March Makeovers: Can ‘Castle’ season 8 start to establish consistency?

Before getting too far into this edition of our March Makeovers article series, let’s start by conceding the following: “Castle” has become a far better show in the second half of season 8 than it was in the first half. However, it’s still not at the point that the show was in its glory days.

If we look back at the parts of the show we enjoyed the most, we’d probably tell you between seasons 3-5. That’s when the Castle – Beckett relationship was really developing, before some of the crazier bits of mythology such as Rick’s disappearance, and also before there were so many creative shakeups. We do think that some of the ideas that executive producers Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter have thought up are fun and interesting, but there are a few glaring issues standing in their way of reaching their full potentially.

Maybe over the course of the next few hundred words we won’t end up actually accomplishing much of anything, but we’re certainly going to do our best to try identifying some of the problems, and discussing what can be done to turn them around.

What’s going wrong – We begin with what is to us the biggest issue with season 8 more so than LokSat, Rick’s disappearance, or even the separation: Castle and Beckett are simply not spending enough time together. The dynamic between Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic is what made the show so popular in the first place, and for whatever reason their screen time together seems significantly less this season. We haven’t done any sort of scientific study on it or anything, but given that we’ve had a full episode without Beckett and a premiere that was very light on her, we have to imagine that it’s far less.

Due to Castle and Beckett spending less time together, some of the cases have been a little more sprawling and unfocused. We’re not going to complain so much about the whole breakup thing anymore; we’ve already done that, and we actually think the pretend-breakup is a twist that has spawned some good comedy. Sure, we don’t think logically it really matters since Rick would be a target if he’s married to her or not, but we’ll give ourselves up somewhat to the convention. The biggest issue at play here is a structural one more so than anything pertaining to what the cast is doing or the premise of some cases.

How to fix it – Some other Makeovers have taken a little more precision to identify issues, but here it really feels as simple as just find a way to have the two work together. Why can’t private eye Richard Castle be a police consultant, and at least do more work with Beckett at the station if she’s not out on the field? You can use Alexis and Hayley as his liaisons, and then Ryan and Esposito as Beckett’s eyes and ears in the field. Also, more Lanie! We hear that she may have some good stuff coming up, and it’s about time since she’s an important part of the show that’s been a little bit marginalized.

The one other thing that we’ll say at the moment is simply this: If the show does figure out a way to cut down on some of its more out-there elements like the disappearance and LokSat, we think the case-of-the-week format really suits it the best with a few larger story elements thrown in htere.

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