A Deadly Affair

I only recently dove into discovering Castle. Previously, I was coming across episodes and enjoying them with no dedication whatsoever, but now that I'm streaming the whole thing in order on Disney+, I'm catching a much better glimpse on its well-deserved hype.

And I gotta say this episode was crafted masterfully, with the dream-sequence-like opening scene that revealed quickly to not belong with a dream but with an actual moment, changing the structure colorfully.

The unconfessed romance between Castle and Beckett is likely to cotribute more to the flow of this season, and I wonder how they will manage to keep the two physically apart for the whole 8 yards 7 seasons.

While praising the story of the episode, I must say it is sometimes a bit too much when they leave it to Castle to figure out the most basic clues. Like, in this one, they feel the need to cross-check all three victims' finances only when Castle propses to. This is too much of a stretch given multiple people are already working on this with a murder board whatnot.

But okay, we can suspend our disbelief that much for the sake of a humor-filled cop show with some cool one-liners.

To me, it has been a while since this series has had the brilliance of the first 5 episodes of the first season. The rival for Castle in Deming did not appeal to me because, while it's good to see Castle be a dufus once in a while, he and Deming were taking it over the top, perhaps an accurate commentary on the shallowness of the male species. Yet, it was still more than a full season before Deming that the show coasted on better than average, but not brilliant, interplay between all the characters. The Alexis and Rick relationship was always great, but the Beckett and Castle one had dipped ever so slightly.

This episode leaves the rivals behind and reverts to the sparkling dialogue with great use of innuendo, double entendre and of course flirting between Castle and Beckett.

A deadly affair is a solid and good start to the third season of Castle, when a Michael Connelly type mystery writer gets to solve crimes with a tough, but savvy female Detective, Beckett. This episodes evokes the fun of the First season with the witty one-liners seen in the second season. Friendship between Beckett and Castle is rebuilt in a cool way and it is intertwined with a "not your usual" crime involving a Vending machine operator, a teacher and a Statue-maker. This episode almost signals the the great ones to come and my only criticism to it is that it is not forgetful, or predictable but there are just so many other episodes which either have better plots or are funnier.

I like Castle but this episode is just dumb & completely unoriginal. Why do the writers of these shows always use the same cliche driven storylines for the season finales & premiership. The characters in this series have great chemistry but this episode comes of as very forced instead of the lighthearted fun from the previous two seasons. I just hope this isn't a sign of things to come for the rest of the season. I do recommend watching the first two seasons & I might still like the remainder of this season & beyond. I guess I will find out over the next month or so after Christmas. Have fun watching.