The Fun Part

So some of you (the few, the proud, the related...) know that I am big, big fan of the TV show Bones. I've been watching it since 2005 and well, I'm love it. Not right now, 'cause the executive producer Hart Hanson decided to make the main character pregnant (for no apparent reason), but the actress in real life is pregnant herself and I guess it adds something to the story line. But I still don't like it. I do not appreciate that kind of twist coming out of left field!

It's beyond me how Beckett resists this face. I couldn't.

So for lack of Bones, I watch Castle. Because I need something to distract me until November 3. (And the David Boreanaz withdrawal. I miss my favorite fictional FBI agent so dang much, Netflix notwithstanding. It's not the same as seeing new episodes every week.) I am an unabashed Nathan Fillion fan-girl, after watching all 14 episodes of Firefly (the entire series...darn you, the network!!!) and the movie tie-in Serenity. Do you see the picture and the caption to the right? Because, holy mackerel on a shingle, seriously!


AND IT DOESN'T HELP. NOT ONE BIT. 




Because if you thought the UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension) was bad in Bones, it's a hundred times worse in Castle. I didn't even know such a thing was possible. But it is. And it does.  


Nathan Fillion plays the lead character Richard Castle, a murder-mystery writer tagging along after the NYPD and more specifically the hot female detective Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic, prettiest brunette in television) and her band of merry sidekicks, Detectives Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito (both of whom I already love inordinately). I'm barely in the fourth season and I'm already screaming (in my head, really quietly, so no one else hears) at Castle and Beckett just to put us all out of our misery and shut up and kiss already. And I haven't even seen the three seasons that came before it. 




Why is Castle worse than Bones, though it hasn't been around as long? Because Castle admitted to loving Kate at the end of the third season, just after SHE GOT SHOT. By an still-unknown assassin. AND WAS LYING IN HIS ARMS, BLEEDING OUT. And then she told Castle she didn't remember, but she admitted to her therapist THAT SHE  DOES. While Castle is trying really, really hard not to push her too much, while it's so freaking obvious what they're not saying to each other. And what everybody else around them already knows. So that's what we have to deal with the rest of the season. That's infuriating. 


Am I taking the whole thing just a little too seriously? Maybe. But the fun in watching it kind of makes up for the frustration we feel at the characters.  


So yes. I am inexorably, irrevocably drawn to TV shows where the main female/male leads drive everybody crazy with their unspoken attraction and covert glances and wordless communication. And everyone else around them is going, "You like each other, just get over yourselves and make out already!" Probably because that's what I write and what I'm good at.


And really, that's the fun of it! Where's the fun in having the main romantic leads just admitting to their affections, right off the bat? Where's the story? The plot? The twists and turns? The conflict? It's just not worth watching/reading if there's no conflict. Not there's nothing wrong with an early declaration of affections. But there needs to be some kind of balance of the mushy-gushy romance bit. You admit it, that's great, but after that, then the conflict comes after admitting it. 


There has to be a real conflict and disrupting of the relationship. An crazy, obsessed tracker-vampire does the job pretty nicely (depending on the story) or an unknown assassin. Just make sure to put the relationship back on track...or at the very least avert the danger so the characters can go on making everybody else around them nuts, not to speak of themselves. 


And that's my story/character spiel for the day. And my shameless fangirling. Heh. 


Over & Out,
Rachel