Re: Castle "The Squab and the Quail"

(this post contains heavy spoilers for Castle, late s3-s5)

I lied yesterday when I said the only thing I wanted to talk about was Sherlock. The reality is, I also really want to talk about Castle. So that's what I'm going to do. Tomorrow will more than likely be when I get to Sherlock and his boingy curls...

At any rate, to Castle. Castle is one of those shows I've been following for a few years now. I didn't bother to give it a chance until I was strong-armed into doing so after the s3 finale, mostly because I took one look at it when it came around as a mid-season replacement (as I recall, anyway) and said to myself "Ugh, another clone." And the reality is, I wasn't exactly wrong: it very much is another clone, and for all its quasi-frequent bouts of extreme gloriousness (thinking of a few choice gems, most notable of which was probably "Close Encounters"), the show suffers from several unfortunate syndromes, not the least of which is its plots. Don't get me wrong, the show has all the most important ingredients to turn me obsessive (quite successfully), starting with Kate Beckett (the Woman) and the Canadian population (SK and NF, former of whom has an accent that never ever stops making me laugh), and ending somewhere with Nathan Fillion (who is, as far as I'm convinced, impossible not to love, even when I was rooting for him to die in a horrible, grisly fashion during his stay on Buffy...sidenote, Xaaaaaandeeeerrrrrr nooooooooooo, Fillion, whyyy??). I have at least six Castle fics lying abandoned between two computers, one of which I'm still legitimately proud of and will hopefully one day actually finish. I have all the boxsets, and the books. I even have a puzzle I found once for $20 when I was wandering around the mall.

My point is, I love the show, I've thought about it a lot, and prior to the whole...Bracken...thing, I'd even devoted something like six+ hours to working out Beckett's mother's murder and who I thought the responsible party would turn out to be (spoiler: I was wrong). It's because of all this that I feel justified in criticizing it, and there are times, especially lately, where I almost can't contain myself. This is one of those times.

So "Squab and the Quail." I had approached Monday skeptically, given I'd seen the ads for the last minute episode switcheroo, and while I was overcome with joy at seeing Ioan Gruffudd again (given his association with the hole in my heart that was once Ringer; oh my soapy show, how I mourn you), that feeling died rather quickly upon seeing the rest of the ad, and the episode. I'll be the first to tell you, I was never a "Caskett" fan. Not ever. Not for half a second. Shipping has never been my thing, and the sorts of plots realized and/or unrequited romance lead to are just never good, unless Joss Whedon writes them, and, clearly, he's not writing this. Part of me longs to write a long, exploratory post on why Castle does a crap job of writing a compelling romance, but that is for another day, because while I didn't enjoy "Squab," it wasn't entirely because of the annoying "will she be faithful?""do I love him?" angst (though I could fill a post just on that). I didn't enjoy it because of one scene.

this scene, or, to be more precise, this moment

This is not because of the sneak attack kiss. That was stupid, but it wasn't episode-ruining, and, frankly, who wouldn't want to kiss Ioan Gruffudd? No, it was because, to reiterate, of this...

I had to pause at this point. I saw at that moment something potentially beautiful, potentially wonderful, potentially actually interesting, and as I saw it, I knew, without any doubt, that they'd never go there. And that thought was confirmed with a few minutes.

yep

So what, if you haven't already guessed, was the thing to which I'm alluding? More than likely, you've glanced the pictures below, and have guessed, but I'll proceed as if you haven't.

I'm all about character continuity and flow, and the more enigmatic, erratic, mistrusting, and self-destructive a character is, and the more they have to deal with the consequences of these traits, the more I am helplessly drawn in. Throw in Mortal Danger of the Constant Kind, Brave Self-Sacrifice, and Long Lasting Ramifications and that's it. My personal life is done for. This is why Crossing Jordan and Buffy together occupy the pinnacle of television to me. This is why I would follow Joss Whedon to the ends of Hell. This is why "Knockout" transformed me from interested to crazoid in the span of ten minutes (and is probably the reason that that was the episode that convinced my friend I had to watch Castle). And this is why "Squab" was disappointing, more so than it otherwise was. I'll now make my case.

"Knockout" and "Rise," AKA Sleepless Night and Endless Rerun AKA The closest Castle has ever been to Buffy

I'm not going to claim for a moment that anything about the s3 finale and s4 premiere was original, but, then again, I've never really cared for originality, and as far as I'm concerned, those two episodes were pretty fantastic. Maybe someday I'll talk about why I loved those episodes, but not here. For now, the only baseline point is that, to me, those two episodes were interesting and compelling, for reasons that should now be somewhat clear. I would also like to point out that while I'm not a fan of Caskett, I am a ridiculous fan of Beckett and, to a lesser degree, Castle, and there is lot to their relationship that I really, truly enjoy. As obsessed as I am with the Woman, she can only barely outshine how much I love her Loyal Friend and Compatriot.

With that said, it should come as absolutely no surprise that I loved the unliving crap out of "Kill Shot." While I recognize the episode's faults after many reruns, I still rank it just below "Rise" on my list of top Castle episodes. PTSD episodes are no more original than the lead character getting shot or getting cancer, but, as I said before, that doesn't matter, and that episode really helped cement Beckett as a permanent member of my favorite character list, which, incidentally, doubles as my dream team in the event of a zombie apocalypse. But as much as I loved "Kill Shot," as with "Rise," on its end I found myself disappointed that long-term trauma from Beckett's near-death experience wasn't going to be a thing. Castle is, at its core, more of a comedy, and while I wanted nothing more than "Buffy s6 v2: On the General Misery and Extended Free-Fall of Kate Beckett, NYPD," I knew that that wasn't going to happen. Still, "Kill Shot" planted within me a deep-seated hope that Castle was capable of being deep, of recognizing the trauma never completely heals, and of allowing Beckett to be more interesting, dynamic, and morally relaxed. The s4 finale pretty much killed that hope (as did "Recoil"), but "Squab" did as good as flatten it.

But why get so upset over squandered opportunity in an MOTW, and a fairly vapid one at that? Because it shows a clear amount of thoughtlessness, and a rather glaring crack in character continuity, as upsetting as the fact that Beckett has a scar from her bullet wound but not from the sternum spreader they used to sunder her chest.

but they cracked you open like a walnut...

I realize that there are several reasons Castle cannot be Buffy. It's a different genre, a different format, and it carries wildly different expectations. It could have chosen to be as intense and interesting as Buffy, back when it was still deciding what it wanted to be in s2, but the time has since passed (though why no one has taken this overdone "cop with dead mother" thing and ran somewhere brutal with it is beyond me...I guess Crossing Jordan is as close as there is at the moment). I accept what it's set out to do, even though I think potential is being thrown away ("Recoil," I'm looking at you). But it's one thing to not go there, to avoid characters falling into emotional pits by simply choosing to travel through roads that are pitless, and it's another to willfully drive over pits and pave them over. I say this, because this is Beckett, slightly less than two years ago.

this is them about to crack you open like said walnut

And this is Beckett a little over a year ago.

hey, look! negative space!

And this was Beckett Monday.

standing right in front of that window, no sweat

This should not be. There is absolutely no reason why she wouldn't have had a reaction similar to what we saw in "Kill Shot." In KS, Beckett isn't shot at or directly targeted. The mere idea of the sniper sends her spiraling. One could attempt to make the argument that she's since healed, but its been less than two years since she was dying on a table with small paddles around her heart, and every day she has to live with several scars from her ordeal (both from the bullet and the tube they jabbed through her ribcage). No one can just get over that, especially not so rapidly, yet she's standing in front of that window probably at most an hour after a sniper bullet came within a foot of her face. At the very least, she should've been nervous about getting near the window, and should have kept near the walls, no matter how much she wanted to save face. The fact that she didn't means the writers didn't think about her history, and the fact that they didn't think about it means that her integrity as a good, solid character has been breached. This is one of those small, yet completely inexcusable continuity breaks, because this scene so easily could have been done without a sniper being involved. The fact that they chose to go the route of a sniper without having any desire to work with what I feel would have been Beckett's very real reaction to such a situation disappoints me a lot. Not only would it have been interesting to see the continued affect her ordeal has on her, it would have immediately thrown into light how ridiculous Castle's jealousy and her concerns about his commitment truly are, and it could have led to a frank, adult, down-to-earth discussion about their worries -- which would truly be a first, given how immaturely their relationship is handled. (And speaking of Castle, I'm not going to forgive him either for it not even occurring to him that the whole sniper thing might have upset her at a deeper level than it might have anyone else...)

Castle is filled with little moments like this, filled with missed opportunities and depth exchanged for shallow relationship-oriented angst. Why this one is the one that stuck with me so hard, I can't really say; maybe it's just the timing, what with me now having this nifty outlet. I won't condemn the show for what it is, and I'll be the first to admit that the Ring and Rear Window parodies were both excellent and hilarious, but it seems a shame to me that week after week we don't really see much substance from two characters and two actors who are so obviously capable of delivering it.

So here's hoping the whole Beckett, pressure plate thing will turn out for the better. God knows I love Mortal Peril, even if it does make me think of that one She Spies episode...