Castle, "Valkyrie": Heartstrings and Set Pieces

Another television year, another season. I feel genuinely relieved to say I think we got off to a much, much better start than last year's finish. I actually -- dare I say it -- even liked the episode. That was a feeling I had been extremely unprepared to experience, since I'd been bracing for...something since the finale. I'm not sure what, exactly, but something horrible. It's not to say things don't have time to get worse, but for the moment I'm tentatively optimistic.

The thing of it is that it was actually a good episode. It was funny, editing felt nice and crisp, sets were hilarious (I'll be getting to those shortly), and there were only two moments that made me freak out. No wincing, no yelling, no burying my face in a pillow because it was literally too painful to keep my eyes on the screen through a whole scene. It was good. It was almost like watching s3 again. And s3 is pretty much the "ideal" season to me, so it was nice to draw a tonal comparison.

So what did I like about it? Well, I guess I'll start chronologically.

"Of course I'm serious. This is the most serious thing I've ever done."
Oh, please, Castle, I'm sure that's what you told your last four wives...

Right out of the gate, Castle addresses most of the issues I went on a tirade about back in May: “I'm not proposing to you to keep you here, or because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose you. I'm proposing because I can't imagine my life without you.” I accused him of emotional blackmail, and the fact that he talks about it here tells me he must've considered how the proposal must've come across too. It's not to say I ever really thought he was doing it so consciously and maliciously, but I'm glad to hear him tell her point blank that it truly is just a symbol of commitment rather than some subtle way to tie her to the city. If he didn't, I feel like down the line she might've wondered. I know I was wondering.

Other than that, I don't honestly care about the Caskett. I never have. I just want them to be happy, and moments like this

pretty much cement my acceptance of the ship. It's interesting how rarely she smiles outside of her interactions with him. It's like he lights up her life, even when otherwise it's grim or shitty (and she's wearing a bulletproof vest here). Hopefully things will continue like this, since I like them much better this way with the external angst rather than with the internal angst a la late-s4 (ugh). Even for as much as I don't care about them as a couple, there was something that genuinely felt almost shippy in my heart when he shows up at her place after six weeks of separation and in an instant we see the lust catch fire between them.

And while we're on the subject of six weeks, it amuses me to no small end that she's still living out of boxes, that she has this spartan little apartment in DC (which looks nothing like the buildings I've been to in DC; I kind of wish they'd gone townhouse and squished the space, but I suppose that would've made the set more complicated than it needed to be considering they'll probably only be using it a few weeks... I digress).

It made me (post-ep) sit back and imagine what sort of life she'd been living these last two months. I loved recognizing a few pictures and set pieces here and there (and the framed shot of Beckett and Castle in the shelf was a cute touch), loved imagining Castle having gone up to visit her after she'd found her place, and he'd probably helped her unpack a little before she'd called him off it with a dismissive "I'll do it myself later." I feel like if the episode had been a little longer, we might've had a scene in their bed post-coitus where he points out to her that she never did get around to unpacking. And I love that the few things she did manage to unpack basically just amounted to books and some kitchen stuff, and that she'd only hung a few of her paintings (though I very, very badly want to know what happened to the big one in the living room of her New York loft; I hope it's in her bedroom). I love that there's a pile of hangers on the chair and that her furniture looks like stuff she might've picked up on an Ikea run because she got the apartment after she started her job and she didn't have time to actually shop. The whole of it is so not her and yet in a lot of ways so is, since it's such a perfect way of illustrating how chaotic and unsettled she is right now.
The only thing I don't like is that her move means once we eventually come back to New York she won't have her beautiful loft anymore. I have a feeling that she's going to end up moving in with Castle, and at that point I can only hope we see a big shift in the set design to include her things (especially that painting). I can't imagine she'll end up back in her own place (given the engagement), and I can't imagine he's going to move. (I'm starting to suspect this is the reason that they posted all those pictures of her apartment set last season, because they knew it was all disappearing)
But I guess I'll worry about Beckett and her things later, once this DC arc comes to its (inevitable) conclusion.

And now's just as good a time as any to segue to the DC thing.

What is up with Castle and the FBI? My goodness do they have a lot of toys up in Washington, and just look at how blue and cold and shiny and high tech and modern everything looks (more than likely a conscious choice, given how warm and homey the 12th feels). At this point I can only hope that Jordan Shaw shows up again, since this is clearly the same office she was working from. I'm not even critiquing so much as laughing at the show's consistency, because, I'm sorry, when I think "FBI" I think, well, this:

So did the electricians just skip that room when they were putting in the lights?

not the land of scifi magic. It just kind of surprises me given David Amann and Rob Bowman's involvement in the show (though I got sad when I saw that Bowman seems to have left early s5), but I suppose every time they've involved the feds they've wanted to accentuate the difference in styles. What I find even more amusing is that Beckett's epic wardrobe for the moment has been reduced to an endless steam of blouses and pant suits, all of which seem to suit her about as well as her place does (a relationship of necessity). I was almost a little sad when I spotted her wearing flats in one scene (though it was just the one...apparently even a job with the feebs couldn't force her to be more practical with her footwear).

Of course, the FBI arc does have one extreme upside. And that upside is named Cuddy (for as many times as I heard her name in the course of screencapping and writing notes for this meta, I still can't remember it without the aid of IMDB; for the record, it's McCord).

I loved Lisa Edelstein in House. She was frackin' hilarious. When I saw that she was going to be in Castle while flipping through a TVGuide at the checkout line, I was very happy. I was even happier to see her in the actual episode. Seeing Beckett work with a legitimate partner (an equal) is treat enough, a female partner even more so, but the fact that it's Cuddy makes it amazing. The only casting choice that would've been more fun for me would've been Jill Hennessy or Jennifer Garner. And the fact that Beckett likes her makes it even better. I would've hated it if she'd been saddled with some asshole of a partner whom both she and the viewer takes an immediate dislike to. Cuddy/McCord is likeable and funny and personable. And I absolutely loved one one of the moments between her and Beckett:

“Castle get home okay?”

“Yep. Fine.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“Good.”

That little smile was all I could ever hope for.

But for the moment, let's move beyond the FBI, because oh my GOD. This guy.

THIS guy.

Oh my god. Just his picture, just thinking about him, makes me giggle like I just took a whiff of cocaine. I just about lost it when he walked down the stairs (and I knew there would end up being a guy, somewhere deep down, when I saw Alexis walk down those steps), but when we come back to him and he's making papaya steaks because he's some sort of fruitarian ("like god intended"), I really did lose it. It's like he trudged right out of some indie movie featuring Michael Cera, where he was the guy they met in the coffeeshop as he soulfully stroked the only three chords on the guitar he knew. What's even funnier is that Alexis apparently dumped Max the offscreen poet boyfriend for this deadbeat. I can just see him in his shoebox of a converted loft on the east side of downtown LA, his walls lovingly decorated with vinyl covers just above a record player he doesn't actually know how to use. He lives in Amsterdam? Please. I bet he illegally sells painted bottle caps to tourists on a street corner near the tar pits.

Pi is a serious casting win, and that's all there is to it. His presence almost, almost makes up for my first complaint. And that complaint is this chick...

Dear god, why?

I seem to remember begging the writers and any god that would listen that she not come back, yet here she is again, in an episode that Espo and Ryan were barely in, and Gates and Lanie didn't even touch. Why? For the love of all that is decent and good and sacred, why did she come back? She's so awful. I want her to go away. Next thing we know, we're going to be, like...learning her name, and she'll get some awkward flirt scene with Esposito, and then she'll get screentime. Precious, precious screentime that should be going to Beckett, but won't be, because instead we'll be listening to her deliver her lines as if she's reading them from a teleprompter. Right now she's so bad it's almost funny, but pretty soon it's going to get not funny. I want to avoid getting to that point.

Gaaaaaaaaaah.

Okay, moving on. What else did I like? I loved the Last Call reference (because that was the very first thing I thought when Beckett suggested underground). I loved the return of the Castle cut-out (especially since it reminds me so much of the Wil Wheaton cut-out that Geek & Sundry's been toting). I loved Castle's "I'm going through a tunnel" routine (because that was truly awe-inspiring; I actually really would like to know how much NF had to practice that static routine before he got it down). I loved everything about Castle's offer to make Beckett dinner, and that his first comment to the guy holding a gun on him is, “Yeah, but, I don't know you, and I've got salmon here that needs to be refrigerated, so...” I loved his little wave to Beckett from where he was sitting in the ambulance. I loved the look on his face when he shook McCord's hand.

Castle was in top comedy form, which was exactly what I needed from him after last season. He was disarming and charming and goofy, and he seemed like such an antidote to the sterileness of Beckett's current life. I loved that he didn't act territorial at all around McCord, that it seemed as if he really might work toward not being a pain in Beckett's ass (and I was glad to see how genuine his regret at having caused Beckett problems seemed to be; the fact that he returned to New York at all really says a lot about how much he was willing to work toward not being the same guy he started off being -- since s1-5 Castle probably wouldn't have left when she asked). He was the Castle I fell in love with, not the one whose face I wanted to cave in (circa late s4) or felt largely ambivalent about (s5).

To that end, there's really only one thing about the episode I didn't love. And it's not to say I disliked it, necessarily, but I feel like it's inclusion wasn't needed, and creates more problems canonically than it's worth. I'm talking about the epic fake-out, of course.

I'm not ashamed to admit my heart stopped for about 2.3 seconds here.

This goes back to the same thing I was bitching about with Squab -- that we have things happen that should definitely cause a relapse of the PTSD, yet they don't.
I mean, it's been barely two years since the shooting, and in reality there's no way she'd be completely past it. I doubt she'd ever be able to be past it completely, since it's something so traumatic and awful (and she died on that OR table). I know that it's just a TV show, one with a finite amount of minutes, and I realize that this isn't Buffy s6 v2: On the General Misery and Extended Free-Fall of Kate Beckett, NYPD FBI, but, still. I was horrified to see her gunned down, and I'm just a passive viewer. She actually had to hear the gunshots, had to feel to the airsoft rounds or paintballs or whatever they were hit her squarely over her heart, and what's worse is she was surprised when they came. I know this episode didn't have time or the want for Beckett to suddenly go all Kill Shot again, but if that's the case they really had no business having such a scene occur at all. It was just a cheap scare, and it feels inappropriate.

What's odd is the show almost acts for a moment like it is going to show her dealing with it. We have her say "It's better not to die at all" with an almost knowing tone to it, like she is thinking about it. And then we have a mirror scene to Kill Shot of Beckett looking at her reflection, revealing the same spot on her chest where her bullet wound is (where there should be a sternum spreader scar, but I'm not going there again), yet it isn't there.

At first I thought the mark on the right was it, but then I realized it was just a pressure mark from the rings

What's even more bizarre is that I'm pretty sure there are two rings on the chain: the engagement ring, and her mother's ring (the same one she's been wearing since s1). This suggests a lot about her frame of mind: the fact that she can't just wear Castle's ring around her neck; that it rests right besides her mother's, over her heart (and this tells me that clearly somebody on set is thinking of her history, if they thought to have her have the ring). She almost seems tense as she walks through her apartment to the mirror, like there's a possibility she could be brooding over the shooting, which aligns well with how immediate her fear reaction is when she realizes she's not alone in her apartment (probably one her fastest gun draws ever).
Yet she does not have the bullet scar on her chest.
I just don't get it. It would've been such a simple thing to do for continuity's sake. I suppose to 99% of the fanbase it doesn't matter, but to me it does, and it's just odd to me how many call-backs they have to her past (the placement right over her heart, the mirror to Kill Shot, the fact that her mother's ring is there), yet they forget the scar.

But, whatever. For as many things as the episode did so very right, I can let it go. And for the moment I even feel tentatively optimistic about next week's episode (even if the premise is cheeseballs). So I suppose for the moment my faith has been reinvested, and for once I'm looking forward to Monday.

Hey.
Hey, Beckett.
You know what you could do when you finally get back to New York?
Here's an idea:
Go out, get some labneh or a pizza or something, then go shoot Bracken in the face.