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KATHERINE BECKET, UNDERCOVER AS A RUSSIAN ASSASSIN. How does Castle keep giving me things I never knew I wanted??? Like, seriously, it is like they have a direct line to my brain.
And then they followed it up where the whole precinct redecorates like it's the seventies, and they all dress up and play seventies police precinct characters too - Becket attempting to act is beautiful. I love that this detail of her character is consistent, that she's not much of an actress, and that they manage to keep it consistent even during the episode where she's undercover. Basically she pulls it off by frowning a lot and not saying much. And now I want Becket and Natasha Romanov to meet, thank you, show. Maybe the actual Russian assassin who Becket impersonated was a schoolmate of Natasha's! -
Anyway. They're going to all this trouble (they got Castle's mother Martha to orchestrate it! SHE IS THE BEST) because they need to interview an old mob consigliere who went into such deep mourning after his mob boss died in 1978 that he still believes it's the seventies.
And I was all "He went into mourning so deep that he barely noticed the passing of forty years? For a friend? I am all for friendship, but come on." And then the show totally went there: the mob boss and the consigliere were in love! Which is an unusual twist for Castle and in between dying of laughter at the seventiesness of everything (they clearly had so much fun) I applaud them.
***
The one thing about season 6 that I'm not sure I'm fond of - I'm not sure I'm not fond of it, either; I think it will depend where it goes in the end - is that they've suddenly added a supernatural element to the show.
For the first five seasons, Castle came up with a lot of weird supernatural theories to explain crime scenes, and Becket always shot them down, and in the end Becket was always right: not necessarily about the exact method of the murder, but that it wasn't supernatural.
But in the sixth season, there are two episodes where is seems pretty clear (at least to me) that Castle's supernatural theories were proven right: there really was a time-traveling conspiracy, and that kid really did have psychokinetic powers. (He even pulled a Matilda where he danced inanimate objects around the room. I AM SO JEALOUS I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT. Ahem.) And this week's invisibility episode is much the same. Okay, it's invisibility tech rather than actual wizardry, but sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right?
On the one hand, this is super exciting and I think it will add a fun new variable to the mysteries: there really is a chance, however small, that something supernatural is going on.
On the other hand, I don't think the writers are going to be able to resist supernaturaling up their conspiracy, and the conspiracy is already slowly, insidiously infesting the whole show, like kudzu. Or possibly a strangler vine. The premise of the season (Castle was kidnapped by a mysterious secret organization that took away his memories because apparently he asked them to) already means that a ton of time gets devoted to the conspiracy.
I realize that arc story telling is all the rage on TV these days, but dammit, I want my case of the week format back. Castle did that really well (while also having character arcs going on in the margins around the cases, which they also did really well) and I see no evidence that the conspiracy is going to be half as delightful.
And then they followed it up where the whole precinct redecorates like it's the seventies, and they all dress up and play seventies police precinct characters too - Becket attempting to act is beautiful. I love that this detail of her character is consistent, that she's not much of an actress, and that they manage to keep it consistent even during the episode where she's undercover. Basically she pulls it off by frowning a lot and not saying much. And now I want Becket and Natasha Romanov to meet, thank you, show. Maybe the actual Russian assassin who Becket impersonated was a schoolmate of Natasha's! -
Anyway. They're going to all this trouble (they got Castle's mother Martha to orchestrate it! SHE IS THE BEST) because they need to interview an old mob consigliere who went into such deep mourning after his mob boss died in 1978 that he still believes it's the seventies.
And I was all "He went into mourning so deep that he barely noticed the passing of forty years? For a friend? I am all for friendship, but come on." And then the show totally went there: the mob boss and the consigliere were in love! Which is an unusual twist for Castle and in between dying of laughter at the seventiesness of everything (they clearly had so much fun) I applaud them.
***
The one thing about season 6 that I'm not sure I'm fond of - I'm not sure I'm not fond of it, either; I think it will depend where it goes in the end - is that they've suddenly added a supernatural element to the show.
For the first five seasons, Castle came up with a lot of weird supernatural theories to explain crime scenes, and Becket always shot them down, and in the end Becket was always right: not necessarily about the exact method of the murder, but that it wasn't supernatural.
But in the sixth season, there are two episodes where is seems pretty clear (at least to me) that Castle's supernatural theories were proven right: there really was a time-traveling conspiracy, and that kid really did have psychokinetic powers. (He even pulled a Matilda where he danced inanimate objects around the room. I AM SO JEALOUS I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT. Ahem.) And this week's invisibility episode is much the same. Okay, it's invisibility tech rather than actual wizardry, but sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right?
On the one hand, this is super exciting and I think it will add a fun new variable to the mysteries: there really is a chance, however small, that something supernatural is going on.
On the other hand, I don't think the writers are going to be able to resist supernaturaling up their conspiracy, and the conspiracy is already slowly, insidiously infesting the whole show, like kudzu. Or possibly a strangler vine. The premise of the season (Castle was kidnapped by a mysterious secret organization that took away his memories because apparently he asked them to) already means that a ton of time gets devoted to the conspiracy.
I realize that arc story telling is all the rage on TV these days, but dammit, I want my case of the week format back. Castle did that really well (while also having character arcs going on in the margins around the cases, which they also did really well) and I see no evidence that the conspiracy is going to be half as delightful.
