HeatWave

(S01E18) As much as this episode veered into "bad buddy cop movie" territory several times, it was definitely a fun hour of television. In fact, after watching last week's episode, and now this, I could definitely see 'Castle' spawning a successful made-for-TV-movie franchise at some point. This storyline was a perfectly-contained movie, and it goes to further prove what the actual 'Heat Wave' novel showed us: these characters can thrive in stand-alone stories.

As Jane mentioned last week, Dana Delany is great as Agent Shaw, and I loved seeing her outside of her increasingly ridiculous role on 'Desperate Housewives,' although it was nice to see her and her 'DH' hubby, Nathan Fillion, reunited -- especially because I'm pretty sure it was more his role on that show, and less his cult status from 'Firefly' that got Fillion the 'Castle' gig in the first place.

(S02E05) I'm really glad this episode ended the way it did, because I was about to be pissed. Obviously Castle isn't going to stop writing the Nikki Heat books and leave Beckett, so I was expecting him to make some asinine excuse to his book agent about why he couldn't take over the James Bo-- er, a "British secret agent with lots of gadgets" series.

But in the end, the excuse of, "hey, my publishing house is going to just dump sacks with dollar signs printed on the front of them on my doorstep so I can make a Scrooge McDuck-like swimming pool out of gold, so screw that British agent and his gadgets," kind of works for me. However, all things being equal, if Castle had gotten the same offer and he had been following around, say, Esposito instead of Beckett, I feel like maybe the prestige of writing the British spy series may have won out over more gold doubloons for an already-rich Castle.

(S02E03) I don't watch Castle because I really need another New York-based police procedural in my life. I watch it because it's funny, quirky, and because Nathan Fillion is dreamy. So while I would be hard-pressed to ever find a bad episode of Castle, this one wasn't my favorite. It just wasn't fun enough.

I'm not really enthralled with models, so the whole "behind the scenes at Fashion Week" thing really doesn't appeal to me very much. However, I do like how the theme of youth and beauty plays itself out throughout the show; first with the obsession over these qualities inherent in the modeling world, then with Castle's realization that he is at the age in which the beautiful young woman he meets isn't someone he met at a party, but rather the gawky girl who babysat his daughter and watched High School Musical with her. All the while, Castle's mother is dealing with the fact that she is no longer getting the ingenue parts, but is instead being offered that of the the crazy granny who dies offstage.

(S01E07) "Most valuable lesson: it's all about relationships."

That would seem to be the motto for Swingtown. It is all about relationships. On the marriage front, Tom and Trina's open marriage, which has been the model for marital bliss till now, has hit the rocks. Okay, maybe not the rocks, but there have been some rough waters.