A Man. And His Blog.

The second season of ABC's light crime/mystery aired during the TV season 2009/2010

TV’s most engaging and unlikely crime-solving duo is back in the second season of ABC’s Castle. The banter flies faster than the bullets in this series, loaded with drama, romance and laughs.
Best-selling mystery novelist Rick Castle’s (Nathan Fillion) unique approach to crime solving may have won over Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) and her colleagues of detectives and friends, but their relationship is still on rocky ground after the events of the first season finale.

Episode 01: Deep in Death
A good season opener. Okay, not really a season opener, because it was a simple procedural episode with the aftermath of Castle’s findings. But I liked the episode; it had everything a Castle episode needed: a case which wasn’t boring, the humor was great, the chemistry between Beckett and Castle is still there, and there is at least some sort of ongoing story, even though I can’t think about the story with Beckett’s mother being the big story now. When the second season survives the TV competition, the writers will handle this story like the writers of The Mentalist handle the Red John story – three episodes per season, maybe a fourth one, maybe even less.
Like I said, the case was not boring (just not interesting either). The bodysnatcher scene was cool and unpredictable, but the whole case was too unspectacular to be really good. Just Castle playing poker with the Russian mob (and Beckett’s entrance as a hot Russian) was cool. 7.5/10

Episode 02: The Double Down
Secrets, murder and gambling – muhaha, what a funny episode. I thing the writers put the actual bet in the front and the two murder investigations were just the second row of stories to tell in this episode. At least the episode brings the other two detectives into the story for a change; this was something I missed in the first season and I hope, this won’t be the last time and all the second- and third-row characters are going to be more involved into the story.
I actually didn’t understand the conclusion of the two murders. Not only was the motive completely missing, but why did they do that at all? Not even the murders have a real sense. At least it was funny as hell, and Beckett spoke again about her mother’s case.
The rest was good, too, it is just the conclusion, which I won’t like. 7.5/10

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Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), a rock star of the literary world, is suffering from a case of writers block after killing off the main character in his novels and is struggling to come up with a replacement.
He had grown weary of having it all, “fame, fans and females”, when he was approached by the attractive Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) of the NYPD to help catch the copy-cat killer staging murders based on scenes from his novels.
Castle is not a traditional investigator and his approach to solving the crimes conflicts with Beckett’s conservative approach leading to much tension and a hint of romance. From now on he works with captain Roy Montgomery (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) and Beckett’s other partners and detectives Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas) and Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever) to look for stories for his new book. Keeping Castle grounded are his mother Martha )Susan Sullivan) and his teenage daughter Alexis (Molly C. Quinn).

Episode 01: Flowers For Your Grave
An interesting start into the series. The plot strongly reminded of Murder, She Wrote (a TV show I never watched btw); the setup strongly reminded of buddy cop shows like Bones, Monk and Psych. In addition to that, it looks like that crime shows with a consultant, who first had nothing to do with solving cases and is generally unarmed, are “in” today.
The murder case(s) of the episode was good. It had the potential of a serial element in the series, but the authors decided to put stories like this in the first episode and finish them, before the pilot is over. That is good and a little bit unexpected. Nathan Fillion has charm like in all of his other shows and Stana Katic was a little bit of an eye candy. The chemistry between the two is good enough to give the series some funny moments, but Castle’s family scored all points in the matter of humor. The man-fishing mother and the adorable daughter who has more sense than her father, and finally the ex-wife, his kinda-like boss.
But the show won’t survive that long. A crime show on ABC? Come on… Women’s Murder Club only survived for 13 episodes. 8/10

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