TV – Castle Season 3

At the start of this season none of the detectives have heard from Castle for months.  They think he might still be out of town, but they walk past a bookstore display touting the release of Castle’s next book, Naked Heat, and that he will be there signing it.  They get a call that a body has been found.  They are the first cops on the scene, so they start to go through the apartment with guns drawn.  They discover one person in the apartment with the body – Castle.

They bring him in, with him protesting his innocence the whole time.  Things were a little strained between him and all the other detectives with his separation and now this just makes things worse.  He eventually gets exonerated, but things are a little different for a while.

They did not make as big a deal of the publishing of the second book in the world of the show.  What they did allude to a few times was that the first book, Heat Wave, was going to get made into a movie.  All the characters say who they want to be cast as their analogues, except for Beckett.  She won’t play along with the others.  Karma occurs when the actress who was selected to play Nikki Heat shows up at the precinct to shadow her.  At first she is flattered, but things start to get weird for her when the actress starts to almost become her.  The actress also decides that since the character of Jameson Rook was based on Castle himself, then to really understand the character of Nikki Heat she should have sex with Castle.  Needless to say, Beckett is not thrilled with that.

The writers have also done the same thing as last year by having a more serious two-parter get aired during the February sweeps.  While investigating a murder it leads to the discovery that a dirty bomb will soon be detonated in New York City.  This brings the Department of Homeland Security on board to lead that investigation.  Castle uses an excuse to get his mother and daughter out of the city, but he stays with Beckett.

This season has continued to play up the sexual tension between the two leads.  Other than a fake kiss that turns into a real one, they still kept the two characters from addressing the obvious feelings they have for each other.  This season it started becoming the elephant in the room and the show’s exec Andrew Marlowe almost childishly refused to address the situation.  (See the Season 4 post for an update on this.)

Season 3 ends with a cliffhanger – a first for the show.  The final episode also sees some major revelations and the loss of a character.

Chip’s Rating: Four stars out of five

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