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!!" 

Rating the TV Romance, Part 4: Chuck and Sarah

When I was re-watching a few episodes of Alias for my last "Rating the TV Romance" post, I re-watched an episode called "A Higher Echelon", the second ep in a 2-ep arc in which Marshall Flinkman (nerdy SD-6 spy gadget inventor extraordinaire) gets to go on his first mission (with Sydney of course).  Towards the end of the episode, Sydney is in the middle of saving him after he has been kidnapped by bad guys, and after she saves him, he manages to bust out a moment where he returns the favor using sheer nerdy ingenuity (i.e. one of his inventions) - a secret parachute that can be hidden in the lining of a jacket.  Syd and Marshall are stuck in a tall building with no way out, so the parachute comes in very handy at that moment.  The moment when Marshall suddenly turns from nerd to bad-ass spy, at least for that short minute in time, is when he straps Syd onto him so they can jump out a window together, and follows this up with: "My name is Marshall J. Flinkman, and I'm here to rescue you!!"

Rating the TV Romance, Part 3: Syd and Vaughn

When Alias first started airing in late 2001, I initially had no desire or intent to watch it because it looked like it would be cheesy and I've never been into the spy genre.  James Bond and that type of stuff was never my thing.  However, a friend of mine was super into it and relentlessly begged me to watch, so I finally reluctantly agreed to check it out.  I was hooked like crack pretty much within the first 2 minutes.  Suddenly I realized that I actually am into the spy genre, provided that it involves the girl getting to do all the bad-ass stuff for a change.  I was used to the tradition of chicks being used mainly as eye candy in spy stories.  But then Alias came along and flipped that 180 degrees, and I was all for it.  And this show had the added benefit of one of my favorite things: a "will-they-won't-they" couple in Sydney and Vaughn - Sydney Bristow is a double agent for a rogue organization called SD-6 and the CIA, and Michael Vaughn is her CIA handler.  Vaughn doesn't show up until the last few scenes of the pilot episode, but the chemistry is there pretty much right away.

Rating the TV Romance, Part 2: Luke and Lorelai

Alright peeps, next up in my "Rating the TV Romance" list, we have Luke and Lorelai from Gilmore Girls (2000 - 2007).  O.k. I know that pic above is not Lorelai and Luke, it's Lorelai and Rory.  But I wanted to start off with the main logo for the show, and I think Rory should get a shout-out there, shouldn't she?  Anyway, for reference, here are the two blog posts that led into this:

Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic
Rating the TV Romance, Part 1: Felicity and Ben

Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic

When I was a little kid, my brother and I were babysat regularly by a teenager who lived on our street named Cheryl.  Cheryl was actually only about 5 years older than me, but when you're 10 and she's 15 it's a pretty decent difference in maturity level.  Between Cheryl and her older sister Connie, their family provided babysitting duties for our family for quite a large chunk of my childhood.  My parents divorced when I was 7, forcing my mom into the undesirable territory of single mom-hood, and the necessity of good after school babysitter became quite apparent by that point.  Cheryl filled the role quite nicely and dutifully.

When I was 10, I started to weasel my way into watching daytime soaps with Cheryl, her mom, and sometimes our other neighbor friend, at Cheryl's family's house.  Before that I had never been allowed to watch soaps at all, and had always been pushed out of the room whenever anyone (Cheryl or otherwise) had them on the t.v.  But I guess by the time I was 10, they started to get sick of telling me "no" all the time when I would beg and beg them, and they eventually kinda gave in and let me start hanging out while they were watching them.  Specifically the two soaps they were into were General Hospital and Days of Our Lives.  I never got super into General Hospital, but Days of Our Lives quickly became a daily obsession for me.  That may have had to do with the fact that it was on later than most of the others: 3pm.  I think the key was that it may have been on just late enough that I was able to regularly catch some of it when I would get home from school.  Though I honestly don't recall if my regular soap watching started during the school year or the summertime.