Building Castles in the Air: An Advance Review of ABC's "Castle"
I've long said that Nathan Fillion deserves a series that's worthy of his talents as an actor and leading man.Fillion, perhaps best known for his role as the scrappy Mal on FOX's short-lived Firefly (and Universal's subsequent feature film Serenity), has managed to soar above most of the projects he's involved in but mainstream success has sadly eluded him. Most recently Dana Delany's arm candy on ABC's Desperate Housewives, Fillion--who manages to effortlessly combine a brigand's rougishness with the sly charms of a master flirt--should be on a series that utilizes his considerable skills to full effect. Sadly, I don't think that ABC's Castle, which launches tonight, is one that's going to crack the mainstream for Fillion either.
On Castle, created by Andrew W. Marlowe (Hollow Man), Fillion plays the titular character, a best-selling mystery novelist named Richard Castle who's almost as enamored with chasing the ladies as he is with himself. Bored with the success that his books have received, Castle kills off his main series' character and sets about to figure out what to do with his life next. Part of that life involves his precocious daughter Alexis (Molly Quinn) and his boozy, overbearing mother (Susan Sullivan) and ex-Broadway diva prone to breaking out in song. (We get it: he's surrounded by complicated women.)
But Castle's life gets even more complex when a killer begins using his novels as the inspiration behind a series of copycat murders, staging elaborate tableaux that recreate key scenes in Castle's well-known books. Which swiftly brings him into the orbit of tightly wound NYPD Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) who is investigating the murders. Chaos, meet control.
Castle and Beckett instantly form the sort of love/hate bond that only exists in films and television series and, despite their animosity and differences, we're supposed to feel that they are meant to be together. Unfortunately, we're not really shown this as Fillion and Katic have a shocking lack of chemistry together. Fillion's playboy author deserves a romantic ideal that's every bit as complex, devious, layered, and quirky as he is, yet Katic's Beckett is pretty darn dull. She's the type of female character whose severe and unflattering haircut is meant to symbolize how "serious" she is about her career.
And that's part of the problem. Hoping to recall the sort of tension-laden romance that categorized 1980s procedural series like Moonlighting and Remington Steele, Castle lacks all of the energy and verve of those earlier pairings. Even FOX's Bones, with his opposites-attract connection between David Boreanaz's Seeley Booth and Emily Deschanel's Temperance Brennan better approaches that classic screwball formula. Here, I keep hoping that Castle will lose interest and move on to another romantic target rather than waste his time aggressive wooing the dull-as-dishwater Kate Beckett.
The lack of sparks between the lead characters is also a major issue as the unconsummated sexual tension between Beckett and Castle is clearly meant to be the most interesting element of this series. The procedural mysteries, at least based on the two episodes provided to press for review, are pretty formulaic and standard to this type of series. By shadowing Beckett (in the hopes of using her as the basis for a new character), Castle is meant to use his creative skills as a mystery author to solve crimes in a way that the by-the-book (heh) detective can't. Which basically makes Castle Murder, She Wrote with more testosterone and form-fitting jeans.
In fact, there's far more sparkle and effervescence in the scenes between Fillion's Castle and his daughter Alexis (Quinn). Here, Quinn channels a teenager far older than her years who at times has to play the parent in her relationship with her doting yet vastly immature father. It's the playful banter between father and daughter that makes the lack of chemistry between the leads all the more painfully noticeable.
Ultimately, the foundations of this conventional series are pretty creaky and, unless the writers can find a way to inject some semblance of a spark between Fillion and Katic and create some more head-scratching mysteries for this duo to solve, this is one Castle that won't be standing for very long.
Castle launches tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on ABC.
