from getting hit, but he's too late.  Next thing you know, they're both on the ground next to the podium and he's freaking out (obvi), and suddenly he utters those 3 (err, 4) key words to her: "I love you Kate."  She, meanwhile, is slightly preoccupied at that moment with attempting to not die.  However, she's looking straight into his eyes and clearly she hears him say it.  But when we pick up in the season 4 premiere, she claims to have blacked out on the entire incident.  Convenient, Kate, convenient (this serves as a cock-block for all of season 4).  I think this storyline definitely veers into soapy territory, though certainly not outside the realm of a prime time drama either.  It's also probably the biggest thing that kept most fans glued to the screen for much of season 4 - waiting (and waiting and waiting) to find out what the hell would happen when Castle finally found out the truth that Kate heard his "ILY" (spoiler: he doesn't take it well).

Overall Rating of Show Itself: 7.5/10

Like I mentioned earlier, Castle as a show tends to frustrate me.  It's very formulaic, at times the cases of the week can be quite predictable or just hokey, and the Castle and Beckett characters were manipulated to act like total idiots in the last 5 or 6 eps of this season, just so the writers could save the big cathartic "getting together" moment for the finale.  It's not a real dynamic or risk-taking show, but there are some upsides to that: One thing that frustrated the hell out of me about Chuck and Alias was that while those shows were always exciting, risk-taking and dynamic, they were also SLOPPY as hell with both attention to detail and with storylines that seemed to be pulled out of the writers' asses on last-second whims and then sometimes totally abandoned later.  Castle is the opposite of that: The writers are excellent with attention to detail, continuity, and planning large story arcs ahead so that they play out on screen in a much more believable way.  I love when a show will give you a small and seemingly minor moment in one ep, and then you may see nothing related to that for the next 10 plus episodes, but then suddenly down the road it connects to something important and you go, "Ahh!!"  I am a very detail oriented person, so I appreciate that immensely.  I think the only show I've ever seen that is consistently dynamic and risk-taking while also paying close attention to detail and proper pre-planning is Breaking Bad.  I don't think I've ever seen any other show pull this off.  Unfortunately Castle doesn't manage to pull off both of these feats most of the time, but at least they've got one of them right.

There is also another important thing Castle does right: the characters.  Despite the issues I have with the show, this is really what keeps me watching.  I love the supporting players - Ryan, Esposito, Lanie, Martha - all so funny and entertaining.  Rick Castle himself is charming, hilarious, smart, and despite the fact he has a history of being a cad, he's as loyal to Kate as a puppy dog and he's also a great dad to Alexis.  Kate Beckett is smart, strong, determined and successful, but also quite flawed in a relatable way.  I'm sure the fact that I'm a lot more familiar with family tragedy than I ever wanted to be is largely why I was drawn to the character.  But I also find it interesting when a t.v. shows takes an already fairly damaged character and then spends the series kind of tearing them apart all the way to rock bottom, essentially forcing them to rebuild a (hopefully) better version of themselves.  That's certainly the trajectory Beckett has been put on, and I'm not sure if it's a little cliche, but it definitely pulled me in.

First Kiss Scene: 9/10

O.k. I'm splitting this up a little differently for Castle than for the other shows on my list, because for C&B, the first "getting together" scene and the first "sexy times" scene are one and the same.  But they do have one "fake" kiss earlier in the series (similar to Chuck and Sarah), so I'll kinda cheat and use that for this section instead.  In the mid-season-3 episode "Knockdown" (same one discussed earlier), C&B need to sneak past a guy guarding a door (in a dark alley).  So they decide to pose as a harmless drunk couple walking by, and then to sneak up on the guy and take him out.  But Castle surprises Beckett by throwing in an extra twist to the plan: He grabs her and kisses her to kinda lure the guy over to tell them to buzz off.  Kate plays along, and has a moment where she pulls back and goes "WTF!?" but then she gets right back to making out with Castle immediately after that haha.  It's HOT, lemme tell you.  Then the guard dude walks up and she hits him over the head with her gun.  The look on Castle's face post kiss is classic and hysterical.  But then in typical Castle fashion, they proceed to make ZERO mention of this kiss at all for the next 10 or so episodes, until the season finale, when Castle gives Beckett a "WTF was the deal with that!?" type of line when they are fighting about her refusal to back off investigating her mom's murder.  Grrrr.  But I'm still giving the kiss a 9 out of pure hotness.

First "Getting Together"/Sexy Times Scene: 11/10

Humm ... wow.  Where do I start with this?  Well, first off, the Castle writers made us poor fans wait FOUR full seasons before they finally let these two crazy kids get together (thank god I condensed all 4 of those seasons into like 9 months haha).  That's the exact amount of time as Luke and Lorelai on Gilmore Girls, and that was an eternity as well.  In typical t.v. fashion they had to employ several contrivances and force the characters to act like boneheaded dumbasses for the last 5 or 6 eps of the season in order to hold this thing off until the finale.  It annoyed the crap out of everyone ... but the writers kinda duped us by completely melting our brains with the finale so we forgot all their sins of the past 22 episodes.  I mean, don't get me wrong - there are instances where a show (*cough*, Sons of Anarchy *cough*) will put out a complete SHIT season, and then try to cover it up with an exciting finale, and 95% of the fans buy it hook line and sinker, and meanwhile I'm left going, "Uhh, NO.  I am not falling for this crap."  Luckily this is not the case with Castle season 4.  Rather, this was more like an instance where I really liked the story being told, but didn't necessarily agree with every aspect of the way they were telling it.  That's an immensely better situation than the past couple seasons of SOA and Dexter, where both the story itself and the execution sucked big time.  The other good news with Castle s4 was that once I got to the END of the season and took everything as a whole, I could appreciate it much better.

Wait, let's get back to this scene, o.k. guys?  O.k.  This episode is the season 4 finale, entitled "Always".  My reaction to it, along with the reaction of the entire fanbase, can pretty much be summarized as such:

FFFAAAAAAHHHH HUHUHUHUH OOMMMGGGGAAHAHAA #$%##^^&@#$$ <melts into puddle of mush on the floor>.

Look I mean, just suffice it to say, it's definitely the best and hottest "couple getting together" scene I've ever seen in all my years of t.v.-watching.  "Chuck vs. the Colonel" previously held that spot, but "Always" surpasses it for two reasons: a) C&B actually get to close the deal and b) there's a lot of heavy emotional stuff here that wasn't there in Chuck, that reeled me right in like the ex soap junky that I am.  Despite the issues and contrivances this season, and though there were elements of the finale that were a bit cheesy (mainly the degree to which the Johanna Beckett murder conspiracy has grown), I gotta give the writers this: they found a way for it to pay off BIG time in this scene.  With very few words and only a couple minutes total, it manages to allow Castle and Beckett to communicate a great deal to each other regarding every issue and transgression of the past 23 episodes.  There's a moment here where they're basically able to say all of the following to each other with exactly zero lines of dialogue (per my interpretation of course): Castle to Beckett: "I shouldn't be so hard on you and angry at you, seeing as how you've been working through some royally effed up shit this year."  And Beckett to Castle: "I know all you've been wanting to do this past year is just to help me and all I've done is shut you down like a cold-hearted beeyatch, but I'm finally taking the wall down."  Say it with dialogue and it sounds totally lame, but say it with zero dialogue and solely physical actions and it is SEXXAAY as hell.  Sadly the scene cuts off before the two make it to the bedroom, but it still manages to score an 11/10 in my book even without actually showing the sex scene.

But have the writers tricked us all by causing us to run on 200% emotional overdrive during this episode and like 15% brainpower?  Probably.  I could feel my brain turning to mush again just while trying to describe it.  But I will concede this to the writers: Getting C&B together directly following the "ILY" and near-death moment might not have convinced everyone (characters & audience included) that these two have real staying power.  Having them wait till the dust settled and to then still be very clear on the decision shows that they are serious and in this for the long haul.  Castle also has a long history of rash decisions in the romance department, so putting him through a year plus of restraint may have been torturous for him, but also showed some nice maturity growth in the character.

Another thing related to this as well - The big dramatic "Castle professes love to dying Beckett and then Beckett claims to not remember anything" storyline may have been a bit soapy, but the show then played out several of the aftereffects of it in a somewhat UNsoapy fashion, via a very subtle slloowwww burn the rest of the season.  I'll use an example to illustrate the trajectory of Beckett's character - I think everyone can relate to the embarrassing situation where you trip and fall in public.  Everyone around you makes a big deal out of it with, "OMG are you o.k.!?" and you immediately JUMP back up again, feeling like an idiot, and you try to downplay it as much as possible with, "No guys I'm totally fine I swear!!  It's all good!  I'm gonna go about my business now k?"  And meanwhile, you're trying to hide the fact that you just ripped your nice new pants, your kneecap feels like it's about to fall off, and your big toe feels like it's just been put through a meatgrinder.  Then as soon as you get a second alone, you can finally assess the damages and yell "OUCH!!" to yourself.  I found it to be quite interesting that this is exactly how Beckett seems to handle her shooting.  It's almost like she's just embarrassed to be publicly knocked down to such a vulnerable state.  So after the initial hospital visits from everyone, she then hides out for 3 months to recover without contacting anyone, and then suddenly shows up at work again like, "Hey I'm fine guys!  I shook it off.  Let's get back to work."

She manages to pull this off for about 8 episodes, and we only get a minor hint or two that she's actually going to physical therapy in the meantime.  Then a serial murder case involving a sniper triggers PTSD in "Kill Shot" and she starts to quickly unravel mentally.  Even then she keeps it behind closed doors as much as possible, though her close coworkers notice her distress and worry about her.  Detective Esposito eventually has to force her to let him help her, based on his own experience with PTSD.  Beckett also goes to a psychotherapist for the entire season as well, and we the audience see this several times, but she never mentions it to Castle until it comes up in passing (related to a case) in the second to last ep of the season.  He, as a result, spends the entire season being somewhat in the dark, and rarely being entirely clear whether she's fine or not fine.  It's part of what made the season both maddening and interesting to me.  It's also what makes the Beckett character both frustrating and endearing at the same time.  She avoids drama in her life at all costs, which is why this story arc was quite un-soapy from my perspective.  And from Castle's side, watching him trying to deal with the situation in whatever way is best for Kate, in a very unselfish fashion, endears him to the audience and also makes it clear that he would be a worthy partner to her.

One final point on what I appreciated about this season and the finale - Many t.v. shows would have neatly wrapped up Johanna murder case with a pretty bow in the season finale in order to open the door for Beckett to finally turn her attention to Castle.  But Castle went the opposite route - the Johanna murder conspiracy is by far the most OUT of control it's ever been by the end of the finale - but Beckett is forced to finally realize (or re-discover) that spending her entire life chasing a ghost is not going to get her anywhere.  She has to make the extremely difficult decision to finally give up on it and move on with her damn life to let herself be happy.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the murder conspiracy will be back next season and they may wrap it up then, but I was glad they didn't allow Beckett to take the easy route in order to finally "choose life" (as Mark "Rent-Boy" Renton would say).  Difficult situations rarely wrap up nicely and neatly in real life.

Overall Rating of the Romance: TBD

Of course, I can't rate this one yet since we've only had about 1 or 2 minutes total of this couple being together so far.  They're at a point right now where the writers are walking that tightrope and could easily go either direction - Force C&B apart again for some idiotic reasons and ruin it for everyone ... or keep them together and let it flow naturally, but allow them to go through normal life challenges that keeps it fun and entertaining with a little drama here and there.  Of course they could easily still manage to screw the pooch with them together too if they let it get super boring and only focus on case of the week stuff from now on, so let's pray they do NOT do that.  Fingers crossed.

And in the end I think it's clear that the soapy factors of Castle have reeled me in like a junky to a needle, same way they did with Alias and Chuck.  But I think the key is that all three of these shows have plenty of other qualities that make me enjoy them as well.  For Castle it's the actors, the humor, the keen attention to detail and pre-planning of story arcs, and probably the most important factor: the underlying stories and trajectories of the characters.  Now here's to hoping that season 5 doesn't follow the path of practically every other t.v. show in existence and go totally off the rails in one way or another!