Castle Review: Season 1 Episode 1 "Flowers For Your Grave"

 By Andrew W. Marlowe

**SPOILERS!**
If you have not watched this episode, please do so before continuing!

What if the things you wrote came true? What if, by writing a story, you could bring your characters to life? That's all well and good for a great fantasy story--the world could use a few noble unicorns, maybe some Elves...

But what if you wrote murder mysteries, and every time you killed a character, someone real died?

The premise of Castle functions something like this: Richard Castle (the inimitable Nathan Fillion) is a moderately successful murder mystery writer who has suffered for some months from debilitating writer's block. Not even killing off his most notable character for the sake of defying predictability could shake him from the slump. Then a homicide detective (stalwart Stana Katic) shows up at his launch party and wants to bring him in for questioning, because a recent murder was staged exactly as he described in one of his books. Of course, he had nothing to do with the crime... but the draw of solving a real mystery is just too much, and he keeps showing up at crime scenes and appearing at the station to give his input. Working together (and using his prodigious connections, since Castle's fanbase includes a lot of government officials), Castle and Detective Beckett solve the case--and Castle suddenly receives inspiration for a whole new series featuring a sexy homicide detective with a pain-filled past who is devoted to her job of catching bad guys and finding out the truth.

Every story has a beginning and an end... but the real entertaining stuff is everything in between!


The "Good Parts" Version:

-I admit, I started watching this because I was like, Hey! That's the guy from Firefly!! But when it starts out by showing the murderer's hands spreading rose petals over his already-dead victim's body... I wasn't sure what to make of it....

-And the fact that the scene cuts between this chilling "staging of the body" and an apparent book launch party going on at the same time was a little confusing, until we realize that the show is establishing it's two key players in the first five minutes of the show: the narcissistic, "ruggedly handsome" celebrity author who has just killed off his most popular character because "It had just gotten too predictable, you knew what was going to happen next"; and the hard-lined woman detective who takes a very professional approach to everything in life--and apparently has no "life" outside of work (the ME teases her, "Who says romance is dead?" and Beckett shoots back, "I do, every Saturday night")

-The murder itself is straightforward enough--but the fact that it's staged exactly like a scene from a book that Kate Beckett has read... by an author she apparently appreciates, because she has bought all his books... That's where it gets weird.

-Also at the book signing are Castle's mother, Martha Rogers, and daughter Alexis; the show does a good job giving us an adequate first impression of both characters: Martha is the exquisitely dressed former stage actress and busy hitting up all of the eligible men ("I just got a hit on my graydar. Bingo. No ring. Stand back, kids. Momma's going fishing, " she chirps) and Alexis is the perfect picture of the daughter of a celebrity man-child: she's brought her schoolwork with her to the party.
She deals with her father's antics with all the casualness of the owner of a hyperactive dog--and yet I think it is the dynamic between Nathan Fillion and Molly Quinn that makes this show so delightful; the two trade banter like a real father and daughter, and he's incredibly tender and protective of her, and while she can sometimes be snippy (as would be expected from the progeny of a writer, just saying!) her snark is overlaid with the utmost respect for her father. I freaking love Molly Quinn. She is awesome.

-Beckett brings Castle in for questioning, to see if he can shed any light on why "her" crime scene would look so much like a scene from his book. He, of course, can't help hitting on someone so ravishingly good looking (being such a "ruggedly handsome" individual himself) but Kate isn't fazed. She rebuffs him at every turn, he absolves himself, and she dismisses him, thinking that surely she will never have to deal with him again. Meanwhile, Castle's imagination has suddenly sparked back to life in a way he didn't think possible....

-While Kate is trying to get to the bottom of these murders, Castle is busy getting us introduced to the other key players in this show: cop buddies Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito, who regularly team up with Kate, and the Medical Examiner, Laney Parrish. The way they tease her when she brings in her entire collection of Richard Castle novels for "research", or Laney teasing her about her lack of a love-life is a lot of fun to watch, and speaks to the fact that these are her "family" inasmuch as Martha and Alexis are Richard's family.

-Castle, of course, doesn't like the lengthy procedure involved with a real investigation (it always seems to go faster in the books, does it not?) so he is not above using his connections to speed things along--much to the chagrin of Beckett and the entertainment of Ryan and Esposito. ("A control freak like you with somethin' you can't control? No, no. That's gonna be better than Shark Week!") 

-Two more bodies emerge, and once they figure out that the stagings are part of the works only "hardcore Castle fans" would ever read, Kate gets the idea to bring in his fan-mail to pick up any more possible suspects. Of course, this leads to a mentally-unstable young man who Beckett is almost positive would be capable of killing people and setting up the murders--exactly according to the way she had profiled the perpetrator. Plus, he has connections with both victims.


-Castle plays poker with James Patterson and Stephen J. Cannell--the former I have read and did not enjoy, and I'm wondering if the same goes for the other guy. They discuss the case when Richard presents it as an idea for a novel--and all three agree that there is something missing in the case, some important detail.

-After a night of thinking deeply (as all writers are prone to... myself included), Castle revisits the precinct and deduces--from using the delivery of a signed copy of his latest book as a cover for taking the crime scene photos from Kate's desk--that a meticulously devoted, mentally disturbed man like Kyle could not have been the murderer, because in the first staging, the rose petals used were different than the ones explicitly written in the book. A near-autistic young man like Kyle would not make such a deviation. Ergo, the murder is a cover-up, not a systematic serial.

-The original murder was the girl floating in the pool a la a scene from one of Castle's worst novels--and both Castle and Kate arrive at the conclusion (and the location of the connection, the office of the girl's father) separately. Kate tries to take command of the situation and be professionally succinct--but Castle's writerly mind is getting the better of him, and he point-blank asks some rather brash questions.... which then reveal that he is, in fact, dying, and that the girl's death meant that the whole of the inheritance would be going to her brother.

-The brother has an immediate alibi, which Kate accepts... until Castle points out how, if he were writing the story, the killer would of course get his passport stamped to give himself an alibi, but that would not necessarily mean he actually went anywhere. Kate--who has had about enough of Castle second-guessing her, causing her to question her own judgment--cuffs him to the car and goes back in to question the brother--but he's already split.

-I love the way Castle totally pulls a stunt like you see in the movies, trying to get the keys to the cuffs, dropping them on the pavement, then slipping his shoe off to pick it up with his toes!

-The killer comes down the fire escape just ahead of Beckett, so of course Castle goes after him. There is a brief stand-off where Beckett is trying to talk the man down, as he has a gun to Castle's head and threatens to shoot him, but then Castle totally takes him down and escapes while Kate arrests the real killer.

-End of story, right? But no, this is just the beginning. Castle has found his muse again--and he gets the mayor's approval to follow the homicide detective around for "research purposes." Apparently he finds Kate Beckett inspiring enough for a whole new series featuring a New York homicide detective named Nikki Heat. Looks like the two of them are stuck together for who-knows-how-long!

And so the story begins....



I loved this pilot. It presented the key characters in just the right way, it launched a story arc that was full of potential, and most of all, the chemistry between the actors was perfect.
What is really powerful, though, is the writing. The banter, the quips, the characterizations, the balance between light-hearted sarcasm and heart-felt serious discussion. This show has a great team of writers--and NEWS FLASH: In case you didn't know, the Richard Castle novels actually exist.  I've read most of the Nikki Heat series (all except the first one) and there are 2 Derrick Storm novels and they are exactly like the show. Not like your ordinary "TV-novelizations" that just feel like another episode of the same show, but actually really drawing from Castle's various experiences throughout the show, and the people he meets (everyone from the precinct has a character in his novels, from "Kevin Bryan" and "Javier Rodriguez" to "Lauren Perry" the medical examiner and "Police Chief Montrose" (after Beckett's captain, Montgomery; also present are not-so-subtle references to the other of Nathan Fillion's most famous work, in the appearance of Detectives Malcom and Reynolds!!) as if it were really Richard Castle writing them! (I seriously doubt it's Nathan Fillion himself, but either he has considerable "creative consulting" into the books, or the writers were just so fantastic at creating the character for him that they could reproduce a near-copy on paper!)

All in all, this was a solid pilot, even though the actual mystery sort of seemed to take a backseat to all the characters getting acquainted. I give it a 10/10!!