Sucker Punch

I loved the series Castle for the interplay between the characters especially Castle and Beckett, Castle and Alexis, and even Castle and his mom. There are two levels of this. One is just the fun banter. The other is the deep relationships.

I hated this series because of the chasing-the-mom's-killer thread. Kate herself should have been dead long before things got dark and serious in the last season or two. Probably Castle too. Kate was tilting at windmills. Some people love stories like this. For me I don't like several things about it in a series. One is the dark ominous atmosphere of those episodes. Another is the conspiracy theory aspect. Another is the obvious departure from anything realistic, which admittedly is at least partially a given in popular TV shows. But most of all, I hate the ongoing futility.

The viewer knows the end goal is never going to be reached, at least not until possibly the finale. This show is better than many that take this approach in that each episode tells a story with a conclusion (except when it says to be continued), even if it is an ending only to the immediate episode.

This episode had at least some saving grace in the last two scenes, especially Kate's quote.

I've gotten hooked on Castle. The banter between Kate & Rick is great. Although one of the genre descriptions is "Comedy", it's not really a comedy... it's a police drama with humorous elements.

I understand that in this kind of show, whether it's cops, doctors, etc., there are going to be things that aren't perfectly accurate for the profession, but the inaccuracies should be minor, in-the-background stuff, not blatant main-scene kind of stuff. For example, no cop of whatever rank would be allowed to be involved at the primary levels of an investigation to investigate the murder (or most other crimes) of their own family member; it would be a conflict of interest that would taint the investigation and prosecution. Also, as another viewer-reviewer pointed out, no cop would put a suspected drug into their mouth or other body part to "test" it, as Kate did in this episode. This may have been common or acceptable in cop shows 50+ years ago, but not in modern times. Also, cops of any rank may not make plea bargain deals with suspects, that is a district attorney's responsibility.