Scattered TV thoughts: Castle and Haven
Oct. 20th, 2012 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI like the Halloween themed Netflix envelopes. Creepy trees and bouncing ghosts! And the proliferation of pumpkin bread, and the yellow leaves rustling on the trees and streets, and pumpkins showing up on all the porches...
I should write an atmospheric autumn/Halloween story.
In the meantime, however! I've been admiring the Netflix envelopes, and watching TV: Castle and Haven, to be exact.
1. I'm almost done with season 3 of Castle, and find myself...really astonishingly on board with the Castle/Beckett ship that the show is sailing, which I didn't expect at all. At the start of season 1 I found Castle's treatment of Becket really obnoxious, but they've settled into this wonderful working partnership.
They come at crimes from different angles - Castle, the crime writer, asks "What would be most entertaining?" and Becket, the police officer, asks "What fits the evidence and makes the most sense?" And from those different starting points they converge on the same answer, often ending up explaining it to each other at increasingly high velocity while incidentally giving each other a look that says, "I just want to roll around in your sexy, sexy brain."
(My favorite characters remain Alexis and Martha, Castle's daughter and his mother, though. I really like the way Castle deals with family. Castle is not a perfect father, but he's a good one, and I always love the episodes where we get lots of his family.)
Also, you guys, this show clearly realizes that it's catering to a geek demographic with Nathan Fillion, so they have episodes that were apparently designed just for meeeeeeeee. There's a steampunk club! An old speakeasy! Vampires and aliens! (Not literally.) Museums (with mummies) and chefs and dominatrices!
And, despite all this temptation to come up with bizarre murder motives, the writers tend to stick with motives that psychologically ring true. The methods may be strange, but the motives generally remain love and money. (Except that serial killer two-parter in season two. But we Do Not Speak of that.
2. I've finished season 2 of Haven. I feel far less enthusiastic about this show than Castle, because it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the writers view their characters as chess pieces in their plot, to be killed off whenever they become inconvenient.
This can range from irritating-to-gutsy - the Rev, killed right before he told Duke his Destiny - to infuriating: Evvy, dead of narrative convenience. Seriously, construct for me an alternate reality where running out into the street to demand that the masked gunman give Duke answers makes more sense than just telling Duke herself.
(I'm assuming, of course, that Evvy does know, but I just can't imagine why she would work for the Rev otherwise. Blackmail, maybe? Perhaps the Rev had weird mind control powers? The fact that the writers felt no need to explain why their hotshot conwoman would work for the Rev just irritates me more.)
Also! It was most of a season ago, but I'll still annoyed by the loss of Audrey 2. I suppose I should be glad that they didn't kill her off, but just gave her amnesia? But I am NOT. I thought she and Audrey had a great rapport (...as you would, with someone who has all your memories), and while integrating her into the regular cast would have been difficult, couldn't she have become a recurring character? She goes back to her FBI business, but pops in occasionally with, I don't know, tidbits of information about the conspiracy of tattooed people.
On the other hand, the fact that the writers treat the characters as chess pieces means Nathan & Audrey & Duke are pretty much guaranteed to survive till the last episode. As I'm kind of watching just for them, I'll probably continue despite my occasional fist-shaking. The first few episodes of season 3 are all online! So exciting!
I should write an atmospheric autumn/Halloween story.
In the meantime, however! I've been admiring the Netflix envelopes, and watching TV: Castle and Haven, to be exact.
1. I'm almost done with season 3 of Castle, and find myself...really astonishingly on board with the Castle/Beckett ship that the show is sailing, which I didn't expect at all. At the start of season 1 I found Castle's treatment of Becket really obnoxious, but they've settled into this wonderful working partnership.
They come at crimes from different angles - Castle, the crime writer, asks "What would be most entertaining?" and Becket, the police officer, asks "What fits the evidence and makes the most sense?" And from those different starting points they converge on the same answer, often ending up explaining it to each other at increasingly high velocity while incidentally giving each other a look that says, "I just want to roll around in your sexy, sexy brain."
(My favorite characters remain Alexis and Martha, Castle's daughter and his mother, though. I really like the way Castle deals with family. Castle is not a perfect father, but he's a good one, and I always love the episodes where we get lots of his family.)
Also, you guys, this show clearly realizes that it's catering to a geek demographic with Nathan Fillion, so they have episodes that were apparently designed just for meeeeeeeee. There's a steampunk club! An old speakeasy! Vampires and aliens! (Not literally.) Museums (with mummies) and chefs and dominatrices!
And, despite all this temptation to come up with bizarre murder motives, the writers tend to stick with motives that psychologically ring true. The methods may be strange, but the motives generally remain love and money. (Except that serial killer two-parter in season two. But we Do Not Speak of that.
2. I've finished season 2 of Haven. I feel far less enthusiastic about this show than Castle, because it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the writers view their characters as chess pieces in their plot, to be killed off whenever they become inconvenient.
This can range from irritating-to-gutsy - the Rev, killed right before he told Duke his Destiny - to infuriating: Evvy, dead of narrative convenience. Seriously, construct for me an alternate reality where running out into the street to demand that the masked gunman give Duke answers makes more sense than just telling Duke herself.
(I'm assuming, of course, that Evvy does know, but I just can't imagine why she would work for the Rev otherwise. Blackmail, maybe? Perhaps the Rev had weird mind control powers? The fact that the writers felt no need to explain why their hotshot conwoman would work for the Rev just irritates me more.)
Also! It was most of a season ago, but I'll still annoyed by the loss of Audrey 2. I suppose I should be glad that they didn't kill her off, but just gave her amnesia? But I am NOT. I thought she and Audrey had a great rapport (...as you would, with someone who has all your memories), and while integrating her into the regular cast would have been difficult, couldn't she have become a recurring character? She goes back to her FBI business, but pops in occasionally with, I don't know, tidbits of information about the conspiracy of tattooed people.
On the other hand, the fact that the writers treat the characters as chess pieces means Nathan & Audrey & Duke are pretty much guaranteed to survive till the last episode. As I'm kind of watching just for them, I'll probably continue despite my occasional fist-shaking. The first few episodes of season 3 are all online! So exciting!
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-20 09:08 pm (UTC)And for what? So they can give us another white male recurring character to go with the other 5?
SO ANGRY.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-20 09:21 pm (UTC)...I don't understand their life choices much. I want Audrey 2 and Eleanor Carr back. :(
no subject
Date: 2012-10-20 09:42 pm (UTC)And Julia Carr!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-21 01:11 pm (UTC)