Castle, "Time Will Tell": Tell what, exactly?

Right. Well... That was weird.

I'll admit that I'm kind of at a loss as to what to think about this episode. It's not that I didn't enjoy it. It's just that I didn't get it. Castle has occasionally toed the line separating the general run-of-the-mill non-reality (e.g. Beckett's wardrobe and Tribeca apartment on her salary, Castle's Soho flat, how the 12th looks and is run, the feds' equipment, etc.) from the more totally bizarre, bombastic, ridiculous non-reality (I usually think of "Close Encounters" and the abduction by the feds, because, I mean, come on, what was that (even if it was totally hilarious)?). But "Time Will Tell" pretty much blew everything out of the water, to the point where there were times when I seriously questioning what show I was watching. I felt like I was spending half the episode waiting for Mulder or Buffy to show up, like there was a possibility that at any moment an interdimensional portal was going to open up in the middle of the bullpin or a couple black helicopters were going to descend upon the roof as the voice of Cecile Baldwin started rambling about the Glow Cloud. It was just completely bizarre, and as much as I could've accepted it, by the end the show seemed to really, really want you to believe that Simon Doyle wasn't a nutball. And that...that's just weird to me.

Castle isn't a sci fi show. It's a cop show. Sometimes it's a silly cop show, sometimes it's wildly ridiculous, sometimes it homages and pushes to the very edge of believability, but it's still a cop show. It's not The X-Files. Yet, this week... we went X-Files. In a lot of ways. I mean, come on...

Is-- Is that... Oh my god. It's Ed Jerse.
It's Eddie. Fucking. Jerse.

This is an episode with both David Amann and Rob Bowman in the credits (Bowman who, coincidentally, also directed Never Again), which on its own isn't a particularly special fact, given they've been involved since s1. But the addition of Rodney Rowland (Ed Jerse, AKA the crazy guy with the Jodie Foster tattoo who once tried to throw Scully into an incinerator) and the crazy, sci-fi nature of this plot makes me look at them suspiciously (even if it was written by Marlowe and Terri Edda Miller). And then there's this:

Oh, good god, Beckett. I know the shoulder pads started showing up last year with that crazy black blazer (which I'm pretty certain is the same blazer you wore this episode on day 2), but, come on. Those things are beyond quarterback levels. They're as intense as mid-90s Scully shoulder pads (and to be frank, I didn't think there was anything more horrifying in this world than mid-90s Scully shoulder pads, which always seemed to be the worst in those awful creme suits she seemed to love s2/3). She even has her pants pulled up high just the way they used to do it back in the 90s. I mean, honestly, Beckett. Half of the reason I first got into this show is because you're the best vehicle for coat porn I have ever seen in my life (something I still appreciate to this day), but this week... Good, sweet, baby Jesus...

I mean, look at those things. It's like she's wearing a jet pack.
I'm pretty sure this is the same blazer she wore to her interview in "Watershed" and a few other times ("Recoil" I remember, off the top of my head), though I'm too lazy to check to confirm. For whatever reason it wasn't so glaringly hideous before, but I think that's because this week it followed that white monstrosity.

This isn't exactly substantive commentary, but I can't help myself. This combined with Jerse and the plotline really made me feel like I was watching another X-Files homage episode, just without the direct references. Even the abandoned industrial plant place looked a lot like the set used in "War of the Coprophages." What I can't figure is if all this was intentional or not. It certainly feels like it was, but even if I'm right, and it was, I'm not sure that that really absolves it-- mostly because the episode ends with the heavy suggestion that Doyle really is a time traveler.

And there are a lot of reasons I'm unhappy about that.

The first is obvious. I don't tune into Castle for sci fi, and I feel like it's reasonable to expect that the show never go there. It breaks suspension of disbelief into a thousand jagged pieces to suddenly and randomly be thrown into a different genre. Castle's dealt with the supernatural before, but by wrapping time we're always given a rational explanation for everything, with at most one or two loose threads that tickle us with a playful little suggestion that maybe there is something para about the normal. "Scared to Death" was one of my favorite episodes of s5, as was "Demons" in s4. I love Scully-Beckett, and I really, really love (faux)Mulder-Castle, purposely ribbing Beckett whenever he can for the sake of personal amusement. But episodes like those never forgot that the show is, at heart, a procedural cop show (and "Close Encounters" didn't forget either). "Time Will Tell" did forget. It forgot hard. I don't know if this is a fault of editing or pacing, but even on the second watch I found myself being pushed into believing that Doyle was telling the truth. Never for a second did "Demons" or "Close Encounters" really leave me with that kind of impression. The fact that the episode then ends with him randomly disappearing, leaving his doo-hicky with Castle, and with Beckett creating the stain on that paper... that was just X-Files level of weird. That's actually precisely the sort of thing that XF would've done. The "rational explanation" felt more footnote-y than anything, shoved in there for about three seconds at the end.

And all of this I could sort of accept, except for what this episode is so heavily implying by having it end this way.

Me too, Beckett, though for different reasons.

When it comes down to it, there's one thing that terrifies me above all else whenever I start watching a show and find myself really loving the female lead. And that is the possibility that she is going to get pregnant.

I just... I can't handle it. I hate the idea that a woman cannot just end her story without children. And as petty as it is, I hate it when actresses get pregnant during filming, thus almost inevitably causing her character to also become pregnant. I thanked every god on Olympus, every god everywhere that has ever been conceived when Jill Hennessy's pregnancy only resulted in strategic coat and table placement in s3 of Crossing Jordan, and that Jordan was able to close the show having escaped the fate of becoming pregnant. This is something that Bones' Temperance Brennan did not escape (despite her s1 statement that she doesn't want children and has no intention of having any). This is something that Mary Shannon of In Plain Sight did not escape. This is something that Sydney Bristow of Alias did not escape (to my infinite displeasure, since as ridiculous as that show was I still sort of loved it). Dana Scully couldn't even escape it, despite her canon infertility. The idea of Beckett becoming pregnant with Castle's spawn is so horrifying to me that it honestly makes me feel slightly nauseous.

And "Time Will Tell" is almost blatantly stating, "Yeah, she's totally getting pregnant."

I had been entertaining the nightmare ever since the Caskett became a thing that Beckett was going to get pregnant. When we got through s5 without it ever coming up for even half a second, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. But this episode... between Castle's relaying his want to relive Alexis' childhood and Doyle's predictions, I'm really starting to feel that we're going to close s6 with a positive pregnancy result.

This is literally the worst possible thing that could happen. No matter how much I've invested (and I've invested a lot into the show right now), if it happens, that's it: I'm done. I'm done immediately, no question. I stopped watching IPS and Alias literally the second the pregnancies were revealed.

The problem with "Time Will Tell" in this context is then... everything. The name is suggestive ("only time will tell if Doyle was correct"). The ending is suggestive ("guys, he really is from the future, and he knows that they have three children"). The dialogue is suggestive ("our future" from Beckett, Castle clearly wanting to spend time with tiny!Alexis again, and the later "drive you crazy" comment). It's such blatant fan-service for Caskett fannits who would inevitably support this sort of thing that it makes me feel like I should start lowering the lifeboat off the ship and piling in the life jackets.

The thing is that I don't want to jump ship. I want to keep enjoying Castle until it ends. I want to keep enjoying Beckett, keep enjoying her badassery, keep enjoying how quickly she draws her gun, that look on her face when she leads the way into a hostage scene or a dangerous scenario, when she glares down some dirtbag in the box like she's an attack dog sitting poised at the end of a short length of chain, and I want to keep enjoying casual!Beckett with her flowy clothes and easy smile. A pregnancy won't change Castle much, if it all (he's already a father), but it will change Beckett. It will change her a lot. A lot a lot. And I don't watch Castle for children and family drama, and I certainly don't watch it to see Beckett getting increasingly chained to her desk because of her (unsightly) physical impediment. I don't want to see her angsting about how a pregnancy and a kid is going to affect her life (considering, a) she's a confirmed workaholic, and b) she loves her job), I don't want to see some cutesy dialogue between her and Castle about her having to give up coffee until she has the kid, and I really, really, really, really do not want to see her in any stage of pregnancy, birth, or baby-holding.

Ugh, just shoot me, Beckett.

The reality is, she's a woman living the 21st century. She's extremely independent, a hard worker, embroiled in a dangerous career, with her life hanging precariously on a bluff she made against a man who could easily order her death once he realizes what she did. And she's in a relationship with a man who already has a daughter. A 19 year-old daughter. She doesn't need to have a kid to be fulfilled as a character, and, frankly, the idea of the two of them producing spawn that's a full twenty years younger than Alexis is just disturbing. If Alexis has children, they'll be of comparable age to her own siblings. And Castle would end up being like sixty by the time these kids entered high school (and Beckett may end up just being dead-- becoming, with a brutal irony, her mother to her children (murdered as Jo was)).

"Time Will Tell" is the first episode that's seriously suggested that Beckett is going to be subjected to this shit. What's worse is that it was co-written by the creator of the show (Marlowe). Am I being alarmist in reading into this? Maybe, but I can't help myself, especially since Beckett didn't say anything against the idea of having children. And it's because of this that this episode put the fear of god into me.

As for the rest of the episode, it was entertaining (up until Doyle made his predictions, at which point my brain pretty much melted). I didn't have that strong of a reaction to Alexis wanting to move in with Pi. The thing about Alexis is she's always pretty much done what she wants, just like her father, and I've justified in my head-canon why she's in a relationship with Pi: I think part of her likes his dependence on her, especially since her other canonical boyfriends all left her (from what I can remember; I mean, she broke up with Ashley, but he physically and emotionally left her long before that); I think she likes how casual and non-serious he is, especially in light of the fact that she's such an extreme academic fuddy duddy, because I think she probably finds it comforting (I can totally see her being one of those college students who's starting to fear what she's actually going to do with her life once she graduates); I think it's possible that she's too naive to see that part of what's motivating him to be with her (I'm guessing) is her money. Moving in with him may not be the brightest move on her part, but it's not like she's marrying him (merging assets), and I'm really, really confident that if they two of them have started boinking, she's practicing safe sex. Once things go wrong, I can see it being an ugly break-up, sure, probably even a messy one, what with them living together, but not permanently damaging-- either emotionally, financially, or physically (since Pi doesn't exactly strike me as violent). Do I like the fact that she fought with Castle? No. But, then again, this is hardly the first time they've clashed over her decisions regarding her relationships (I have a feeling that she may have internalized Castle always telling her that she's "the smart one" -- to the point where she believes that she truly is better at making decisions than him). I'm sure in a few episodes she'll show up in tears on Castle's doorstep telling him what a mistake she's made, apologizing for acting rashly and impulsively, for not listening, and everything will be fine. I mean, for god's sake, Castle is rich enough to buy any attorney in the nation, and his fiance is a cop. If there's anyone who could get out of a messy relationship with very little real blowback, it's someone with Alexis' resources.

At any rate, that's pretty much all I have to say. To be frank, I just really, really hope "Time Will Tell" was nothing more than tease, because I'd love to rewatch it ten episodes or a season from now and laugh at how ridiculous my reaction was to it, since it was otherwise a hilarious episode on the face of it (I mean, come on, the only thing more annoying than ghosts or demons or Big Foot or aliens or the CIA would have to be time travelers when it comes to working with Castle on a case, especially if a lot of the evidence piling up is only supporting Castle's whimsy when all she truly wants is to find the living, breathing, skin-and-bone explanation for everything so she can close the case and go home and take a bath and go to bed). Joshua Gomez' (Doyle) performance was a lot of fun to watch. I loved watching Beckett getting tackled like a quarterback (to match the shoulder pads), finally dragging herself up from her daze with gun and temper raised high. I'm finding it amusing that this is the fourth time Castle has almost died in as many episodes (since, again, I consider 6.01 and 6.02 to be one episode canonically). I'm wondering what happened to Gates and Sully, but to be honest it doesn't bother me that much that Beckett got her desk back and hasn't been relegated to a new place. Overall, it was good, fun, solid.

It's just... yeah. You get it, you know what I'm concerned about. I just hope I'm wrong, overblowing the whole thing because I'm on high alert.

Please just shoot Bracken in the face before something worse has the chance of happening.
At least give me the pleasure of watching you pull that trigger if things are truly going to go the way I fear.
And then you can go ahead and shoot me too.

Things left in seldom opened closets

Freshman year of high school I picked up the piano. I used to spend my breaks in a little closet of a music room, with my laptop positioned precariously on its top, and watch piano tutorials and think to myself “One day, I will be just as good as this guy.” The room was only a few inches longer than the piano, barely had enough space for me to scoot the stool back. I used to think, in those little moments of solace snatched between the general tedium of schoolwork, that I was actively engaged in finding myself. I played for several years, self-taught, with dwindling enthusiasm, until eventually the little electric Yamaha in my room became mostly relegated to the role of extended desk space, and I stopped visiting the closet. I've kept that Yamaha with me through several moves. Today I played it again, and I realized that I had forgotten almost nothing since I'd last played – I could still read, my fingers still remembered the songs I'd spent time learning, and I still screwed up in the same places. I realized that if I'd kept at playing all these years, with just an ounce of discipline, I would've been as decent as that guy in the videos.

When I was six or seven, my parents wanted me to learn the violin, but I stopped within two lessons, convinced it was boring. I own a guitar I only vaguely know how to play. My computer is filled with half-written stories, my desk filled with plans I never bothered to see through. Sometimes I look back at my brief existence and see a road of dead opportunities, of skills never achieved, of experiences never garnered, and I just get incredibly annoyed with myself, and I convince myself I will do better, but then I never do.

I often find myself in the position of feeling terribly unmotivated, and just as often it seems as if I'm surrounded by people with similar proclivities. While the characters I commit so much of my time to studying pursue their passions with a zeal encroaching on obsession, I consistently don't find that quality reflected in anyone I know personally, including myself. I generally chalk this up to my larger theory that television is a form of idealism, but then I remember that there are actual people – lots of people – who find the motivation to do things far more difficult than poke some keys for a few minutes every day. That being motivated isn't simply idealistic, and I can't excuse laziness through the actions of my peers.

Standing there today, going over the sheet music I'd printed out several years ago, I thought again of how easy it is to disappoint yourself. I remember most of the ways I used to project myself into the future: a famous paleontologist, trekking through the Gobi desert; a doctor; then a scientist. I used to see myself with capital letters behind my name, actively fantasized about how I would sign my paperwork and introduce myself. Used to think about my life split between a busy job and a quiet apartment, which I would fill with dulcet music and fairy lights and (eventually) multiple lovers. Now I try not to think about the future.

I don't forgive myself for my mistakes, but the thing about being unmotivated is that it has enabled me to live with disappointment. To accomplish much of anything, I often have to half trick myself, or I have to set up some sort of arbitrary award system. Read five pages? Excellent, take a break. Wrote a paragraph? Fantastic, watch through to ad break on Crossing Jordan. Establish a routine? Make sure I have to prove it by marking its completion on a calendar. It gets to the point where I wonder why I bother to engage in activity at all, if it's apparently so unenjoyable that I have to accept bribes from myself just to get it done. What amazes me is that no amount of self-hatred or screaming desire can seem to energize myself into doing anything. Why do I lament my lack of musical and artistic ability when I take no strides to improve them? Why can't the part of my head that understands and appreciates the difficulty of learning seem to establish communication with the part that controls basic motor function and concentration?

I suppose the answer lies in an extreme lack of discipline, established early on when my decisions to quit things despite lack of trying always went uncontradicted (though I refuse to be so trite as to blame my parents for my failures). Even the act of writing this rambling exposition is a form of procrastination, as I write this as a way to avoid working on the very things I've mentioned. But in defense, it does feel good to admit my weaknesses frankly and unapologetically, so that I may see rather nakedly how ridiculous I am. Maybe this is all just another trick – the act of admitting how pathetic I am publicly will cause me to remedy the situation out of shame (though one could debate how public an unread blog truly is). Or maybe I simply wanted to write about something, and through the myriad of possible topics, this one floated to surface. Whatever the cause, and whatever the result, all I can say for certain is that I almost always get a little melancholic when I watch Lindsey Stirling or Sherlock pluck their violins – and that sucks ass.

Pecan ice cream and personal indulgence

I've been asked why my life so often seems to revolve around fictional, pixelized characters. And today, for whatever reason, I started to think about it, and this is what I came up with.

To me, television is something of a shallow lover. Despite all the discontinuities and the disappointments, I remain ever faithful, because part of me longs for those moments when I've turned off the lights and let go of time, and the world falls away as my screen whispers vague promises of love and joy and beauty and fulfillment, as it assures me that pain is as sweet as it is transient, that there is no one too distant, too guarded, or too damaged to find both meaning and acceptance. The falseness of it doesn't matter; it's just the feeling, just the response.

I used to read a lot when I was a kid. I wasn't what one would call a prolific reader – I just tended to read the same things over and over again, constantly searching around for the feeling I got out of one passage or another, and then savoring it once I found it. And it was always the same person that I looked for, across authors and genres: a woman on the outside (sometimes by choice, but generally by circumstance) who slowly builds herself the family she never had – or, to be more accurate, a family builds itself around her, often without her knowledge or request. Generally, she still remains the outsider to some degree, never fully integrating within this family, even though she is its core, and while she may abuse its members, or go off without them for long stretches of time, upon her return or at any hint of threat it will rally around her without hesitation, so strengthened is it by its love, trust, and faith in her. Above all she is strong, and she is right, and she is damaged, and she is plagued by demons, and her conviction will carry both her and her little band through the Gates of Hell in the hope that there she may find solace, though she never truly will.

Feeling generally isolated myself, the Woman became something of a guiding force. I trusted in her saga and her arc, I took faith in the kindness she both exhibited and was afforded, and I loved her fully, unconditionally. She was the ideal, the god I never believed in, and I internalized her as such. Without friends or religion to guide me, I strove to become her, and, once I had done so, I quickly came to realize that the world wasn't adapting around me, that my isolation (which predated my recognition of the Woman) wasn't being breached by anyone looking to save me from myself, that friendships were weak and trustless and selfish, and that life was boring and monotonous. I would never slay monsters; I would never save the world; I would never travel between countries on horseback, restless and determined. Long before I had even entered high school, the world was a place I desperately longed to avoid, and so I did, throwing all of my emotional energy onto printed pages and, eventually, moving pixels. Under the auspices of the Woman, I became an idealist, paradoxically convinced that loyalty and love were as fictional as the stories I so desperately consumed.

Since then, little has changed for me. I've found people – both myself and others – to be constant sources of disappointment. The thing about idealism is that ultimately it's a lonely way to live, and often when I find myself seeking joy and fulfillment, I end up mostly finding emptiness and groundless sentiment. Often I find myself struggling against the recognitions I made in my childhood: that life lessons don't come gift-wrapped from the mouths of friends or strangers, that heroes live mostly in the stories, and that greatness and strength and courage are not traits of great relevancy in this culture of menial jobs and hollow friendships and easy lives. It's true that I'm not starving or cold or dying, that as far as 83% of the world is concerned, I lead a life of privilege and ease by virtue of being American, that my perception of hardship is vastly insignificant in the face of the poverty and desperation so many people face. But this knowledge does nothing to curb the ache for meaning and acceptance, the yearning for true friendships and a found family, and so I find myself constantly returning to the Woman and her sweet promise of humanity, even if I no longer entirely believe her. Living vicariously is, to some degree, the only thing I've learned how to do well, and so often she is my only source of comfort and stasis.

I sometimes wonder who I would have turned out to be if I had never found the Woman, or if I'd never internalized her to the degree that I did. Maybe part of the substance of other people's happiness is that they don't spend so much time trying to unlock the secrets of it. Maybe it's not that joy is complex, it's just that I fail to recognize it. It's equally possible that I'm just a nutcase, that rumination is unproductive, and that people give up on me because I'm difficult to be around. In any case, such is the state of my life, and for whatever reason, it feels good to admit it.

And on that note, I return to Sherlock.