Caught my first episode of Castle since the season 4 opener, which I thought was really bad. I was wondering if The Wire had soured me on… basically all shows ever? Thankfully this Halloween episode of Castle proved to me that Castle can still be the witty, hilarious, and entertaining police procedural that it used to be. Castle has had a history of great Halloween episodes and this one was no different. Great Castle/Beckett back and forth, sharp one liners, playful tone, everything I love about Castle and in this episode, good use of the Halloween theme. I loved Alexis’s line in the opening scene “Dad were you using me as a human shield against zombies?” hahaha. Very much looking forward to catching up on the episodes of Castle I missed with Hulu.

So the Castle season 4 premiere was on Monday and unfortunately I was extremely disappointed. I kept laughing at the premiere, but for all the wrong reasons. It was unintentionally hilarious. The acting was uniformly bad from everyone except Nathan Fillion. Castle has never been a great show for dramatic moments, it’s the fun playfulness with which they tackle murder cases that separates it from the rest. The premiere was so somber, appropriately so given the ending to season 3, but I just couldn’t take it seriously.

The opening scene where they’re rushing Kate to the operating room was flat out HILARIOUS. Lanie’s giving Beckett CPR and she’s like “Don’t you die on me Kate! Don’t you die on me!” and the nurse tries to take over and Lanie says “this is my friend, you hear me?” and the nurse says “then let us save her life!” and I was just DYING at how bad that dialogue was and how terrible the acting was. That and I feel like they’re just trying to come up with ways to prolong this storyline of the death of Beckett’s mother. So now there’s ANOTHER random motherfucker who was involved that we had no idea about? You’ve only used that ploy like twice already in this case, why not do it again I suppose? *sigh* The only storyline I liked from the premiere was the idea of Molly not being happy that Castle was going back to work with Beckett. Molly up to this point of the show has just been the goody two shoes daughter who always supports her father. I like the idea that she really cares about her father and is worried that he might get killed if he keeps putting himself in the line of fire with Beckett. That was the only new bit that felt effective.

I’ve been running through The Wire for the past few weeks and I think The Wire has ruined every show ever for me now haha because nothing can compare to the realism of that show. I understand Castle and The Wire are two different shows, but I just can’t take Castle seriously because The Wire has done everything better. It looks like next week Castle is going back to it’s bread and butter of a fun, feel good cop procedural though, so hopefully they’ll get back to what made them great and got them four seasons of this wonderfully fun show.