Friday, September 13, 2013

I am so over "Castle"

The TV show "Castle" starring Nathan Fillion is not without charm, and some of the mysteries presented in each episode are pretty well thought-out, but I finally became fed up. The Kate Beckett character was really starting to annoy me.

She started out very well - the premise is that she was from an upper-class background but after her mother was murdered she decided to become a cop. And she's a good cop and has a businessness-like and no-bullshit demeanor.

But the show has been chipping away at this character since the first season. It's as if the writers are worried that Beckett is too interesting, too unusual, to make her a worthy mate for the Castle character, so they've gradually been making her as boring and typical as possible. I was incredibly annoyed when a character says to Beckett that she (Beckett) likes to wear high heels so she can tower over the men, since high heels must be so difficult to run around in when you're chasing bad guys (and unlike real cops, Beckett spends a lot of time running after bad guys.) Beckett says she just likes to wear high heels on the job.

What sane human being is so enslaved to fashion that they would cripple themselves with sadistic footwear on a daily basis on the job, so much that they won't be able to do their job nearly as well.

I guess it's so we can all heave a sigh of relief that Beckett is a real woman and not some scary dyke.

And then a few episodes later, I began to really hate both the Beckett and Castle characters. It is an episode where a young male writer arrives on the scene and considers Beckett his muse. But Castle considers Beckett his muse, and so he invites the young writer to his house for the exclusive purpose of being mean to him - he and a couple of old man mystery writers proceed to insult and undermine the young male writer.

So the next day Beckett, instead of disapproving, tells him she likes that. And as if that wasn't enough to make me despise both characters, the young male writer decides to follow around Esposito, another cop at the precinct and the cop says to Beckett and Castle "it isn't weird for a guy to be a muse, is it?" And after he's gone Beckett and Castle agree that it is weird.

Which means that Beckett, Castle and the people responsible for this episode's script are either sexist - because while a male writer can have a female muse, a female writer can't have a male muse because it's weird for a guy to be a muse, or they're goddam homophobic because it's weird for a guy to have another guy as his muse.

And I have other peeves like the way they treat the poor actor who plays Lanie, giving her absolutely nothing to do except look at dead bodies and occasionally play the supportive black woman role to the white woman star, telling Beckett she could wear lipstick once in awhile. Not only is this annoying in itself, but it indicates that Lanie is ridiculously unobservant for a medical examiner, because Beckett's face is always completely done up and her hair is always perfect. And of course she's such a slave to fashion that she wears high heels while chasing bad guys.

The only thing that Lanie gets to do besides play second-banana is have a brief affair with Esposito - and the writers do nothing with it.

This Slate writer thinks that Stana Katic, who plays Beckett, is a bad actor, and maybe that doesn't help, but it doesn't excuse the sexist homophobic assholes who write the scripts.

I may still watch the last few episodes of season three, since I paid for them, but I can't see the point of continuing with this show, especially since this Australian critic thinks it goes downhill in season four.