tljgator

Since I know so many have thoughts on "badass Beckett," lol ... from TV|Line:

shapeshifter, I thought the whole season was filmed in Capetown, South Africa

From TV|Line:

I was lucky enough to have a friend take me to ink last year for my birthday. It was outstanding. Really creative and tasty. I definitely recommend it if you're in LA.

From TV|Line:

Wedding promo, per TV|Line (supposed to air tonight, I guess).

Andy's tweet with the floor plan of Beckett's apartment says "memories" at the top, so maybe that's the last of that set and she's moving out/selling it/etc. in that episode? (Or, maybe I should stop trying to make sense of these things, lol.)

From TV|Line:

KaveDweller -- agreed that the first one was terrible (I had trouble getting past the spelling errors/grammatical issues since it's a pet peeve of mine), but they get progressively better. Really, from the third one on, it's pretty standard mass-marketed murder mystery fare (of the Patterson variety). I haven't read the latest (beyond the free chapters) yet, but I do like to see how they take the in-show things we see and turn them on their heads a bit for the books (I won't spoil anything, but to some degree they tend to take things that happen to or apply to Beckett and instead apply them to 'Rook' in the books and vice versa) and/or use cases in different ways. You could always try reading the first few free chapters that ABC makes available to see what you think before paying for the book.

TV|Line Spoilers:

THIS. I'm with Elysium ... it was the first time in a long time that the show seemed effortlessly fun for me, which made it infinitely more entertaining. It's a lot easier for me to handwave the little things when I'm having fun and enjoying the show. [Could the girlfriend have killed the guy and manhandled both Castle and Beckett that way? *handwave*martial arts background*handwave* Back to the banter.] More of this, less 'new mythology,' please.

So, the Castle writers are just ripping off their past episodes and hodge-podging them into a case of the week [drug-sniffing dog from 'Embarrassment of Bitches'; heroin smuggled into the country in a disparate product from 'Knockdown'; the assistant did it; etc. etc.], then shoe-horning in the "new mythology"? Boring and confusing. Meh. I didn't necessarily think that the story about why 11-year-old Castle decided to be a mystery writer was related to the whatever went down while he was missing, just that he knew it was the one thing he had never told anyone else, so if this guy mentioned it, he'd know to believe what he was saying. Since so little of this story makes sense, though, I could be completely wrong about that.

Forever = (Castle + Elementary) / Supernatural trope that the lead can't die Honestly, I had trouble getting past all the "Sherlocking" in the first few minutes (and throughout) to notice all the Castle-like qualities. The ring on the necklace really stood out, though, as he Sherlocked that it meant she had a dead husband. *rme* It was one of the most derivative shows I've seen in a long time. Or, thinking in terms of fashion, what TLo call "Frankendresses" -- mish-mashes of a bunch of parts that worked in another context, but when stitched together are lacking. It's a Frankenshow. I did enjoy the Castle commentary in last night's Mindy episode, though. Both Mindy Kaling & Rhea Pearlman really sold it.

Gotta agree with Sars on this one (and especially with the wtf-ness being parallel to the FNL story line that we all just pretend never happened) -- moving the body tipped things over the edge for me. I was already inching close to "too far" territory with cop-boyfriend smoking the crack when offered (but I can handwave that to some degree), but the notion that moving the body instead of calling the cops was the best course of action really lost me. It's a shame, because I had enjoyed the season up until this finale.

Interesting: "With Castle creator Andrew W. Marlowe and consulting producer Terri Edda Miller on board to serve as executive producers, ABC is in the early stages of developing a new series based on Derrick Storm, the P.I.-turned-CIA freelancer that serves as the focus of Rick’s other bread-and-butter, our sister site Variety reports."

"TVLine has learned exclusively that Ryan Sands, best known for his portrayal of Officer Lloyd “Truck” Garrick on The Wire, has been tapped to guest-star in the ABC drama’s Season 7 premiere. He’ll play Tagger, a Hamptons police sergeant who helps Beckett investigate the most difficult case of her career (presumably, Who the hell ran Rick off the road?)."

This really bugged me, too, A Boston Gal; in fact, most everything about the casino rang so false that it really took me out of what the scene was meant to accomplish. Anything over $10,000 in winnings gets dinged in Vegas (as I think it does with other forms of winnings, like the lottery), and I'm sure it would in CT, since I believe that's a federal income tax threshold for reporting. I also can't imagine that they'd have just cashed him in for $20,000 that came from a balled up wad like that, out of worries of someone laundering money, and I have no idea why he wouldn't have had the casino cut a check to the bank or simply wire the money directly to the bank instead of risking walking out with that kind of cash. I don't understand why he was parked so far away in the middle of a mostly empty parking lot, or why (if he insisted on stupidly taking it all in cash) security wouldn't have seen him to his car -- except that it all lead to the overly convenient set-up for the robbery attempt with the all too obvious creepy guy from the roulette table.

And, if you watch on Amazon Prime (as I did ... no idea how I missed this the first time around), you'll need to watch the pilot separately first, then the first series.

For whatever it's worth, the caption under her talking head scenes labeled her "Cook and Girlfriend" ... and, yes, my eye-roll at reading that was epic.

As a professor myself, I've always been partial to: "Please, Fry. I don't know how to teach. I'm a professor."

Thanks, Rinaldo! I like Sepinwall, anyway, so I'll definitely hit up his recaps. I appreciate the "newbies" distinction (like the non-book GoT threads here).

I'm working my way through for the first time, too, now that Amazon Prime has added so much HBO goodness to their collection, so a (re)watch this summer sounds great to me as well. I'm reading the archived TWoP recaps as I watch an episode to make sure I understand/didn't miss anything important (which I somehow always manage to do, even when I think I'm paying fairly close attention). Glad to see there are other 'first-timers' here since all my real life peeps either watched back in the day or ponied up for the DVDs.

I didn't say that I expected anything to change, and, yes, it did make me feel better (that's precisely what my original post says). I just thought folks might want to know that the studio was bothering to ask questions.

It's a panel for ABC Studios, who produce the show, not ABC, and I haven't had anything nearly as disparaging to say about Castle up til now (although I did gripe about the proposal in last year's finale and I did think the premiere did a good job of "fixing" that). I will say that I've vented to them about all manner of things wrong with Revenge, OUAT, and Nashville and that, yes, it did seem they addressed issues there. In those cases, they seemed to know what the problems were, though, and the surveys were specifically addressing those issues. This was more general than some others have been, but they seemed to focus specifically on the last half of the season, so I'll bet they're aware of the response the finale got.

The ABC Studio Advisory Panel finally got around to doing the Castle survey today. They asked for ratings of characters, ratings of relationships (not just romantic, but the work groups as well), ratings of the final set of episodes, favorite episodes from that last group and why, and least favorite episodes from that group and why. Needless to say, choosing my least favorite episode was not remotely difficult -- I had things to say to them about that finale, y'all. Tossed in a few comments about Marlowe's interviews making it all even worse in the "other comments" box as well. I admit, it felt vaguely cathartic to tell someone who kinda, sorta matters what I thought.