verdana

I agree the fans are at the mercy of the writer's imagination and whims and that's the risk everyone runs when getting involved in watching something that the show you loved could at any moment implode and suddenly there's a painful parting of the ways. Should we get deeply invested each time only to run the risk of heartache and disappointment? I must admit I'm going to be wary about getting super involved in a TV show again like this one, was the good times worth the rest of it? I'm not too sure about that...may be with time and distance I can rationalise it better. Recently I read a post on tumblr where it was clear the person was deeply upset with the number of women characters being killed off, the show she's been hooked on five weeks ago killed off the female love interest very quickly after only just bringing her back to the show after a big gap (although I thought the character was dull as dishwater and clearly on the way out in any case given the role she was playing). I've been following the tag for weeks now and the upset has been steadily building mostly I note from young women, they were hoping for some bizarre reason she wasn't really dead and was going to pop up suddenly at the last minute lol, the finale has aired and reality has sunk in she's dead! Cue fan outrage. She's calling the writer a misogynist (neither the writer or actress has made any public comments about her departure) and demanding that writers in general have a moratorium on killing off women characters for 6 months and telling them to "get creative" and think of other ways to tell their story. I disagree with her, writers should be allowed to create whatever they like without those kind of restrictions placed on them - they'll either find an audience for their work or they won't and if their product isn't successful or well received and they're smart they'll take lessons from that and develop and grow as writers. She has every right to be upset about her favourite character meeting her demise as a fan and explain why she's upset on her blog and she says the show is dead to her and she won't watch any more. That's also up to her but she appears to have forgotten that these are the risks you run getting emotionally attached to a show where you can't control the trajectory of the characters, there can be great highs but then on the flip side there can be disappointment, disillusionment, rejection, disgust and anger. Although I do sense that the younger the fan the more extreme the reactions tend to be, at least based on what I've seen trawling tumblr and twitter.

I stopped feeling any sympathy for this guy the minute he and Winter crawled away and left the trainwreck that was S8 without having the decency (and balls) to give any post finale interview to the fans which might have helped shed some light on their reasoning behind Locksat and and the separation of Castle and Beckett. It was unprofessional and cowardly, at least Marlowe understood his responsibilities. Hawley seems the type that wants the adulation but none of the brickbats - tough shit mate you're in charge it comes with the territory. Trying to hide behind the darker and more crazy nature of the fandom which is out there as many us have witnessed and lump them in with everyone else is diverting attention away from the problem which was partly at least down to Hawley's inability to be a showrunner which is a very different ball game to being a writer - as he's finding out to his cost. In the end despite the BTS rumors it came down fundamentally to a succession of bad writing choices, just when you thought they couldn't make it worse this season - they did. The situation was compounded by his interviews which came over as clueless, misleading and arrogant. I'm fed up with showrunners and general hangers on moaning about the "entitled fans" costing them their jobs and making their poor lives a misery on twitter etc day in day out with their constant demands and complaints - I feel like yelling get a grip! You don't like it then find another job! Or hell go off twitter if you're that offended or get a handler to deal with your account. But you know what? They won't because what they get out of it in terms of monetary reward, perks and ego stroking is worth far more to them but using the fans as an excuse whenever they need it to cover their own inadequacies is a very useful tool - they may not be saying it out loud but it's YOUR fault this happened nothing to do with me! I was told "the customer is always right" they're the ones consuming your product and if they don't like it (or feel you're not listening to them) they'll eventually move on and find something else that suits them better. You need to listen to all your consumer base and learn how to filter out the obvious idiots and pay attention to those ringing the alarm bells. The trick is even if you can't please all the people all the time you can at least act like you're trying to and Hawley didn't even bother. He came across as someone who didn't give a shit about his consumer base and was just doing what he wanted and expecting everyone to lap it up. Shock horror they didn't. If this is his reaction, going all passive aggressive, then he's not cut out for this industry and may be he needs to move on or toughen up and examine his own failings first before attacking the fans and blaming them for something that he had more control to correct than they ever did. If he can't learn when to accept some portion of the blame for what happened and face up to things (which includes giving interviews when your decisions have gone wrong) he's going to be dealing with this exact same set of circumstances on his next gig. I feel sorry for the fans of the next show he ruins, they're getting an arrogant cry baby as showrunner.

Here is what Marlowe said on the matter when he was asked about that scene. In Marlowe speak that translates to "I don't have a clue, here are both obvious scenarios it could be to chew over, take it away Castle fans! I have no plans to revisit this ever again."

As for that Vera Lynn song I thought it was a case of Stana overacting the fear factor and making it more than it should have been and Bowman letting her. Watching that scene now her abject terror makes me laugh it's so OTT and of course there is no come back to it as usual which has become par for the course.

I'll add a few more instances where they didn't follow through on issues that frustrated me: 1. Meredith telling Beckett about her life with Castle being like a souffle, the swelling rather ominous music builds as she watches Castle preparing breakfast oblivious to their discussion with Katic putting on her best *worried look", it was never discussed again. In real life her talking to Castle about why his last two marriages failed would have been a no brainer given she was about to become wife no 3 but not on Castle! She has zero interest in discussing the matter. It also continued this irritating pattern with Beckett that she her spent her time talking to everyone but the one person she should be about her concerns. Argh! 2. Beckett reading the letter from Royce on the plane home from LA then casting Castle a long meaningful glance, shippers got their hopes up but she completely ignored his advice and it came to nothing. Might as well have chucked the note unopened in the bin for the all the relevance it had. 3. Alexis gets kidnapped and the very next episode they're joking around like NOTHING ever happened, I know they like standalone episodes but Jesus something that should be enormously traumatic to the family happens and the don't even manage one single mention of Alexis the following week, meanwhile dad is fooling around chasing after a tape that could be cursed. Sigh In the end this jarring emotional seesaw act they had going with the characters between high drama/emotional distress one minute and funny episodes the next with usually no referral back to past events impacting on them in any way increasingly annoyed me as they piled up. This way of structuring a show doesn't work, I've realised how much I value continuity and Castle was terrible at it, I'm not sure I'd watch something like this again where it's clear the writers have no intention of maintaining any kind of continuity whatsoever, it's also lazy writing.

Not me, I was waiting to find out what would come out post finale and based on what I've read it proves a S9 would have made S8 look stellar in comparison. I've found especially over the latter seasons that as each year passed there was a marked decline in quality, the show was spiralling each season into more desperate soap operish storylines and playing fast and loose with the characterisation, once writers are on that path it's very difficult to get off it even if they cared to do so (and I don't believe they did) so it makes sense that S9 would be worse. They either knew that Katic was probably gone after one more season or they figured they had better hedge their bets and start preparing the groundwork because it was so obvious from the first promo the direction they were going in and that didn't change. The writers proved they have zero respect for the characters so I'm not shocked they would have had Beckett doing something like this which is yet more damaging regression for the character - I would say if they had gone down this route it would have made her irredeemable at least to me. They should have had the balls to kill her off if they were going to get the green light to carry on, let their be a time gap a bit of mourning and then they can move on, it's not perfect but it's a damn sight better than the suggestions I've seen of trying to incorporate an offscreen Beckett into the story out of sheer desperation to draw the fans in. I'm also looking forward to the Heat books to come out, I wasn't so keen on the last one but the romantic relationship in the books is worked much better than the corresponding one on screen which has become very superficial.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact they were fully prepared to let Beckett bleed out on the kitchen floor like that (getting shot AGAIN) in a repeat of her mother's death - shot by a guy linked to Bracken - talk about coming full circle and making everything seem almost irrelevant. They had various options if S9 had continued when it came to disposing of Beckett but they had chosen the worst possible option by the looks of things, a further example of their tone deaf storytelling and failure to respect the characters Marlowe created. The writers clearly saw them as just puppets to mess around with and clearly there was no respect given towards the fans either who had been on this journey with these characters for so long and invested their time and passion. Whilst I'm relieved it's over as S8 stunk the place out, I didn't even watch half the season, I was curious about what they had planned for S9 minus Katic but I'm relieved that fans didn't get that alternative ending which would have surely generated similar upset to 6.23 if not more in some quarters.

It backfired because instead it made me turn on the writers because what they were doing was so bad and didn't make any sense that I couldn't get that angry at the character. Hawley clearly had a chip on his shoulder about Marlowe and whilst part of it may have been trying to wean fans off Beckett with a view to a Katic-less S9 I believe he desperately wanted to re-do S4 when he left hence Beckett's sudden regression into obsession mode again.

LOL it's true! Hawley and Winter were given a chance to make some thing better, they were given a decent starting point (although Hawley didn't seem impressed) but instead S8 had me almost missing Marlowe and he was the guy that started the rot in the first place! He was horrible at pacing and had clearly run out of ideas by the time he and his beloved wife departed the scene, it was time to freshen things up - and instead the show went to hell in a handcart. But what S8 has done is bizarrely make some fans put on their rose coloured glasses reminiscing about the good old days saying this "would never happened with Marlowe" some even called for his return and I'm quite sure if they were pressed would admit they'd spent most of the last few years of this tenure sincerely wishing he'd leave. But that's what experiencing gross incompetency on a weekly basis can do, it makes people yearn for what they had before which in comparison suddenly doesn't look half bad. Hawley and Winter have proved to be so lacking in almost every department as writers and showrunners that it's burnished Marlowe's reputation - I'd love to be a fly on the wall of the MilMar family home whilst this whole train wreck of a season has been unfolding. I also find it pretty damning (although not surprising) that both showrunners skulked away and refused to do any interviews but that was a mistake, they're in a position of responsibility, they ultimately were the ones who decided on the separation and the Locksat silliness (even if their hands were tied somewhat with the BTS issues). Even Marlowe after the wretched 6.23 gave a series of interviews (I hated them given what he said but he was the figurehead it's expected). If I was scouting around for fresh writers for a show I would not be calling Hawley and Winter up, not only due to the poor quality of their ouput but also because of their behaviour when it came to handling the press, their interviews made them appear completely out of it, failing to issue even a bland statement of good wishes to Katic (which is simple good manners) and then not having the decency to at least explain to the fans what they were thinking when they put together the finale given the cancellation and how they viewed the season as a whole. I probably wouldn't have liked what they had to say but that's not the point, I believe if you're in a position of responsibility and paid accordingly you step up and do what's necessary even if it's through gritted teeth then you can go home and lick your wounds. You don't like the heat get out the kitchen find another job. What little sympathy I did have for them evaporated after they cancelled the post finale interviews. Poor show.

Lily is a good choice which fits but Jake and Reece...no. But I suspect what they called the kids was the least of their worries! I take it that the little girl was the actress getting pestered by some fans for asking about with she had filmed with Stana and Nathan because she only mentioned Nathan? Poor kid.

That's what I was hoping, it was another thing that bugged me during the flash forward not knowing what she was up to at that point (or Castle for that matter), what was he writing? I'd have hauled her over the carpet the first two days she didn't turn up for work as captain lol.

Castle alternative ending I love this it would have been perfect, forget all the crud that came in between and just tack the last minute of S8 on to the end of 7.23.

The only bit I didn't get was the pan to the empty loft that made no sense whatsoever, then to the room piled with children's toys. It seems obvious they couldn't even be bothered to take out anything much to alter what seemed to be their original version of a Castle continuing without Beckett - I can only assume they really did assume they were green lit for a S9. Either that or they were being incredibly lazy which is entirely possible. I also agree with whoever it was who suggested they didn't want them to have three kids like MilMar had said in the the time traveller episode, I could have done without that too and instead had no shoot out garbage and find out what happened to the rest of the gang and then panned to Beckett sitting obviously pregnant or at the table with a baby, I have a hard time imagining that Beckett suddenly cranked out three kids and that Castle wanted a brood like that, he also didn't look any older and with three young kids to take care of he should have look shattered!

I thought the various reasons offered by fans as to why she had to keep everything quiet didn't hold up to any firm scrutiny plus Castle is not a child, he had every right to know what was going on given he was married to her and had already been kidnapped and tortured! Castle did not deserve to be deprived of agency, no one does it doesn't matter what excuses are offered up, Beckett of all people should be aware of how that feels.

That's the problem she's wasn't open about what she was doing with the very people she needed to be, she tried to handle it on her own when she had no business to be getting involved in any kind of secret investigation given her job and leaving other people out the loop on something that could get them killed. The fact she had to be pushed into revealing what was going on at various times due to forced circumstances not of her own volition only made it worse. She has a duty of care to her husband, family and work colleagues and she failed to exercise it because she was so hung up on taking Locksat down without appearing to give sufficient consideration to the consequences of her actions as she continued poking around. I found the whole story arc and the supposed deadly threat Locksat constantly posed was handled far too casually by everyone not just Beckett.

I couldn't agree more with your comments on Beckett and her actions madmaverick, another reason I disliked the Locksat business was because it made Beckett look self absorbed, uncaring and stupidly ignorant of the danger she had wilfully stepped into, I don't normally subscribe to violence against any one but I seriously wanted to slap some sense into her when she was talking in the car to Mason. There was no reason for her to get them involved in all this case - yet she did it any way and Castle lamely went along with it when he should have made her sit down and discuss it properly if not for his sake then for his family's. If Alexis and Martha had died I doubt in real life Castle would have been quite so forgiving of his wife and her burden of responsibility and they would be struggling to hold it together, more likely it would have emotionally destroyed him the so called "love of her life". She's got a funny way of showing it with this Locksat conspiracy. She took an oath as a police officer but I'm sure it didn't involve acting like she's taking part in some glorified crusade. Given how Locksat are so dangerous quite why her dad being on business protects him I don't know. She talked about carrying a burden and that she had to gain justice for the victims but I wonder how she would have reacted if her husband or his mother and only child had been killed due to her obsessive need to hunt down Locksat? Where does it all end? Someone should have put the question to her surely? At the end of the episode I don't believe any lessons were learn't there was no character growth for Beckett or Castle this season only regression - especially Beckett. There should have been consequences to her secret investigation - severe ones - both personally and professionally if they were going to have Locksat have any impact on me emotionally. I needed something and I didn't get it, the story had no impact on me whatsoever, there was no journey to get invested in, no nerves, no excitement, no fear, the writers clearly were aimless and lacked inspiration, even the ending was recycled elements from Marlowe's time. Hawley didn't bring one fresh idea to the table.

Beckett has never been allowed to be part of the family in any genuine way, I honestly do wonder if there was something going on BTS there too between Molly and Stana, because it's so weird they seem to almost deliberately keep them apart, not just these writers but Marlowe too. If it wasn't that then I'd love to know what their reasoning was for treating Beckett and Alexis like they couldn't be in the same room together for too long in case one of them spontaneously combusted or something. I've seen people more distressed about missing the bus than Beckett was over the realisation her husband had apparently been barbequed. I love the boys, Seamus and Jon have been the best things for me this season in this pile of crud from what little I've seen, I hope they find something better to do than be glorified exposition monkeys and God forbid get a job which involves some character development.

"I want to go back to being boring" You were always boring Vikram and creepy too. The rescue from the shoot out by Mason was ridiculous. It's bizarre how they go from surviving a massive shoot out against guys with automatic weapons which was completely implausible to making jokes about the BBQ truck - it should be funny but it got me eye rolling. "Castle this is a trap!" Yeah and you're a police captain who should know better about going any where without back up and playing secret sleuthing with creepy Vikram helping her out on a case. Doesn't she have a JOB back at the precinct to do rather than facing a team of highly armed shooters who conveniently can't seem to hit anything? Does any one miss her when she's out? There was enough gun fire to raise the dead but no one noticed in the area or called the police station? Apparently the truck is impervious to heavy weapons fire too. Lucky! She then talks about disappearing along with Castle, hello you're running a police precinct! What does she think is going to happen she can just come and go at will? Beckett's transition to captain has been a waste of time and actually regressed the character. And only now she's worried about the boys and everyone's safety and them being sitting ducks? The idea she'd be safe and sound at the precinct where the likes of 3XK had a ball coming and going was again laughable. Castle leaves to go to the precinct and of course gets kidnapped again. "I was raised by the state" huh? If I was Castle I'd be angry that my selfish and stubborn wife and got me in a position where I was almost certainly going to get killed and my family too all for her desire to hunt out Locksat. The moment he has to reveal that Martha and Alexis know was well done by Fillion, he's better when he's not having to try and pretend he wants to get touchy feely with Beckett.

The writers gave very little time and attention to anything but Locksat that was the most disappointing aspect, I wish they had wrapped the whole Locksat business up earlier, very few cared about it any way at this point. The dialogue was heavy handed and I wasn't that overly impressed with the acting once again aside from a a few moments from Nathan. I felt sorry for Jon, Seamus and the rest of the regulars they deserved better, no chance to see what they were up to 7 years down the line but that's par for the course on this show - they were increasingly used mostly as exposition monkeys to the leads and the show suffered for it. Locksat got a mention five times in the preview alone and over a dozen times in the first five minutes, as someone mentioned up thread if this had a been a drinking game I'd have been on the floor before the opening credits even started. It's such awful writing, they couldn't be bothered to do any significant plotting about this story arc all season long and then in the finale go to the other extreme as if I should give a crap at this point - their story telling SUCKED, Hawley and Winter don't deserve to helm another show after this crapfest. Watching a guy being burned to death in car with the contrast in the upbeat music I found terribly jarring but that's been a symptom of this season the way they've handled death no longer quirky just distasteful. That sort of thing belongs on another show, not the Castle I knew. I shared Ryan's feelings at the scene. "Could my ex wife be Locksat because in a lot of ways that would make perfect sense"- frankly it would have been been way more interesting than the actual reveal of Mason which had me shaking my head they'd chosen a character most fans had probably all but forgotten about as the ultimate big bad.

Wow that was one hot mess of a finale what a waste of my time but alas I wasn't expecting anything different - 40 minutes of Locksat (meh) which left minimal time for anything decent for Castle and Beckett - this couple (and the fans) deserved a much better ending for the very last episode but predictably didn't get it. As a series finale this did not work, the obviously horrible tacked on ending was a sad let down for this once gem of a show, the writers should have crafted something better for their alternative ending which flowed more seamlessly. Instead what we got simply reinforced how seriously bad the writing has been and the way they were going to have Beckett die like that - so cheap - I could well understand the fans fury if that's the ending they had got after investing so much passion in the show and particularly in this couple. What a lucky escape but even at this critical point the writers couldn't get it right, what was with the shooting? That should have been taken out, it was far too rushed and also confusing for some by the reactions I've seen with the pan to the empty flat and the seven years later bit. To me it was obvious they just recovered miraculously from their gunshot wounds and lived happily ever after with the three kids as predicted by MilMar. Job done, Caskett shippers happy. The show works a million times better when it does light hearted quirky comedy with a murder not massive shoot outs and big bad conspiracies and this was cast iron proof of that, I found the episode boring, silly and stupid. I'm loathe to say this but Hawley and Winter made me almost wish Marlowe was back in the saddle with his passive aggressive wife and I thought he was a hack! That's how bad the characterisation, plotting, planning (if there was any which I doubt) has been this season, the only plus point watching this last episode is that fans at least got the happy ending they craved with the kids even if it was crammed into the last few minutes. I would have much rather had an episode similar to the 100th as a celebration of everything Castle but Hawley and Winter weren't in the business of giving me satisfying genuinely fun storytelling, they made that clear from the start which is why this season will be easy to consign to the garbage bin and 7.23 will be the official end of Castle and I can imagine my own happy ending. Sad to see the show end this way with a whimper but it could have been much worse.

Yeah I agree they knew it was a pile of crud, if they didn't then I worry for them, the promotion for the finale was also very poor given this was the end. Castle went out with a whimper sadly. TPW fall from grace is frustrating, I hope he can move on and start producing the goods again.

Castle Series Finale: EPs Thank Fans for Watching 'A Love Story for the Ages' at TV Line. A love story for the ages? Hardly, especially not towards the end when the writers are spending most of their efforts in keeping these epic lovers separate.

Oh how I laughed till my sides ached, dear me, I'm with you there on not missing Luke, knowing my luck he'll get hired on the next show I get attached to, as for that wedding dress and swimsuit argh! Both of those outfits still give me nightmares. Me neither, you never know even outdoors he may have found some contraption that completely blocks out the sun...sigh Sure why not, she's forgotten so much about when she was there, why not a baby heh. Yeah that's what I was thinking, how old is that kid any way? I'm useless judging their ages. She look so young, there is no way in hell I'd be letting a child on twitter or anything else at that age I don't give a crap how much they'd whine about how all their friends are on it. Good luck in Hollywood kid!

The seeds of Castle's demise were sewn a long time ago, the writing on the wall was there to see relatively early on. The obvious over reliance on Castle and Beckett coupled with the lack of fleshing out the secondary cast and their stories, the way they dropped important story lines until the very end of the season and never developed them properly was incredibly irritating plus the overblown mombatross saga which dragged on way past it's sell by date. Marlowe was uncovered as a hack who had no idea how to write a love story - only the WTWT - or develop anything else for that matter - those fundamental weaknesses were bound to take their toll eventually. Isn't that way shows like NCIS are so popular? The people in charge appear to understand their product, they understand why it works, why the audience enjoys it, they don't try to be something they're not. I don't watch NCIS that much but I get why others do and why it's still going strong, I wish other showrunners would understand their product and stop trying to pretend they're being bold and clever changing it into something else to satisfy their own egos and/or in their sheer desperation to squeeze as much cash out of it as they can.

The artwork makes me smile in that it's obviously photoshopped as usual, no way you would get them posing together like that and rather misleading given the writers split them up for 8 episodes then spent their time trying to find ways to keep them separate whenever possible. They really need to have Hayley, Alexis or the boys poking their faces in between.