3月9日
'Castle': Made of Sand
Nathan Fillion has had the sort of talent that should have long ago made him a huge, huge star. He can do drama. He can do comedy. He can do action. And he'll look darn good doing it, if handsome, funny, rugged men happen to be your thing.
He starred in the high-quality, dead-before-their-time shows "Firefly" and "Drive." Tonight marks the premiere of "Castle," his latest project. My guess is that if the pilot's any indication, it's going to be a low-quality show that nevertheless sticks around for a baffling number of seasons. There's a certain injustice that his worst TV show will probably have the longest run. But such is life.
Fillion plays the title role, Richard Castle, a famous but jaded mystery novelist who has just killed off the lead character in his main series and is suffering from a case of writer's block. Luckily for him, someone decides to stage a few murders in the style of his lesser-known books. That causes the NYPD to bring him in as a possible suspect. And by NYPD, I mainly mean Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic. Beckett's the polar opposite of Fillion's Richard Castle. He's got a sense of humor. She's serious. He's unconventional. She's by the book. He flirts with her a lot. She rolls her eyes at his advances while secretly welcoming them.
Sound familiar? Sometimes, I think I would give a lot for someone to reverse that stale formula. Why can't the woman be the unconventional, flirtatious, funny one? Or why can't both partners be?
Anyway, a lot more would need to happen for these two to develop the sort of "Moonlighting"/Nick-and-Nora style chemistry for the show to actually work well.
And the mystery, at least in the pilot, is somewhat preposterous. You would have to turn your brain completely off to ignore why someone would go to the lengths of the murderer.
We also are introduced to a bunch of secondary characters who aren't exactly exciting: Castle's outspoken and sex-starved mom (who lives with him because the writers, I guess, felt there weren't enough wacky hijinks without her), Castle's wise-beyond-her-years good-girl daughter, Castle's publisher/ex-wife, a cop who just wants cases to be closed and doesn't feel compelled to sweat the details much, etc., etc. About the only noteworthy ones are the real-life authors like James Patterson who guest-star as themselves in a weekly poker game Castle plays in. I bet they were all saying, "Man, I wish I could have written my own dialogue. It'd be waaaaaaaaaaay better than this crap."
About the only times the show felt like it transcended any of the gajillion procedurals out there were when Castle used his novelist's mindset to read people and situations. For the show to get good, I think it needs to strive less to be less like "Moonlighting," and more to be like "House," "Lie to Me" or "The Mentalist." The only way the show can realistically get better is to just rest everything on Fillion's shoulders and let him carry it across the goalline.
- posted by Raoul
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