Quest to Nowhere

I just caught up on season 2 of Castle, and I’ve concluded that it is my favorite show on TV right now. I started watching it originally as it started airing earlier this year, and then had fallen in watching it as the second season started earlier this fall.

Now when it started I mainly chose to watch because it was starring Nathan Fillion (aka Captain Hammer, aka Malcolm Reynolds.) Also the concept of a mystery writer working for the police seemed interesting, and I’m usually a sucker for stories about writing or making comics (see future blog post about my love of Bakuman.)

The show started out interestingly enough, but it didn’t seem that great. Although Richard Castle (Nathan’s character) was good enough to carry things and keep me coming back. By the end of the first season things seemed to finally be gelling on the show. The mysteries in each episode were always interesting, and had interesting twists to them, but also as you learn more about the other characters (especially Detective Beckett,) I started to find myself enjoying all the reoccurring characters.

Now in this second season it feels like they’ve really hit their stride. Although its a sort of monster of the week (in this case mystery not monster,) it never feels formulaic. Everything makes sense, nothing seems to come out of no where, and the police and Castle always seem to make the smart choice. They are never the ones impeding themselves, which is nice since sometimes shows will fall back on that. Or they’ll have something happen that doesn’t seem realistic, something that feels very contrived.

Anyway, I think the highest praise I can give this show is that I found myself laughing out loud at the show fairly frequently, and yet it never pulls me out of the drama.