I bought this book, like I really need an excuse to buy a book I only have a thousand +, and I think that the author is listed in the acknowledgments section.
Castle: "The Double Down" 9/28 - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Aragorn
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Based on Castle's author's blurb, I think it might be this guy. The blurb is too clever by half, methinks.
Notable exception: The Wire.
It was a clue, although they didn't highlight it. Neither killing was a crime of passion----the killer genuinely did not care about what they were doing. Hence Castle's reasoning that one would take extra care to get the grammar right in that sort of message didn't apply.
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^Even if a murderer did truly care about the murder, that doesn't mean they'd know that "your" was an incorrect spelling in that case. You don't gain more knowledge or spelling skills just by caring more. And I doubt someone in the middle of committing a murder would stop to consult the nearest dictionary or spell-check program. So that wasn't a clue, it was just Castle being pedantic to a degree that's out of character.
Anyone who's past 3rd grade should have learned the difference. They might not always get it right, but on some level they'd *know* it, and a little thought should be able to bring the correct one to the surface if they cared enough to think about it.
I'm with Castle on this one.
I'm with Castle on this one.
^I've known some very smart people who have trouble with spelling. It's not something everyone can do equally well with the same amount of education and effort. Different people's brains work differently, and some people's minds are more equipped for spelling skills than others. People whose minds are more sound-oriented, for instance, would be more likely to confuse homophones such as "your" and "you're." It's not due to laziness or ignorance, it's just due to cognitive differences among individuals.
And again, nobody who's in the middle of committing a homicide and defacing a body is going to give a damn whether someone grades his spelling. The message gets across no matter how the words are spelled.
One could make a case that it was a clue in that the actual murderer turned out to be someone who, I think, was from a lower socioeconomic class than the husband and thus more likely to make spelling errors, but that strikes me as elitist at best, and it certainly wasn't brought up in the episode. Also, it's contradictory that the "your" would be a sign of linguistic ignorance, given that the murderer was clever enough to convert "psychotherapist" into "psycho the rapist" (unless we're supposed to believe it was simply a coincidence that the word was broken up that way).
Besides, Castle didn't treat it like a significant clue, he just treated it like something that annoyed him as a grammar pedant. And I still say that's out of character. Calling it a clue is just an attempt to rationalize his behavior after the fact.
And again, nobody who's in the middle of committing a homicide and defacing a body is going to give a damn whether someone grades his spelling. The message gets across no matter how the words are spelled.
One could make a case that it was a clue in that the actual murderer turned out to be someone who, I think, was from a lower socioeconomic class than the husband and thus more likely to make spelling errors, but that strikes me as elitist at best, and it certainly wasn't brought up in the episode. Also, it's contradictory that the "your" would be a sign of linguistic ignorance, given that the murderer was clever enough to convert "psychotherapist" into "psycho the rapist" (unless we're supposed to believe it was simply a coincidence that the word was broken up that way).
Besides, Castle didn't treat it like a significant clue, he just treated it like something that annoyed him as a grammar pedant. And I still say that's out of character. Calling it a clue is just an attempt to rationalize his behavior after the fact.
That supports my position. The writing clearly *wasn't* done by someone with poor language skills, as you say. That's a clue in retrospect, once we realize that the you're/your mistake was due to the fact that the killer was not personally invested in his crime----he got it wrong because he simply didn't care enough to get it right.
Castle realized instinctively that there was something amiss there, but didn't have enough information to put it together at that point. I suspect the editing room may be responsible for him apparently not revisiting that later.
^I simply don't follow your logic at all.
Perhaps that's why the editors cut the follow-up on that clue from the episode, leaving it dangling as a rather odd observation and nothing more?
It simply points to the fact that, unlike most murders, the killer had no personal investment in the killing. It wasn't a terribly clear clue in that regard, merely suggestive.
It simply points to the fact that, unlike most murders, the killer had no personal investment in the killing. It wasn't a terribly clear clue in that regard, merely suggestive.
I wondered if this is something which will come to play later in the series, and really didn't have much to do with this particular eps. It was introduced pretty hard and stressed on at least two different moments for it to be a simple "toss away" moment, unimportant event, or even a mistake on the part of the script/director. It definitely carried the weight of something done for a reason.
I just haven't figured out how they could use this/what it could be setting up...
And I just don't agree with the chain of reasoning that leads you to that conclusion. I don't think the spelling of a word has any provable or consistent correlation to the degree of personal investment. As I said, different people are just differently predisposed to spelling ability. The person could've been in a hurry, with no time to spell check. The person could've been upset; even without a personal investment, taking a human life and defacing the corpse is not something most people could do dispassionately enough that their overriding priority would be spelling. So I just don't think your conclusion makes any sense at all. There are too many factors other than "personal investment" that could account for a spelling mistake.
I don't recall the exact quote, but Castle's reasoning is that anyone that desperate to send a message would take the time to do it right. Everything else proceeds from that assumption.
I'll agree it's a shaky assumption, and it's possible it got left on the cutting room floor for that very reason. If you think about it, nothing about the writing on her face played into the story at all, which suggests it's either setup for something later (we've seen little evidence of arc-based storytelling from this show so far) or that there was originally more to it.
I'll agree it's a shaky assumption, and it's possible it got left on the cutting room floor for that very reason. If you think about it, nothing about the writing on her face played into the story at all, which suggests it's either setup for something later (we've seen little evidence of arc-based storytelling from this show so far) or that there was originally more to it.
And it was clearly played as a humorous character bit, a way of painting Castle as irritatingly pedantic about language to the point that he'd propose something so completely irrational as the idea that spelling would be important to a murderer. I think you're reading wayyyyyyy too much into a joke.
I thought it was a joke at the time too. But given the particular way he made the observation and the ultimate reveal of what was going on, it seems clear to me that it was originally written as a clue, but later cut down to just a joke in the editing room.
I'm referring to writers' logic here, not in-story logic. In-story it doesn't hold together very well, which may have been why it was removed, as I said.
It's like the fish-tank joke. They used that as a red-herring, but they used it----it wasn't a joke just for the sake of being a joke.
It's the hand-gun on the dresser; you can't just show it without using it later in the story. If you do, you end up with the
reactions seen upthread. This isn't the type of show that would put writing all over a corpse's face and then have it not be a clue.
I'm referring to writers' logic here, not in-story logic. In-story it doesn't hold together very well, which may have been why it was removed, as I said.
It's like the fish-tank joke. They used that as a red-herring, but they used it----it wasn't a joke just for the sake of being a joke.
It's the hand-gun on the dresser; you can't just show it without using it later in the story. If you do, you end up with the
reactions seen upthread. This isn't the type of show that would put writing all over a corpse's face and then have it not be a clue.
