FORGET the crimes. Ignore the clues. Never mind the cops and criminals. When it comes to a show like Castle, the only thing that really matters is the chemistry.
At first glance, this new ABC series — which premieres Monday at 9 p.m. — seems like a police drama, filled with all the requisite murder and mayhem and investigative mumbo-jumbo leading to an episode-ending, climactic application of the cuffs. Read the rest of this entry »
Judging by the timeslot it’s given Castle — it premieres at 10 p.m. ET Monday, March 9, after the network’s top-rated show, Dancing with the Stars — ABC seems to think it’s found the show to break that drought. And while the first two episodes have some good moments — thanks in large part to Firefly and Waitress star Nathan Fillion in the title role — the show doesn’t immediately announce itself as a hit…. Read the rest of this entry »
…Granted, as series premises go, a mystery novelist solving actual crimes isn’t exactly the freshest idea in the world, but there’s a reason the show is called “Castle,” not “Murder, He Wrote.”
This new series is carried stylishly and confidently by Fillion in what may be the best role of his career to date after a fairly thankless stint as Dana Delany’s philandering husband on “Desperate Housewives.” In fact, Fillion was filming that other ABC series when the “Castle” executive producers scheduled a meeting with him.
“I never do this in a meeting, but I said, ‘Listen, I am so this guy. This is me. I can do this forwards, backwards and blindfolded. This is what I love to do,’ ” Fillion recalls. “The script just spoke to me. Here’s a guy who is having fun every day, having adventures, getting away with something. That’s what I want my life to be like. In my real life, I sit around a living room and talk to people, so in my work life, I’d like it to be an adventure like Rick Castle.”
It certainly wasn’t a stretch to capture Rick’s reluctance to grow up, adds Fillion, 37, who admits that his own inner child is still pretty rambunctious.
“When I was a kid we weren’t spoiled with a lot of toys,” he says. “We have a family joke that when we were kids, we had two toys: Legos and a stick. My parents expected us to use our imagination. Now I’m older and have more disposable income, so I look on the Internet and see an electric skateboard that will carry a guy my size 14 miles an hour, and I’m buying that thing. That’s what I use to go down the corner to get groceries.”
The show gets additional zing from “Dharma & Greg” veteran Susan Sullivan, romping through her scenes as Rick’s madcap actress mom, Martha Rodgers.
“Susan kind of blows in and out of episodes,” Fillion says. “She comes in like a hurricane, does her bit and mixes things up and then blows out again. What is so great about her scenes is that Susan is an actress who just truly understands comedy. Her comedic instincts are phenomenal, so you really get the impression that Martha Rodgers has a life before she arrives into the scene and she has one after she blows out of it. You just get the very real sense that she’s part of a real world that we’re just getting little tastes of.
“One of the things I love most is you get the distinct idea that Castle has a mother who is not very maternal, and yet he has a daughter who is. Rick mothers his mother and is mothered by his daughter.”
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Yet at the core of “Castle” is the prickly relationship between Rick and Kate, and series creator Andrew Marlowe insists that he and fellow executive producer Rob Bowman are in no rush to turn up the romantic heat between these two characters.
“(Rick) is looking for a new main character … and (Kate) becomes his muse, the new character for his next best-selling set of novels, so he pulls some strings to allow himself to become her unofficial partner on cases,” Marlowe says. “Castle approaches the investigation from the point of view of ‘What is the story?’ So he brings in a storytelling point of view, whereas Beckett, who is a good cop, is all about the evidence. You have the two of them investigating the crime from different points of view, and their styles and their personalities clash, and that’s where the sparks fly.”
“I think what you’re really asking is: ‘Are they going to blow it early?’ ” Fillion says. “No, I don’t think they’re going to do that. I think you’re going to be very happy and very comfortable with the pace at which they do things. I think we all learned a valuable lesson from ‘Moonlighting,’ in that once (David and Maddie) got together, that show was over. Here, you have two people who are very attracted to each other and have a real interest in each other, but at the same time they are diametrically opposed (to each other) in a lot of different ways that are going to keep them separated.”
Full Review: www.thepost.ca
The opening act, which cross-cuts between Nathan Fillion’s character’s book release party (he is the titular Richard Castle) – he’s just written the final book of a bestselling detective character in which the main character is gruesomely killed – and a murder scene where a Female Cop recognizes the mode of murder. Castle’s publisher is his ex-wife, and he’s months overdue for turning in his next manuscript. Oh, and he invited his (alcoholic?) mother to live with him and his daughter now that he’s divorced or something. Castle’s mother, played by Susan Sullivan, pales in comparison to Jessica Walter’s Tabitha Wilson on 90210 (she remains the only standout on the spin-off… but she’s basically playing a toned down version of Lucille Bluth, so… moving on). And just as things are getting truly boring, Castle starts complaining about how truly boring he finds the release parties and how boring he found writing those detective books to be. Why? Because he already knew what every scene was going to be. So you’ll color no one surprised when Female Cop shows up at the book release party wanting to ask Castle some questions (because the murder was done in a way that was featured in one of his novels, natch…) Really wish there hadn’t been a lampshade hung on that. As usual, Fillion oozes a kind of dirty charm and chemistry with just about every extra and inanimate object. Which is why we love him and why we haven’t stopped watching yet.
I find Stana Katic rather bland in the Mariska Hargitay Female Cop role (I believe it’s Detective Beckett)… but she’s supposed to be straightwoman to Fillion’s Castle, who is something of a loose cannon / lothario (he stole a police horse… and was naked at the time… also during the release party he signs many guest’s decolletage) so she does a serviceable job. Oh, my, I wonder if the series is going to revolve around UST… b-t-dubs, I think Cupid’s UST between Cannavale and Paulson is better. In a semi-twist, it’s actually Castle who volunteers to assist with the investigation, as opposed to him being forced to by the police. Much to Beckett’s chagrin, of course. I do like the way Katic intonates “novelist” as an insult when speaking to Castle. And I do find myself thoroughly amused that the NYPD runs into real-world roadblocks such as the length of time it takes to get, like, fingerprints analyzed and Castle can just use his “I’m a famous, rich author” connects to speed things up… and then he gets a lecture from Beckett about cutting the line (other people are waiting for prints, you know).
There’s another copycat murder, a frame job, yadda yadda yadda, and the only thing I’m really curious about is how the series is going to be set up (since I have to assume that it’s not going to be yet more copycat murders each week… and I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that it’s Castle looking for his next bestseller).
Score one zinger for the daughter when she tells Castle that if she keeps having bail him out of jail, he’s going to have to raise her allowance.
It’s hard to see Fillion in a brown coat that isn’t Malcolm Reynolds’.
The UST banter between Castle and Beckett isn’t quite up to par with Booth and Bones, television’s current reigning bantery UST crimesolving duo. Although it’s not for Fillion’s lack of trying (nice use of entendre on the work “debrief”… XD)
And why are they going to film the series in Los Angeles, when it takes place in NYC and there’s all those awesome NY state / NYC tax credits to take advantage of?
For a script that I couldn’t even manage to get through 15 pages of… a rather enjoyable foundation from which a better series could rise. The series, by the way, is set up by the fact that Castle’s next series of novels will center around a tough but savvy female detective, but Castle needs to tag along to do research (and it’s kind of helped along because Castle is friends with the Mayor… so, blah blah, political pressure, swept under the rug, just get on with the series, peeps). I would definitely say that Castle is the first pilot I’ve seen thus far that has so vastly overdelivered on my expectations. Hell, I’m even willing to see if Katic can grow into the role (a role that is a tough one, as the straightwoman… and will on be aided when the series lets us know more about her character, as the pilot was pretty much all Castle all the time).
You know… I’m actually surprised ABC picked both Castle and Cupid up. Not from a quality perspective, mind you. But they’re both NYC-based (though only Cupid will be able to take full advantage of that as it’s going to be NYC-filmed) anthological series with a UST throughline between a larger-than-life leading man and a straightwoman. It’s just that one is a murder mystery each week and the other is a romantic comedy every week. ABC has done stranger things with scheduling, and of course it totally depends on the network’s needs come January or March… but I don’t think they’d be a terrible fit together (though perhaps it’d be too much of the same). For now, I say move Brothers & Sisters to the post-DWTS Results 10pm hour, put Castle after Desperate Housewives and put Cupid after Grey’s Anatomy (I haven’t seen the new Life on Mars yet… but my hopes aren’t high).
– Submitted by: Travis Yanan
