First Impressions: Castle

It is hard not to get a distinctive case of déjà vu while watching Castle. We have seen it all before: a woman who takes her job a little too serious gets stuck with a guy who doesn’t take anything serious. This has become so overdone it is hard to remember the last time television put together a stuck guy and a free spirit chick.

What the show does have going for it is the characters are someone likable. The all too serious detective Stana Katic (The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice) gets stuck with bad boy writer Nathan Fillion (Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place) after someone has gone on a killing spree that mirror those in his books. And naturally the sparks fly.

And if that isn’t enough clichés for you, then we meet Castle’s family, his mother the drunken Martha Rodgers (Dharma & Greg; hey, there’s an answer to my question earlier). Then there is his fifteen year old daughter who is more mature than her father, naturally. Also in the cast are some of Kanic’s coworkers, but none of which were interesting enough to really mention.

What hurts Castle the most is a symptom that has been plaguing a bunch of new shows lately where the premise is a decent idea if it were a movie, but it doesn’t seem built for the long run. For Castle, had they extended out a couple more murders, it would have made a decent movie. But I am not sure how they can keep Castle following around the cops entertaining week in and week out.

Castle airs Mondays at 10:00 on ABC. You can stream current episodes over at ABC.com.