Castle, "Need to Know": Because things fall apart

Oh, "Need to Know." So many feelings. So many, many feelings. So many I'm not entirely sure where to start.

I guess my first jumping off point is the speculation that this was an episode written to give Stana Katic less screen time for whatever reason. She was in very little of the episode, which is actually a first for her as far as I can remember ("Hunt" as possible exception?), since she absorbed lead capacity back in s2 despite NF's continued first billing. Because of this I'll admit that as funny as I found the episode, there were definitely times where I couldn't help but pine for her back, and afterwards I couldn't help but reconstruct the episode mentally to try to fill in what she had been doing while the boys had been off doing their things. It's not to say I didn't enjoy the episode, but I think I might as well restate for the record that I construct Castle around Beckett, so the vast majority of my fanwanking and meta and thoughts are tied to her, not Castle. (and I only point that out because this meta is, once again, going to largely be centered around her)

Let's start with my brief, more shallow comments. Starting with the obvious:

Oh, sweet, baby Jesus

I'm sorry. This guy is just endlessly hilarious to me. The thought of him having put down stakes in Castle's living room, the thought of him endlessly rambling to Alexis about his dreams of hitchhiking across the States with nothing but a smile and an upraised thumb, the thought of him having some highly garbled concept of spirituality that no doubt blends the sensibilities of a 70s stoner with a Westernized brand of Hinduism-- everything just makes me laugh. I can see the uber pragmatic, highly academic, stuffy Alexis finding comfort in the airy ramblings of Pi and his vague promises of an uncomplicated future, as he lies back and proclaims something to the effect of hakuna matata to the ceiling (it means no worries, for the rest of your dayyyyys). The fact that Martha seems to view him as some amusing but temporary fixture in the house is funny enough, but add tousle-haired Castle driven from bed by a juicer at what I can only assume is 7:23AM and that's it. I was roaring, near crying into my pillow as random possible scenarios involving Castle and Pi or, better, Beckett and Pi (because part of me is convinced she dated a guy just like this back in the mid-90s) flashed through my mind.

Whoever conceptualized and cast this guy, thank you. I just hope you weren't responsible for the first of my complaints:

Er... Morning, Professor Trelawney

What was up with this chick? The last time I saw overacting as painful as this performance was on Once Upon a Time, which on multiple occasions drove me to cleaning my kitchen just so I didn't have to look fully at the screen. 2013!Trelawney (because that's all I could think when I looked at her) was just miserably bad, made all the worse by the awful anti-90s at her back. And while we're on the subject...

90s failed conception versus actual 90s

As a child of the 90s, I can't help but find it bizarre how far afield Castle fell in portraying the 90s. The time frame they were shooting for was less than twenty years ago, and I feel pretty confident in guessing that there are few, if any, people working on set who didn't live through it. The 90s was overalls and wrinkled overshirts, logo'd t-shirts and jeans up to the waist. Everything was three sizes too big, striped or tie-dyed or animal print. The 90s was chokers and spandex and hair clips and fuzzy sweaters and weird make-up and shaggy hair and leather jackets and leather everything. I mean, all anyone had to do was flip on a Buffy rerun circa 1997 to get wardrobe ideas, and a quick run to a Goodwill easily could've fulfilled the need.

I guess in the larger frame of things, it's not that important, but seeing the suspender-clad, clearly modern (and clearly un90s) hipsters in a 16:9 aspect ratio filled me with a lot of strange, unexplainable feelings. Why write about a mid-90s show that holds nostalgia for several characters (Ryan and Martha, at the least) without also allowing the viewers the same pleasure? Castle in the past has been very good at call-backs and references; probably one of its more shining moments was (at least in my eyes) "Close Encounters...", which brought back for me a hundred feelings from The X-Files. Yet here the best they came up with is the pathetic "2 Cool for School," reminding me rather unpleasantly of the 80s attempts at the 50s in a long series of terrible movies. Maybe this is just one of those inevitable pitfalls of the media, which seems to have the attention span and memory retention of a squirrel on meth, but it just made me suddenly fear the days we'll be inundated with "90s" films that feel about as authentic as Dewey's orange suspenders.

At any rate, let's move on to what I actually want to talk about: Beckett.

While I'm on this picture, what's up with all the wide angles in this episode? The amount of fish eye in shots like this one (and I can think of a few others, such as Esposito's confrontation of Castle in the break room and some shots in the Brooklyn warehouse) are pretty jarring. I don't know if it was intentional by the director (if there was some underlying metaphor I wasn't really getting), or what, but it was really disorienting.

What I found most interesting about this episode is how very not funny it gets once you switch POV characters (from Castle, who drives the episode, to Beckett, who sidelines), which is precisely what I did. I was struck immediately by Beckett's isolation, by the giant hole she'd left in the precinct, and by the fact that on her return she's unable to fill that space again. During that initial crime scene scene, I couldn't help being struck by how male everything is without her, and how noticeable her absence is (made even more obvious by Lanie's absence, with Perlmutter there in her stead -- I have a feeling this was intentional). It feels wrong to be at that crime scene without her. It was interesting to me to watch a random episode from a different season after that, because it's so clear how much Beckett utterly dominates the spaces she occupies. Crime scenes feel like her crime scenes. Her corner of the precinct feels utterly hers, and hers alone. It was jarring to be at a crime scene with Castle but without Beckett. No one was commanding or directing the flow. It was like they were all waiting around for her to show up and tell them what to do.

This is of course followed up by our return to the precinct, where my heart was promptly shredded upon seeing the corruption and defilement of Beckett's space.

Sidenote, did Beckett gift the ever absent Dt. Wallis one of her elephants?

It was like walking through a house I used to live in. The most important things are the same (the desk, the chair, the phones, the location), but all the details are wrong. I immediately was reminded of Spender and Fowley's take over of the basement office. I mean, all of this was clearly intentional -- Sully seems to have been cast specifically because of his not-Beckett-ness, and his desk hygiene would never be tolerated in a real work space, especially given anyone going to see Gates in her office would inevitably be walking by it -- but that doesn't change how I feel about it. I winced with Castle every time I saw it, thinking back to a hundred scenes that had taken place on that desk, to scenes I had written there in fic or conceptualized in random thoughts. The fact that Beckett at the end of the episode relinquishes her territory to him seems to make it worse somehow, like she is personally shoveling the last bit of dirt over her past life in the precinct and has every intention of moving on (which, in the context of the last minute of the episode, brings to the surface a lot of implications; I'll be addressing those momentarily).

When Beckett finally does arrive, there's an overwhelming sense of separateness. We see her through the slats in the breakroom, where Esposito is murmuring accusations of Judas-ism, we see her running giddy to meet Castle at the breakroom because someone there actually wants to see her, we see her sidling up to the whiteboard with coffee mug in hand, wanting to get in on the conversation, but immediately frozen out of it (then utterly abandoned there after McCord approaches).

I love this one in particular; it's like she's hiding in the break room

There's a real feeling like she truly has moved on, like this place is no longer quite what it was for her. There's this real sense of camaraderie between her and McCord, like they're the new unit.

While I'm on this picture, it was really interesting to see Gates coming to the defense of her people against the judging forces of the Other (McCord and, to a lesser degree, Beckett), and it was interesting to see Beckett's silence as she leans against the table, torn between old loyalties and new (especially since she was the cause of the problem)

I became fascinated by the constant mirroring between them, like to some degree they're the same person. In most of their scenes, they were able to immediately make a space feel like it was theirs alone, no matter how many other people were in the room. It's not just that both actresses have powerful screen presence; it's the fact that they would constantly turn to each other and away from other people (physically turn toward each other, not just look), that they'd often mirror each other physically. Within the span of three episodes, I completely bought them as partners. Beckett and McCord are what I wish Rizzoli and Isles (Jane and Maura) would be.

And, then you know, this happened...

Bu- but... my head canon, my plans.... Mc- McCord! NOOOOOOOOOO!

Oh, god, why. I mean, we all knew Beckett's appointment with the feds would be a temporary one, but I hadn't expected it to be dropped this quickly. Given the first two episodes were a TBC (and, thus, were one episode to me), we've only really gotten two episodes of Special Agent Beckett, and I feel robbed. I fucking love McCord, and I love Beckett's energy around her, and I'd been hoping to go at least another two or three episodes before things fell apart.

And then there's just how abruptly things fell apart. Beckett does a small leak, is immediately found out, is immediately fired. It all happens in like three minutes, so quickly I barely had time to figure out what was going on before it was done. I'm hoping next episode we see some back-tracking and explanation, because this plot-line right now ended so quickly it was like we were cruising at 70 mph and slammed into a pole (part of me feels like it was thrown in at the end without it really being planned; there's just so little warning). There's no build up, no realization scene by McCord, no discussion between Beckett and McCord about it. All of this leads me to strongly suspect that the writers regret ever having started down this plot, that they wanted to drop it as quickly as physically possible, and they jumped onto the first possible train out to accomplish this. It really makes me believe that the writers didn't have an over-arching plan for Beckett's time in DC (even more so than I already did), and I can't stop the disappointment. I knew it was going to end, and I do want Beckett to rejoin her family, but I didn't want it to happen this quickly, especially because now we're going to end up in that squicky situation of Beckett somehow magically getting her job with the 12th back again, which I know is going to be an annoying plotline and I was hoping to have it put off for a few more episodes.

I mean, overall, I really did enjoy the episode. Castle and the boys were hilarious (Ryan's matter-of-fact wearing of the crew hat was great); the Beckett/McCord, Beckett/Castle dynamic were extremely entertaining ("Are you bribing me with a latte?"); I love Beckett struggling with her isolation and her growing concern that she's being corrupted by her new job; I love Castle taking my words from last year out of my mouth by admitting he could work from anywhere so why not just live in DC with her. Were it not for the last twenty seconds of the episode, I would've loved it.

But, unfortunately, those twenty seconds did happen. So now I guess I'll have to sit and wait for Monday to see the fallout.

While you're in New York, Beckett, I know we've been here before, but...
You could make a little side trip.
Go over to Albany or wherever. Check out the scenery, go to a park, shoot Bracken in the face.
Come on, Beckett, I'm just gonna keep pushing this until your mytharc resurfaces.