Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoilers

Discussion in 'TV & Media' started by Aragorn, Sep 20, 2010.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    ^Which just goes to show that one should avoid making assumptions about the motivations of a storyteller, n'est-ce pas?
     
  2. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Mais oui! I wish everyone would follow that advice. We could avoid Last-Temptation-like bruhahas that take up so much valuable breathing time. :D
     
  3. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    I thought making the terrorists ex-US special forces soldiers instead of Islamists actually allowed them to explore a greater range of issues and ultimately make it a far more compelling and nuanced episode than if they had gone the stereotypical and easy route.

    Think about the wide variety of ideas they touched on in this episode:

    - Jumping to conclusions about Muslim persons of interest in an investigation being terrorists is wrong, but so is choosing to ignore patterns or evidence pointing in that direction in the service of excessive notions of fairness or "political correctness," as much as I loathe the abuse of the term. If they had wound up with the Syrian family being terrorists, it would have undermined the former part of the message, while the latter part was still addressed even with them being innocent.

    - Seeking to understand or even empathize with a terrorist group or other enemy does not equal approval of their actions. If they had been Islamists, I think a lot of people probably would have dismissed their cause out of hand as unrelatable. Instead, they chose to have the motivation be the loss of the unity we as a nation felt after 9/11 and the fact that people have largely put the war in Afghanistan (and to a lesser extent the fact that there are still troops in Iraq) out of sight and out of mind despite soldiers still being wounded and dying there on a regular basis. That's very relatable to the viewing audience, and therefore hopefully gets at least some of them to think about extending that consideration to other issues.

    - Sometimes people do things that we as laymen on the outside of the situation perceive as unnecessary or excessive, but we may not have all the facts they do. Castle and Beckett for instance wonder how many times similar incidents like this have gone down where they were the ones on the outside who were kept in the dark to prevent a panic. Is it better to have total openness and have people potentially living in a perpetual state of fear which can endanger lives and destroy economies, or to control the amount of information the public receives? I lean toward the side of the argument that favors openness except where ongoing diplomatic, intelligence, or law enforcement functions (that aren't illegal) would be compromised and place people at risk.

    - Just because someone does do something we perceive as excessive or cruel (such as threatening to take away the woman's baby), doesn't mean they are cruel by nature. Adrian Pasdar's Homeland Security agent made this clear when he said he's not his job, and that ultimately what he does is in service of saving lives. I also thought it was smart having an American of Iranian descent like Pasdar play the role (plus he gave a great performance).

    I thought it was a surprisingly thought-provoking, well-rounded, and dramatic episode and that going for the generic Islamist terrorist angle would have undermined the points they were trying to raise, and in addition go against the typical narrative of the show, where it's rarely the first and most obvious suspect that turns out to be the guilty one.

    I was a little disappointed about the semi-copout on them being found, defrosted, and back in action so quickly, and the reset of Castle and Beckett to the relationship status quo, but those are minor points when weighed against some great acting and drama in the episode. The actress who played the Syrian woman, Pasdar, Fillion, and Katic all gave outstanding performances. Plus, you have to love Castle and Beckett's reactions to stopping the bomb at less than the last second.
     
  4. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Excellent post, my Bored friend.
     
  5. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Not to mention that it simply makes a more interesting story if the villains have some ambiguity or identifiable motives. The problem with interpreting story content purely in political terms is that writing fiction isn't solely about polemic. It can have a message, but if a story isn't engaging in and of itself, then the message won't be as effectively conveyed. So a writer's first priority is usually going to be telling a good story.


    Oh, I didn't realize that. Might've made things more nuanced if his character had been written as Iranian-American as well.


    Well, the alternative was that they'd die, so I'd call that a necessary copout. And I like it that it was Alexis's knowledge of her father (that he would never fail to leave her a message) that alerted Ryan and Espinoza to track them down, although I wish we'd actually gotten to see Alexis telling them that rather than hearing about it secondhand. (Is there some reason Molly C. Quinn has so little screen time lately? Perhaps she's been studying for finals or something.)

    Bahar Soomekh. Who's actually Iranian by birth.
     
  6. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Well, yeah, obviously they're not going to kill off their two main characters, but it was a little jarring having them be on the verge of freezing to death and having the captain tell Esposito they can't search for them while the crisis was ongoing, and then have them be found anyway, thawed out, and back in action so quickly. I would think it would not be that quick a recovery (within a matter of a few hours), even from a "mild" case of hypothermia. It's a dramatic conceit to get them back in the action, and not a big deal or anything, but it just seemed odd.
     
  7. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Would've been a better payoff if they'd escaped by their own wits, rather than dumb luck. Waddayagonnado.
     
  8. Jax

    Jax Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    ^ How does one escape from a lock steel container?
     
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    But it wasn't dumb luck. It was Alexis's relationship with her father that saved them, because she knew he wouldn't fail to send her a message unless something was wrong. And it was Ryan and Esposito's loyalty, in that they went against Fallon's orders and made it a priority to find their colleagues. That's all good in principle. What weakened it is that all of that was mostly off-camera and just described to us after the fact.
     
  10. kitkat

    kitkat Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    I actually liked the "dumb luck" escape route. :lol:
     
  11. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    When Beckett fired a few shots into the door and then gave up, I did find it kind of amusing that over her right shoulder on the far wall you could see the bank of fans that covered the refrigeration unit. I'd imagine firing some of her remaining shots into that might have helped a bit.
     
  12. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    I'm not sure. Shooting into rapidly spinning metal blades? There was enough of a ricochet problem as it was. And I'm not sure what the odds of hitting anything vital to the machinery would be.
     
  13. Dac

    Dac Commodore Commodore

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    You could see the radiator grill thing that was cooling the container though. I would have though simply smashing that up/kicking it would have at least broken the refrigeration allowing it to warm up a bit.
     
  14. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Okay, it was SMART luck.
     
  15. Thestral

    Thestral Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    I think they just had too much ground to cover unfortunately. It's a shame because it would've been nice for Alexis and Martha to get a little more screentime, but I don't think there's anything they really could've excised as it is.
     
  16. Aragorn

    Aragorn Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    [​IMG]

    Castle and Beckett investigate the axe murder of the head writer for a long time New York soap opera. Everyone is suspect when it's discovered that the action behind the scenes plays out as good as the on-air storylines. Castle uses his writer's skills to figure out who's the killer.
     
  17. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    "Castle uses his writer's skills to figure out who's the killer."

    No, really?
     
  18. Aragorn

    Aragorn Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    When Esposito was talking to the actress about delivering lines, were his awkward pauses an attempt at the bad soap opera actor delivery?
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    If you mean the scene I think you mean, his awkward pauses were the result of being enthralled by the (supposedly) super-gorgeous soap star who was flaunting her sexuality to get him off his guard.
     
  20. I Grok Spock

    I Grok Spock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: Castle: Season 3 (Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic) - Discussion & Spoi

    Unusually for me, I actually called this one as soon as they showed the perp. A few good chuckles in the episode but it seemed overstuffed with guest stars/red herrings which meant nobody got very much screen time. The heavily hyped Jane Seymour seemed particularly short-shrifted.