It’s
summer, and I’m going back through some old favorite TV shows. Since Castle
ended, and I wasn’t impressed by season 8, I figured I’d start there. I have to
say, season 1 is amazing. And as I’m going through it, I’m trying to figure out
what happened. What’s different between 1 and 8. Why did 8 become such a flop,
and 1 was so spectacular.
First,
Castle the character is better. He morphs over the course of the seasons to be
goofier, who launches into the patently absurd. Yes, he’s a believer of the
absurd, or at least a hopeful believer, but what made him so good in the early
seasons was that he was smart, and knew what made for an excellent story when
it came to crime.
Story is
number two. He was in it for the stories. He wanted to see what made these
crimes tick, how the people could conceive of these crimes. And they were a bit
convoluted in the beginning, full of interesting reversals. Castle provoked
Beckett into thinking, more than once, that they had the wrong person due to
the story not adding up. The focus on story was evident from how many of the
episodes ended with him at his laptop, writing away, or interludes where he had
been writing.
Family is
the next step, particularly with Alexis. Yes, Martha has some interesting
tidbits here and there, but the dynamic between Castle and Alexis is amazing.
The moment in Hedge Fund Homeboys where he explains to her that she can tell
him anything and he’s okay with it,
so long as it’s the truth is wonderful. He is a great father to her, despite
his bad boy charms and troublemaking. And she follows up with a tearful moment
where she talks about how she jumped the turnstile. And, of course, the tender
moment where he pulls out a picture of him holding her hand when she was a
little girl.
I’m sure
there are more, but these are what are standing out at the moment. I think this
is important because I’ve seen a lot of television and book series become long
in the tooth both because they forgot what made them great, or because they
never allowed for growth. The secret of keeping a series fresh and interesting
is somewhere in all this. I know it’s tough, especially as the genres become
formulaic, rely on tropes, and inevitable clichés, but there’s something in
these that I can use for my own writing. I’m sure there will be plenty of red
herrings, too.