ABC’s ‘Castle’ season 8, episode 14 review: Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau reunite for ‘The GDS’
There were a lot of things to enjoy about Monday night’s “Castle,” though at the same time there were a few things to be frustrated about.
First and foremost, we’re not going to try to get into the mystery as to why Stana Katic is not in every episode this season. It is a little weird and jarring, but we just gotta live with it. We’re happy when she’s there and feel like “Castle” in its purest form is her and Beckett solving a case together, but it’s also unfair to penalize the rest of the cast for something that they don’t have any control over. Therefore, we’ll try to look at “The GDS” objectively.
Clearly, one thing that the writers are trying to in these episodes without Stana is compensate by bringing in some of Nathan Fillion’s former “Firefly” co-stars. Earlier this season, it was Adam Baldwin as Ethan Slaughter, and for this episode it was Summer Glau. We’ve always been a Summer fan, and have long wondered why she hasn’t secured more of a regular role on some other show, but we are more than happy to have her here as Kendall Frost, a private investigator who like Castle, was in a race against time in order to solve a case to get invited into the Greatest Detective Society, a club featuring the best mystery-solvers out there. Gerald McRaney was fun as the head of the group, and while the case itself was somewhat straightforward, there were a few nice moments in here. Watching Rick, Kendall, and Hayley go undercover at a prominent director’s home was worthy of a laugh, and it was nice to see Rick emerge victorious in the end.
Now, things get a little tricky. We’ve never liked the story of Rick’s missing time, and we are also not fond of LokSat. We’re still not entirely clear just how Rick went from Thailand to Los Angeles or why he cared so much about this in his missing time, but he had his memory wiped to protect Beckett, feeling that what he knew would get her killed.
Also, Hayley was in on it the entire time, at least in that she encountered Rick a year and a half before and tried to look after him and his daughter out of fondness for them. All of this was certainly convenient, but at the same time it’s nice that all of this is connected, if for no other reason than that it’s easier to wrap up and the show can get back into what is to us more interesting: The humor and crime-solving. “The GDS” was at its best when there wasn’t all of the mythology to wade through. Glau and Fillion still have great chemistry, and the sideplot with Ryan and Esposito trying to prank Lanie about her new boyfriend (it’s great to see Lanie have something to do!) made us laugh. It’s just too bad that we had to spend so much time on a long-term story that doesn’t feel right for this world. Grade: B-.
Judy Berlin
March 26, 2016 @ 11:02 pm
Why bother??? Just leave a blank screen with commercials. Have we not heard the same interplay with the LA police on a different episode. I didn’t find the episode with Lanie funny, just juvenile and cruel. No Beckett, no Vikram, ditch Hayley and the idiot plot, find Castle a new partner, Sumner Glau or better and kust move on. B- more like F-. Doesnt any body care why no body watches any more?????
Buddy
March 13, 2016 @ 1:48 pm
Every time you think things could not get worse they do. I agree with everything you guys have said I only wish it were not true. The one thing that has not been tried yet is to send over 4 million emails to project sponsors complaining and indicating that we are going to stop watching the show and possibly turning the tv off on Monday night. I believe we might get results that way.
Easter
March 9, 2016 @ 7:12 pm
How can you have a CASTLE show when you don’t have Nathan and Stana? The show this week was the pits, why did Beckett not go with Castle? it was not a Castle and Beckett show, they know how to solve a murder with the guys in New York. I have stayed with the show for the whole season hoping that the next show is going to be something like the other seasons but no, they keep saying the next show will be the one that we are going to love and that has not happened yet. I would rather watch the old shows. I think the need to bring Mr. Marlow and his wife back they new how get what people wanted to watch and breaking up Kate and Rick was not the way to do that. I really dislike the writers this year of who ever is running the show. I love CASTLE.
NMP
March 9, 2016 @ 9:38 am
All the wit and sparkle that made Castle so fun to watch are gone. This episode was a generic procedural that could have been part of a dozen mediocre shows. And Stana MIA for the second time? That’s just wrong.
If ABC really wants “Castle” to continue, they need to bring back Marlowe. The current showrunners are doing their best to kill the show.
Vikki
March 9, 2016 @ 2:42 am
F- That was the worst. Ok so Stana was away, but ignore her character completely until the final seconds? By everyone? AH must really hate that character, probably because Marlowe loved her. The plot (both of them) were stupid. Didnt care about the murder, GDS and predicted LokSat connection months ago. Hayley sticks around because she is fond of RC and Alexis? No, she is there to replace Beckett. Caskett is dead and AH should hold the wake. Im sure he’ll enjoy himself.
Microgrey
March 9, 2016 @ 12:08 am
This Castle-Beckett separation is bad enough, but a completely Beckett-less episode is just wrong. I don’t know what these showrunners are thinking but they have already ruined 2/3 of the season with this nonsense and need to stop now. Fans primary reason for tuning in is see Castle and Beckett together. The 5 million fans that they still have are only there out of loyalty to the show and the cast. This is a cruel way to reward such loyalty.
What I’d also like to know is, how did Castle know to call this mystery partner of Bracken’s “Loksat” a year and a half ago? If you will recall, the redacted memo in which someone wrote the word “Loksat” in the margin, was only discovered in season 8, when a query that Kate had initiated while at the AG’s office, flagged it. Even if we assume Castle’s dad had access to this memo before Kate and shared it with Castle, remember that Loksat isn’t the person’s real name. It was just a word in the margin that Kate used as a pseudonym to arbitrarily refer to this unknown person. So what are the odds that Castle would refer to this mysterious person by the exact same pseudonym?
Jim45
March 9, 2016 @ 12:01 am
Hawley supposedly wrote this episode. If he did, this is amazingly bad. Confused, scattered, disjointed are terms that occurred to me as I watched. Smooth storytelling does not come to mind. If he wanted to provide insight into Rick’s missing time along with a strand and convoluted LokSat connection then what was with the practical joke on Laine and that shot of Fillion with the big guy on the golf cart? The GDS thing was just strange.
Conservativefemale43
March 8, 2016 @ 11:51 pm
Matt, do you think the new TVLine blind item about a drama “killing it’s star in the season finale” would be Castle?
JAN
March 9, 2016 @ 1:47 am
Since they’ve already killed the Beckett character with terrible writing, it must refer to another show:-/
georgee
March 8, 2016 @ 10:38 pm
If at best a C. The show writing and running was real bad after having a few good ones this was bad. If this was a spin off of what Castle would be like without Kate, it was a non starter for a lot of people. One would have to think if Rick was looking into the one thing that was so important to him, Kate would have been by his side, no we had the Kate want to be instead. With only 7 episode left I sure hope we see a lot of Rick and Kate together. Maybe that what her new career going to be, and she become apart a Castle PI. Now that we know that LokSat knows them both of them real good, it is time for Kate to come home. I really thought the ratings would go up pretty good this week because of all the firefly info on firefly. But it did not went down in overall. We have had better episodes this year than this one.