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lillibetJason and I have been very much enjoying Castle, Nathan Fillion's new show on ABC. For those not watching, he plays Richard Castle, a very successful crime novelist who tags along with an NYPD detective and her team. While there are flaws (do they have to explain every single joke?) we've liked it enough to keep watching and generally find his character well balanced as a likable-jerk type.
But in tonight's episode ("Home Is Where the Heart Stops") something really bothered me. Now, the reason that Castle gets to hang out with the police--getting material for his books, surfing the sexual tension with the 'tec and playing out his childish cops & robbers fantasies--is because he plays poker with the mayor and pulled strings. Tonight's case involved a true crime story writer who happens to be a younger woman. She asks him to give her access to details about the case for the book she's writing and flirts with him in a way that strokes his ego.
Then it is revealed that she did something slightly underhanded, though clearly legal, in order to make her forthcoming book more likely to sell and that her actions resulted very indirectly in a murder. And he tells her, at the end of the episode, that he won't help her because what she did was "slimy" and makes it clear that his rejection is both professional and personal.
That scene left me with a really sour taste--who is he to decide that her tactics are slimy, from his lofty position secure in the Old Boys Network? It felt sexist and arrogant and hypocritical and, well, mean. I didn't particularly like her and I didn't think what she did was strictly ethical, but the person she was attempting to screw over was not a very nice character, either and it was clearly a situation of everyone using each other to get what they wanted and manipulating things all across the board.
Overall, I didn't think this was an especially strong episode (could they have been any slower on the uptake?) but it's going to take a while for me to forgive him/the show for that one and if there's more of that sort of thing I will be abandoning the show before long.
But in tonight's episode ("Home Is Where the Heart Stops") something really bothered me. Now, the reason that Castle gets to hang out with the police--getting material for his books, surfing the sexual tension with the 'tec and playing out his childish cops & robbers fantasies--is because he plays poker with the mayor and pulled strings. Tonight's case involved a true crime story writer who happens to be a younger woman. She asks him to give her access to details about the case for the book she's writing and flirts with him in a way that strokes his ego.
Then it is revealed that she did something slightly underhanded, though clearly legal, in order to make her forthcoming book more likely to sell and that her actions resulted very indirectly in a murder. And he tells her, at the end of the episode, that he won't help her because what she did was "slimy" and makes it clear that his rejection is both professional and personal.
That scene left me with a really sour taste--who is he to decide that her tactics are slimy, from his lofty position secure in the Old Boys Network? It felt sexist and arrogant and hypocritical and, well, mean. I didn't particularly like her and I didn't think what she did was strictly ethical, but the person she was attempting to screw over was not a very nice character, either and it was clearly a situation of everyone using each other to get what they wanted and manipulating things all across the board.
Overall, I didn't think this was an especially strong episode (could they have been any slower on the uptake?) but it's going to take a while for me to forgive him/the show for that one and if there's more of that sort of thing I will be abandoning the show before long.
