pepper

I watched Castle until the bitter end, but I can honestly say that starting in season 3 (and possibly from the last scene in season 2) I never considered it to be particularly well-written. And although I never watch anything live except tennis or other sports where a party is involved, I remember the time delay for my viewing getting longer and longer as the seasons went on. At first I'd watch with a 15-minute delay, so almost live. Then the Canadian broadcast got early and I'd sometimes watch before US broadcast time. Then I started watching the next day. Then I started watching just to see what people were talking about as the conversation became more entertaining than the show. Now that I'm re-watching, there are still episodes I delete as soon as I recognize them (Douchebag Arc, Locksat, Private-eye Castle) so I watch perhaps one episode out of 3. I still love most of the first two seasons and I love random episodes from later seasons where they're together as a couple and there is no angst related to it. And it makes me aware that if they'd simply made them a team after exhausting the plausibility of the WT/WT plot lines - arguably at the end of season 2 - it could have continued to be a near-live show for me. But hey-ho, they made a lot of money over 8 years, so maybe that's all that matters. The fact is, I love procedurals and I love strong characters, think Helen Mirren's role in Prime Suspect. But as the procedural plot lines became inevitably weaker over the years, IMO the writers failed to make it up to the viewers with compelling characterization. What I love about re-watching is seeing if the original criticism on message boards stands the test of time. E.g. Lanie was excoriated for always relying on lividity to establish time of death. Funny observation: so did Perlmutter, but he got zero grief for it from the fans... And now that all the fashion is a decade old, I find Castle's shirts irrelevant. Re-runs are fun.

I managed to enjoy my Castle fandom by never doing @ searches on twitter and simply reading the feeds of the few show-related people I followed, avoiding gossip sites and only reading well-moderated message boards where people type complete sentences. I've round that links to interviews can be found on those boards and comments (in complete sentences) allowed me to decide whether to follow the links. Resisting my own tendency to obsess, actually made it quite easy to avoid the obsessed-to-deranged end of the fan spectrum. Oh yeah, and I quickly wrote off tumblr as not a good use of my time.

I'm entitled, all right. I'm entitled to get a good quality product if I've invested my time in it. I work in a service industry. The feeling is that if customers are unhappy only about 20% will complain and you need to treasure that 20% because the other 80% will just leave. Among the 20% a sub-set will not be diplomatic, but that doesn't lessen their value in letting you know you have a problem. Television is at once a product/service and a creative endeavor. So they have to deal with critics as well as consumers. And with the advent of social media, everyone has the platform to be a critic - including that sub-set of the 20%. The criticism might not always be constructive (critics aren't always right and social media critics are not often experts in your field so may not understand the reasons for your choices e.g.), so that's probably embarrassing when they don't like what you deliver. But if you don't accept that as simply the nature of your business, use the constructive and shrug off the negative, there's an argument that you're too immature to be the face of the project.

So what about the fans that simply said they would - and those who actually did - stop watching because of the perceived decline in the quality of the writing? To me that's part and parcel of the same issue. Were they "entitled" as well? Or are you only "entitled" when you want the show to stop rather than just withdrawing support? I was certainly one who had no intention of watching without Katic, but I would have made exactly the same decision without Fillion. There was zero reason to believe that the writing talent I saw on display could pull off that kind of bait-and-switch from the original premise of the show. And the (sad?) fact is that when you put out a product for public consumption, the public will have an opinion. In my industry we always say that if your clients are unhappy, more than 90% of them will never tell you - they'll just leave. So it is imperative to pay attention to the 10%, even if some of them will be on the fringe of your demographic. I admit that social media can make that fringe a pretty high-volume group, but the way to deal with them is not to dismiss the message because it comes in a pissed-off package. After all, they're about as reliable as the ones who think you can do no wrong... IMO there's nothing wrong with fan entitlement if what they think they're entitled to is a quality product.

My mother is visiting us and watching DWTS and they just said "stay tuned for the final ever episode of Castle." I was in another room and ran in to rewind it to be sure. She thinks I'm mad but it did make me feel a bit sad. Also made me wonder about the reason for recent BTS melodrama.

I looked at the Castle-Alexis-Haley parts of the episode as separate from the rest and an indication of what next season will be like. The over-acting. Ugh.

Actually I was completely understanding your point. Your point is that Fillion has all those passionate sci-fi fans that will support his every project. My response was that they have not done anything for Castle. The demographic for the show, the most loyal viewers, are older, female and not attending Cons, so there is little correlation between his strength and what is keeping the show relatively popular. Your point, that losing the core of what those fans watch for and delivering Fillion will be enough, is something I find doubtful. Just as losing that core and delivering Katic would be a losing proposition. The difference was, I didn't say that Fillion was interchangeable... but that's not necessarily a positive. Most lead actors his age are in better shape and the TV industry is notoriously shallow. So blowing up the initial premise of the show, especially given the current quality of the writing, makes no sense to me. And I disagree with you that the "power" of Fillion can fix that decision. I personally will not be sticking around to watch the show they've proposed, but I'm sure I'll find out the result on the Internet.

Not for nothing, but how much has the "passionate Internet fandom" done for Castle? It gets the show awards at award shows that don't matter and makes people vote multiple times in polls that don't count for anything. People get angry about choices made by the creators of the shows and those creators ignore them. If they cared about entertainment press, they'd be leaking/promoting the fact that two people who don't like each other have to make out on screen, ramping up the prurient interest. But the fact is that most of the people who watch this show are not "passionate Internet" fans. They're watching the TV version of a rom-com that's a hybrid police procedural. If the rumors are true, it's about to become pure police procedural featuring a single lead character whose trademark characteristics used to be wit and optimism, but who now has a tragic past. And a group of mediocre writers will turn this into comedic gold? I'm highly skeptical that Fillion's star power is going to overcome all the problems inherent in that premise. Maybe I should have posted this in "unpopular opinions", because I'm just not a member of that bubble.

One thing that doesn't seem to be considered by those who think Fillion alone can make the show a success, is that all those loyal Firefly fans didn't make the film a blockbuster and the RL Castle fans I know, had no idea who he was before he became Richard Castle. They are mainly middle-aged, female and not on the Internet except to play those annoying Facebook games. And there is a huge difference between selling photos to nostalgic fans at a Con and carrying a film or a series by yourself. Sexism in Hollywood may be alive and well, but men in Hollywood are increasingly under pressure to be fit. I'm an opera fan and even opera leads are increasingly being asked to take their shirts off - popularity and talent notwithstanding. Fillion has not kept himself in great shape and there are guys older than him who can do shirtless scenes without a sheet pulled up to their nipples. At this point he'll be a middle-aged character actor. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the scope is more limited than if he was still in Firefly shape. I honestly think that many assume his appeal to be greater than it is. Edited because... grammar.

Wonder how much I can get for early-series DVDs on eBay? Every "idea" I hear for how they'll be continuing the show sounds worse than the one before.

People are vegetarian for a variety of reasons. I chose it 20 years ago for ethical reasons. If someone "accidentally" puts dead pig in my food, I'd expect them to give me the choice not to eat it. I don't judge other people for their choices, (people who have known me for years don't know I'm vegetarian unless they're planning to feed me) so I'm not melodramatic enough to say an actor is "dead to me" for revealing something like that about himself. But the equivalent for a North American meat-eater would be someone feeding you a burger made from dog meat and finding it funny that you didn't know. Imagine how your stomach would lurch at the knowledge of what you'd eaten. Would that be dismissed as simply his sense of humor?

He tweeted quite gleefully about serving pork drippings to vegetarians attending a barbecue at his home. They didn't know and thought the "veggie" burgers were great. He thought he was hilarious. Character is what you do when no one is watching. But then, I guess tweeting about it later means he doesn't agree with that philosophy. After that, I didn't need other people to tell me what he was like. He had already told me. I still loved the character he played though. But not enough to watch him after this debacle. It would make me need a shower after each viewing, even if I'd had one before I watched. Ugh

Well, I am personally hoping season 9 lasts for fewer episodes than "Firefly". Sickened by this. The show wasn't even great to start with! Ok, it was great literally to start with, but certainly not recently. The idea that I would spend an hour a week watching just goofball Castle, his obnoxious daughter, his scenery-chewing mother and weak COTW plots involving Ryan and Esposito is just nuts! Fillion may or may not have got his wish, but the fact that the show will not now end on a happy note - which would have made the weak recent seasons somewhat worthwhile - is just awful and I regret sticking it out in the hope of a satisfying ending. So I'm back to the opinion of f**k this show.

Everything official says Stana did not leave voluntarily, nor did Tamala. Why is it now being speculated that she did? Have I missed something?

F**k this show.