Castle Series Finale
Eight years ago laracorsets mentioned that she was working on a new series with Nathan Fillion, and I started watching the news to see what the show was and when I could watch it. I’ve been a fan of Castle ever since the pilot episode. It's a cheesy show, but that's part of why I like it so much.
Last night’s series finale of Castle was….. weird.
So I knew going in that they had filmed two alternate endings: one if the show got cancelled, and another if they were going to continue on for another season. The problem is, they’d already revealed that Stana Katic (Kate Becket) and Tamala Jones (Lanie Parish) would not be back for another season. I did some Googling, and there were rumors that Fillon and Katic weren’t even on speaking terms with each other. Which might explain this season’s storyline which kept them apart for most of the season, not to mention the fact that she wasn’t going to be back for another season.
A source told People that the animosity between the two had become so great that they didn't speak between takes. They said: "The two were basically not speaking to each other if it wasn't in character."
So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from last night’s season finale. I knew that there were two alternate endings, at least one of which could have been the setup for the show continuing on without Becket. (I wasn’t sure how the heck they would have explained that Laney was missing though, I mean, they could have killed off Becket, or had her go into hiding or something, but Laney should have still been in the coroner’s office. And we won't even go into how I feel about the idea of continuing the show with two less female characters.)
So I wasn’t particularly thrilled about the whole “LOCKSAT” storyline this year. It felt forced and contrived, just an excuse to keep Castle and Becket apart when they were already married. And the writers never really fleshed out just who LOCKSAT was supposed to be, other than a really mysterious and scary dude(?) who killed off Becket’s former AG team and had something to do with Senator Bracken. Super mysterious, super not interested in more conspiracy theories on my police lovestory show.
Last night they were going to tie up that story thread. OK, thank goodness, for those who care. But I felt like the script was really weak. Becket got a clue last week from someone who worked for LOCKSAT, and this week’s episode started out with that guy (Caleb Brown) being killed. So while they were tracking down our murder-of-the-week, we got our first big clue, there was an assassin who worked for LOCKSAT. And we had him on tape.
Of course this leads Becket and Castle to pretty much go into hiding to protect themselves, Becket at the station, Castle in his office panic room with his mother and daughter. But then, of course, because Castle wants to be with Becket, he leaves the office and takes a cab to go down to the precinct. And of course, who is our cab driver? Our assassin of course. *Facepalm* Well, at least the writers have Castle consistently acting like a fool.
Cue a tedious scene involving Castle strapped to big table looking like a gingerbread man while our assassin administers truth serum and questions him about his love for Becket (which was an interesting way to take a little trip down memory lane, but seemed like a weird thing for an assassin to do…). Then, as usual, Ryan and Espo burst in at the last minute to save Castle. But Becket is meeting with LOCKSAT! She has to be rescued! And she is, very quickly, almost too quickly. Before we know it, the whole season’s crisis is over and we’ve somehow wrapped up an entire season’s Big Bad storyline without any muss or fuss.
My problem with the last ten minute of the show was partly the writing, and partly the blocking. Honestly, I didn’t really have any idea who LOCKSAT was supposed to be. He was just a mysterious Big Bad conspiracy theory character. His purpose and motivations were not really clear for me (unlike Senator Bracken, who was working his way up to being President). While they were trying to follow up on clues earlier in the episode, they ended up in a gunfight and got rescued by by Mason Wood of the Greatest Detective Society, supposedly sent by Castle’s stepmother Rita. He’s a character that we’ve seen only once before, but it feels weird that this old man is our “big bad” for not just the entire season, but really, for the entire show. We have no motivation for his actions, no explanation for why he did what he did. He’s just presented as our villain, and that’s that.
He sets up a secret meeting with Becket and drives her to a CIA facility where there’s a “murder room” in the basement with a roaring fire in the incinerator to dispose of the bodies. Becket isn’t a fool, and pulls her gun on him. Wood isn’t a fool, and turns on an electromagnet, then pulls his plastic gun on the now unarmed Becket and tells her that Castle is already dead and being incinerated. Here’s my first issue with the blocking, Becket doesn’t even turn to look inside the incinerator to check his story. Then Castle comes in to save her, loses his gun to the magnet, but it’s enough of a distraction for Becket to knock down Wood. And then (another blocking blunder if ever there was one), instead of checking to make sure he’s really down and handcuffing him because he's too damned dangerous not to, she turns her back on the Biggest Bad of the entire show, and throws herself into Castle’s arms. Come on! They’ve been through worse together. Never EVER turn your back on the bad guy!
But nothing happens. There’s no exposition to explain Wood’s motivation. We don't even get a "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids" line or a perp walk/booking scene, we just never see Wood again. We then continue on to a quick scene in the precinct where the guys are going out for drinks. So that’s it? We’re just going to get the sort of ending that we get in every show? Good job guys, now let’s go home and get some rest?
So Castle and Becket go home to go to bed. But Castle is going to make breakfast first, because they’ll sleep better on a full stomach. At which point, the previously presumed dead Caleb Brown pops up out of nowhere and shoots Castle. Don’t these people even lock their doors? You’d think by this point Castle would have a state-of-the-art security system on their place, but apparently not. Castle goes down like a sack of bricks. More bad blocking, he just falls, doesn’t grab his wound, just lands flat on his back on the floor. Becket comes out of the bedroom, shoots Brown, but gets shot in return. We get a glimpse of the fact that she’s bleeding before (yet moar bad blocking!) she just tumbles to the floor. Again, no hand on the wound, no attempt to stop the bleeding, just tumbles to the floor. And crawls over to Castle, where both of them lay there on their backs, holding hands, staring up at the camera with glassy eyes, not trying to call for help or stop their bleeding at all.
At this point, I’m thinking “YOU GREAT BLOODY BASTARDS! Eight years and you’re going to kill off BOTH of the leads in the final moments of the series!”
And then the camera pans across the hardwood floor. And you hear a voiceover with some quotes from the pilot. ("Every writer needs inspiration and I found mine," Castle says. "Always," Beckett agrees.) And text on the screen says Seven Years Later. And as the camera pans across the apartment and towards the door of Castle’s study, I’m suddenly wondering if those asshole writers are going to do something even worse than kill off their leads? Are they trying to pull a Bobby Ewing on us and say that the last eight years never really happened but have have all been in Castle’s mind, that this has all been the novel that he’s written not about Nikki Heat, but about Castle and Becket?
But then suddenly three smiling giggling kids burst out of Castle’s office and race towards their mother. And that’s what we get for our happy ending, a shot of Family Casket eating breakfast together as the credits start to roll.
So, last few moments, happy ending, everyone dies, no just kidding, they live happily ever after and have three kids.
WTF show WTF?
***
OK, it wasn’t just me.
Castle Season Finale Strikes Sour Note
In a statement released tonight, the show's current EPs called Castle "a love story for the ages," which makes me wonder why they were apparently prepared to go on with the show if ABC had done what absolutely everybody expected last week and ordered a ninth season, even though it had already been announced that Katic would not be back. I don't care about the circumstances surrounding Katic's exit. If there was behind-the-scenes whatever, it's none of my business here. What is my business is that writers who spent two-plus seasons conspiring to keep the show's two main characters apart and yet still called it "a love story for the ages" were ready to keep going for an additional season completely without half of that love story.
Yeah, I was wondering about that too.
Buddy TV - Castle Series Finale Recap
What we do get in this series finale, titled "Crossfire," is the conclusion of one of the show's biggest mysteries, an actual moment of interaction between Beckett and Lanie, and one of the single strangest endings to a television series that I have ever witnessed. On this show, though, what else could we expect?
TV Line - Series Finale Recap
…we got a final, closure-filled sequence. Jumping forward seven years and with past “Caskett” dialogue scoring the scene, we saw Rick and Kate breakfasting with their three children, precisely as foretold by Season 6’s “time traveler.”
Huh, I forgot about that. Still doesn’t make it clever writing.
Last night’s series finale of Castle was….. weird.
So I knew going in that they had filmed two alternate endings: one if the show got cancelled, and another if they were going to continue on for another season. The problem is, they’d already revealed that Stana Katic (Kate Becket) and Tamala Jones (Lanie Parish) would not be back for another season. I did some Googling, and there were rumors that Fillon and Katic weren’t even on speaking terms with each other. Which might explain this season’s storyline which kept them apart for most of the season, not to mention the fact that she wasn’t going to be back for another season.
A source told People that the animosity between the two had become so great that they didn't speak between takes. They said: "The two were basically not speaking to each other if it wasn't in character."
So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from last night’s season finale. I knew that there were two alternate endings, at least one of which could have been the setup for the show continuing on without Becket. (I wasn’t sure how the heck they would have explained that Laney was missing though, I mean, they could have killed off Becket, or had her go into hiding or something, but Laney should have still been in the coroner’s office. And we won't even go into how I feel about the idea of continuing the show with two less female characters.)
So I wasn’t particularly thrilled about the whole “LOCKSAT” storyline this year. It felt forced and contrived, just an excuse to keep Castle and Becket apart when they were already married. And the writers never really fleshed out just who LOCKSAT was supposed to be, other than a really mysterious and scary dude(?) who killed off Becket’s former AG team and had something to do with Senator Bracken. Super mysterious, super not interested in more conspiracy theories on my police lovestory show.
Last night they were going to tie up that story thread. OK, thank goodness, for those who care. But I felt like the script was really weak. Becket got a clue last week from someone who worked for LOCKSAT, and this week’s episode started out with that guy (Caleb Brown) being killed. So while they were tracking down our murder-of-the-week, we got our first big clue, there was an assassin who worked for LOCKSAT. And we had him on tape.
Of course this leads Becket and Castle to pretty much go into hiding to protect themselves, Becket at the station, Castle in his office panic room with his mother and daughter. But then, of course, because Castle wants to be with Becket, he leaves the office and takes a cab to go down to the precinct. And of course, who is our cab driver? Our assassin of course. *Facepalm* Well, at least the writers have Castle consistently acting like a fool.
Cue a tedious scene involving Castle strapped to big table looking like a gingerbread man while our assassin administers truth serum and questions him about his love for Becket (which was an interesting way to take a little trip down memory lane, but seemed like a weird thing for an assassin to do…). Then, as usual, Ryan and Espo burst in at the last minute to save Castle. But Becket is meeting with LOCKSAT! She has to be rescued! And she is, very quickly, almost too quickly. Before we know it, the whole season’s crisis is over and we’ve somehow wrapped up an entire season’s Big Bad storyline without any muss or fuss.
My problem with the last ten minute of the show was partly the writing, and partly the blocking. Honestly, I didn’t really have any idea who LOCKSAT was supposed to be. He was just a mysterious Big Bad conspiracy theory character. His purpose and motivations were not really clear for me (unlike Senator Bracken, who was working his way up to being President). While they were trying to follow up on clues earlier in the episode, they ended up in a gunfight and got rescued by by Mason Wood of the Greatest Detective Society, supposedly sent by Castle’s stepmother Rita. He’s a character that we’ve seen only once before, but it feels weird that this old man is our “big bad” for not just the entire season, but really, for the entire show. We have no motivation for his actions, no explanation for why he did what he did. He’s just presented as our villain, and that’s that.
He sets up a secret meeting with Becket and drives her to a CIA facility where there’s a “murder room” in the basement with a roaring fire in the incinerator to dispose of the bodies. Becket isn’t a fool, and pulls her gun on him. Wood isn’t a fool, and turns on an electromagnet, then pulls his plastic gun on the now unarmed Becket and tells her that Castle is already dead and being incinerated. Here’s my first issue with the blocking, Becket doesn’t even turn to look inside the incinerator to check his story. Then Castle comes in to save her, loses his gun to the magnet, but it’s enough of a distraction for Becket to knock down Wood. And then (another blocking blunder if ever there was one), instead of checking to make sure he’s really down and handcuffing him because he's too damned dangerous not to, she turns her back on the Biggest Bad of the entire show, and throws herself into Castle’s arms. Come on! They’ve been through worse together. Never EVER turn your back on the bad guy!
But nothing happens. There’s no exposition to explain Wood’s motivation. We don't even get a "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids" line or a perp walk/booking scene, we just never see Wood again. We then continue on to a quick scene in the precinct where the guys are going out for drinks. So that’s it? We’re just going to get the sort of ending that we get in every show? Good job guys, now let’s go home and get some rest?
So Castle and Becket go home to go to bed. But Castle is going to make breakfast first, because they’ll sleep better on a full stomach. At which point, the previously presumed dead Caleb Brown pops up out of nowhere and shoots Castle. Don’t these people even lock their doors? You’d think by this point Castle would have a state-of-the-art security system on their place, but apparently not. Castle goes down like a sack of bricks. More bad blocking, he just falls, doesn’t grab his wound, just lands flat on his back on the floor. Becket comes out of the bedroom, shoots Brown, but gets shot in return. We get a glimpse of the fact that she’s bleeding before (yet moar bad blocking!) she just tumbles to the floor. Again, no hand on the wound, no attempt to stop the bleeding, just tumbles to the floor. And crawls over to Castle, where both of them lay there on their backs, holding hands, staring up at the camera with glassy eyes, not trying to call for help or stop their bleeding at all.
At this point, I’m thinking “YOU GREAT BLOODY BASTARDS! Eight years and you’re going to kill off BOTH of the leads in the final moments of the series!”
And then the camera pans across the hardwood floor. And you hear a voiceover with some quotes from the pilot. ("Every writer needs inspiration and I found mine," Castle says. "Always," Beckett agrees.) And text on the screen says Seven Years Later. And as the camera pans across the apartment and towards the door of Castle’s study, I’m suddenly wondering if those asshole writers are going to do something even worse than kill off their leads? Are they trying to pull a Bobby Ewing on us and say that the last eight years never really happened but have have all been in Castle’s mind, that this has all been the novel that he’s written not about Nikki Heat, but about Castle and Becket?
But then suddenly three smiling giggling kids burst out of Castle’s office and race towards their mother. And that’s what we get for our happy ending, a shot of Family Casket eating breakfast together as the credits start to roll.
So, last few moments, happy ending, everyone dies, no just kidding, they live happily ever after and have three kids.
WTF show WTF?
***
OK, it wasn’t just me.
Castle Season Finale Strikes Sour Note
In a statement released tonight, the show's current EPs called Castle "a love story for the ages," which makes me wonder why they were apparently prepared to go on with the show if ABC had done what absolutely everybody expected last week and ordered a ninth season, even though it had already been announced that Katic would not be back. I don't care about the circumstances surrounding Katic's exit. If there was behind-the-scenes whatever, it's none of my business here. What is my business is that writers who spent two-plus seasons conspiring to keep the show's two main characters apart and yet still called it "a love story for the ages" were ready to keep going for an additional season completely without half of that love story.
Yeah, I was wondering about that too.
Buddy TV - Castle Series Finale Recap
What we do get in this series finale, titled "Crossfire," is the conclusion of one of the show's biggest mysteries, an actual moment of interaction between Beckett and Lanie, and one of the single strangest endings to a television series that I have ever witnessed. On this show, though, what else could we expect?
TV Line - Series Finale Recap
…we got a final, closure-filled sequence. Jumping forward seven years and with past “Caskett” dialogue scoring the scene, we saw Rick and Kate breakfasting with their three children, precisely as foretold by Season 6’s “time traveler.”
Huh, I forgot about that. Still doesn’t make it clever writing.