Thank you!! It was torturing me trying to remember that guy’s name!
Hmmm. Nathan Fillion is good. Murder She Wrote, not so much–but I think I may be reacting against Angela Lansbury more than the concept. (A mystery is a mystery, after all; the detective’s profession doesn’t matter as much as his character/personality).
I’d give it a shot, but I’m still beefing with ABC over Pushing Daisies. Best of luck to Mal, though. 
Mild bump. I just saw a commercial for it and checked ABC.com. They have a 13 minute intro that you can watch, that’s probably going to be pretty representative of the show. Hopefully it’s not just the first half of the first episode.
It doesn’t look good, but it doesn’t look like it will be awful either. I’ll probably watch it just so I have something on Mondays.
Starts tomorrow!
So did anyone watch it yet? I thought it was pretty good. The crime/mystery-of-the-week was not very interesting but it was pretty much just a backdrop for the lead characters to interact. This episode was all about the charisma of Fillion and the detective and their chemistry together. It worked! Fillion is great and the lead actress holds her own with him. I also liked Castle’s mom and daughter.
We’ll have to see if the investigations become more intriguing, but right now this looks kinda like Moonlighting '09 (in a good way, like the early seasons of Moonlighting).
I pretty much agree with you totally, Tangent. Fillion was definitely brilliant and the rest of the cast was very good. I won’t complain about Stana Katic as the lead actress either. She doesn’t even have to act, she can just stand around and quirk that little smile every once in a while and I’ll be happy. That aside, I agree that the actual story was only mildly interesting and pretty standard, but Fillion was amazing and his interaction with the rest of the characters was a lot of fun. I hope it gets better from here, but it is good enough for me to watch it as is.
Yeah, I liked the interplay between Fillion and Katic, who I don’t recall ever having seen before, and the daughter character was great, but everyone else seemed just a bit too…arch for me. Ain’t no Firefly, for sure, but not entirely horrible and I’ll probably catch the next few episodes.
I’m surprised no one’s checked the IMDB yet on Katic. She looked familiar, so I did. She was in “Heroes”. Her character’s name was Hana Gitelman, but IIRC, she was more commonly referred to as Wireless
I was underwhelmed. On the plus side, I thought both leads gave good performances, and I liked the daughter quite a bit. The mother was a hoot, but I’m wondering how long you can play that before it gets tiresome.
The not so positive: I hated the flip tone. When Castle pulled strings with the mayor to speed the fingerprints processing along, and the detective pointed out that he jumped the line of every other detective waiting for prints for a case, the writers turned it into an opportunity to show what a fuddy duddy the detective is. I hope next week’s case is when a murderer kills a second victim because the police didn’t catch him because their fingerprints processing was delayed.
During the scene where Castle was describing “the story” of the detective’s past (and that was a little heavy-handed for a Castle=Holmes moment, I thought), I hoped he would be wrong, because I thought that would be interesting, given that the story he told was so predictable and cliche. But no. (At least, they made him seem right by her reaction, I suppose the show could redeem itself in a future episode by revealing she was only humoring him.)
I guess my biggest problem is that I was expecting something great from Fillion, and despite his solid performance, this show seems pretty run of the mill. I’ll give it a few more weeks because I don’t always love a show right from the pilot, but I’m feeling pretty Meh about it.
The actors were fine. It’s the writing that’s a problem.
Fillion and Katic do what they can with what they’re given, but it’s mostly Generic Banter. And as for the mystery - well, I suppose you could do worse than to crib from Christie, but it was still nothing to get excited about.
The fatal flaw as far as I’m concerned is that there’s nothing here that I haven’t seen before with better lighting.
And the less said abouth the poker game the better.
It was pretty routine. Some good chemistry, but a fairly trite story.
And, as usual, they got the business of writing wrong: no publisher is going to ask for an advance back, especially from someone who’s selling as well as Castle does. The money’s been spent, Castle’s older books are still in print, and pissing him off is not a good way to get him to stay with you when he does have something to be published. There was also the “blocked writer” cliche, but at least they resolved that as they set up the series.
OTOH, we actually saw Castle sitting at the computer and writing (not in standard format, but that’s not as standard as it used to be, so it’s excusable). While I don’t expect them to spend a lot of time showing it (writing is boring to the outside observer), I hope they do, from time to time, show him working on a book.
I’ll watch again, but it’s not a must.
If those poker players were actual authors, that might explain the bad acting.
How could any smart modern woman put up with that kind of Sexual harrassment? I don’t care if he has* Obama’s *name in this speed-dial.
I’m pretty sure one of the poker players was Stephen J. Canell but his IMDB profile doesn’t list it.
I thought they were - I’m pretty sure that I recognized Stephen J. Cannell and James Patterson.
Sorry for the double post but the poker players are definitely writers. Stephen J. Cannell and James Patterson.
Yeah, Castle actually name drops Cannell and Patterson in an earlier scene. I think it’s when he’s asking for copies of the crime scene photos, saying something like “Cannell and Patterson would be so jealous.”
I don’t begin to see how good natured, if slightly heavy handed, flirting even begins to count as sexual harassment.
It was fairly obvious the character enjoyed the attention on some level, and she was certainly strong enough to slam the door on it were that not the case.
On the whole, I liked the show. There were some bumps, but I’m hoping it finds its stride over the next few episodes.
We have it on DVR. My wife watched it and said it was good - much better than either of us have been finding Dollhouse. So I’ll take a look.
I thought it was pretty good for a first episode. Loved granny with her greydar 
Watched the premiere last night. Near the end, I thought, well, that was a neat movie, but how are these two going to keep working together? Looks like a pilot that got picked up because it was good as a pilot, but not necessarily a concept to last as a show. I shall of course watch more, even though it’s on opposite Medium; I loved probably-doomed shows. I shall give up on it when it becomes a success & gets old, much as I did Las Vegas.
Cannell cameo FTW.