Castle: Till Death Do Us Part (S4.11), Dial M for Mayor (S4.12)

January 17, 2012

Just chiming in on the last two Castle’s. Very big contrast between the two. The one with the Casanova/industrial espionage was a very fun episode. Had it not been for the fact that I saw an episode of CSI Miami in its first year that had exactly the same plot and even the exact same resolution in its first year, this would have been a killer episode for me. Look, I made a funny! J 

In contrast, this week’s episode was a huge letdown for a number of reasons. The first is that they didn’t have the balls to make the Mayor actually the bad guy which would’ve been a game changer. The second is that they brought in the Beckett conspiracy plot thread complete with the Chain Smoking Man—er, the Mysterious Caller. This is the same problem that the X-Files suffered from: the buildup to the conspiracy was so vast and ominous that  the power of the conspirators was vastly out of proportion to the reason for the conspiracy itself which led to a “WTF? That’s it?!?” resolution for that series. I’m afraid Castle is veering dangerously close to this situation to the point where I am 100% certain that the writers made the same mistake Chris Carter did in not actually plotting out the conspiracy first and making it up as they went along.

There were a couple of very bright points, however. The new Captain showed quite a bit of integrity and character in her office scene with Beckett. Lots of respect for her there. The background of the victim and the constant twists and turns in who she actually turned out to be were pretty brilliant. She actually deserved a better story to be put into. And amazingly, Rick actually used his WRITING SKILL to solve the mystery by cluing into the “inciting incident” as the start and end of everything. Lastly, I completely bought the relationship between the Mayor and Rick. If you didn’t buy their friendship, you wouldn’t buy Rick’s lack of objectivity and the two actors really did great in bringing it to life.

Now, next week’s episode looks hilarious with a dog show murder and Beckett looking absolutely STUNNING in the preview going undercover as the stuffy show dog owner/contestant. That’s the absolute sexiest Stana Katic has looked on this show since the episode where she pretended to be Russian to save Rick’s life from the Russian mobster. The actual shot of her entrance reminded me of the shot of Rick made up as the Elvis impersonator. I’m sure it was no coincidence. I still question her chemistry a bit with Fillion but there is no denying she is a beautiful actress.