The star of ABC's latest cop show, "Castle," is the notorious mystery writer Rick Castle (Nathan Fillion), a womanizing, irresponsible single father who is not very good at playing with others. "Sir, he is like a nine-year-old on a sugar rush: totally incapable of taking anything seriously," detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) tells her superior.
Above all, though, Rick Castle is meant to be charming, so it's lucky for him that he's played by Nathan Fillion, who recently starred in short-lived cult darlings such as "Firefly" (2002) and the TV show "Drive" and more mainstream projects including "Desperate Housewives" and the movie "Waitress" (2007). Fillion has built a reputation as a charismatic, unpolished leading man, and he channels everything he has into "Castle's" thin script, doing his best to make audiences swoon.
"Castle" focuses on the interaction between a writer and a hard-edged cop. In the show's first episode, the two are forced to team up after a murderer emulates crime scenes from Castle's novels. Beckett calls Castle in as a consultant and is frustrated to find that the freewheeling celebrity fails to follow procedures. However, he proves to have solid detective instincts, and together, the unlikely team manages to solve the puzzling murders.
Katic and Fillion try mightily to emulate the sexual chemistry of David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel from "Bones," but they simply don't have the same spark. Castle is often such a jerk that it's unclear why Beckett, a closet fan of his books, is so charmed. A scene between the two, near the end of the pilot, set to One Republic's overplayed "Stop and Stare," tries to set up a potential will-they-or-won't-they dynamic, but the pair has less chemistry than a fourth grader's science project.
Perhaps the characters fail to engage the audience because they have been so obviously cut from familiar cloth. Beckett is the overworked, suit-wearing female cop that viewers know well from countless "Law and Order" spin-offs. An early scene in which Castle nonchalantly profiles Beckett is meant to imply that he has particular insight into her psyche. The show is oblivious to the real joke, however: Anyone who's watched TV before could have psychoanalyzed her just as easily.
The dynamic between Beckett and Castle is just as predictable. One is type-A and the other is type-B. Castle is the unwieldy variable that Beckett can't reign in. The script even spells it out through one of Beckett's colleagues: "A control freak like you with something you can't control? ... That's going to be more fun than 'Shark Week.'"
With such a tiresome premise and generic characters, fun is the only commodity that "Castle" has to sell. Fillion plays up every impish grin and squinty smirk, and his character's family lightens up the non-crime-solving scenes. As Castle's mother Martha, an aging stage actress, Susan Sullivan plays a lazy clone of "Arrested Development's" Lucille Bluth. Castle's 15-year-old daughter, Alexis (Molly C. Quinn), is one of those TV teens who is really a parent. When Castle offers her a glass of champagne ("You're an old soul," he tells her), she sagely turns it down.
Real-life mystery novelists James Patterson and Stephen J. Cannell make cameos as Castle's poker buddies and sounding board. Castle summarizes the plot of the episode for them, framing it as one of his novels in the making. The two older men agree that the mystery was solved too easily. "Where's the twist?" Patterson asks.
"Castle" treats mystery novels like nonfiction. Beckett says that she reads them in order to find out why real people kill, while Castle transforms his writing research into real, effective crime solving. Is this true to life? Of course not; this is television. "Castle" is just another show that was created to fill up space on the network's calendar. Fillion may be able to resurrect the show from repetitive procedural hell, but only time -- and departure from that formula -- will tell.
