Castle (TV Series) After the Storm (2012) User Reviews

A Great Episode...Still Hoping They Don't Jump The Shark

[MichaelSeese · 10/10 · 3 October 2012]

I'll admit that I had feared the season ending Castle-Beckett hookup would be a jump-the-shark moment. We'll have to wait and see. But I did enjoy "After The Storm."

I thought the opening five minutes were great television. It started with the awkward morning-after conversation. Then it moved to slapstick when Castle and Beckett literally fell off the bed. (And was that an elephant behind them? What is an elephant doing in Castle's bedroom?) Castle's discomfort was hilarious as he tried to shoo his mother out of the bedroom. Then, his dodge of the flying pillow was perfectly timed.

Down in the kitchen, I loved his hangover conversation, which rose and fell in volume as he tried to cover Beckett's escape sounds. Her panicked look for her brassiere had me in stitches. And it all ended with him nearly shouting, "Experience this in its fullness, untrammeled by relief from over-the-counter pain relievers." We watched that scene twice.

(SMALL SPOILER IN THIS PARAGRAPH) Plotwise, good and intense. The music which played as Beckett walked through the hall in her search for Bracken was perfect. And I thought the scene in the kitchen played out brilliantly. Perhaps I'm making a big assumption here, but it seems to me as though the writers wanted to put this story arc away -- rather than have Beckett always looking over her shoulder -- but leave it open enough to revisit.

One more kudo: visually, I thought the scene where Castle and Beckett were reflected in the television showing Bracken campaigning was a neat idea.

OK, one plot faux pas: why did Castle and Beckett have to search for Michael Smith? Why didn't they just take the photo to Mrs. Montgomery and ask, "Who is this?"

And finally, the "looks." The aforementioned first five minutes was one long exercise in looks, especially Beckett's glare from the closet. And the whole thing ended with Castle's happy realization as the elevator doors closed and Beckett said, "I'm pretty sure I'll think of something to do" during her suspension.

So, very good episode. But I'll keep looking for fins in the water.

And it starts ...

[VetteRanger · 7/10 · 27 December 2022]

I questioned the start of season five letting Castle and Becket begin a sexual relationship. It has been the death knell for other series, including Remington Steele and Moonlighting. It even started the downhill spiral in the 60s for I Dream of Jeanie.

Castle managed four full seasons after this, so they did it a bit better than their predecessors.

The other focus of starting season five was a continuation of the long-term arc about the murder of Becket's mother. The episode begins with Becket hanging from a building's roof by her fingers, and then we go to "three days earlier", a common device on thee series. That element of the story is tense and action-packed.

Shark seems well in the past...

[tiercel1 · 1/10 · 20 October 2012]

If there was a jumping-the-shark moment, it wasn't the hookup... it happened last season when the will-they-or-won't-they "tension" became more important to the show than its wacky, unlikely police-procedural comedy.

I could have accepted more of a shift to serious drama (the conspiracy behind Beckett's mother's murder, a more serious relationship between Beckett and Castle), but the relationship issues played out more like painful awkward teenage angst than serious dramatic development.

I was hoping that just giving in and letting the leads hook up might let the show get past making Our Heroes act like insecure kids and either get back to the fun wacky silly that made the show fun... or go on to significant character development and more serious drama. Instead, the show and the season opens with such excruciating sophomoric awkwardness that subsequent episodes are languishing unwatched on our DVR.

I only got through last season through sheer inertia, watching because of how fun Castle had been through its first three seasons and hoping that the show would break out of its funk (one so bad that characters in the show were hanging a lampshade on the fact that leads were clearly, obviously, blatantly in love but required by plot to be unable to talk about it all season).

If there's not going to be any real character development, let Castle just be a fun, silly, wacky comedy. (Beckett and Castle could maintain essentially the same obviously-in-a-relationship badinage from the early seasons while BEING in a relationship, really.) If we are going to let characters actually take on lives of their own and grow, let that happen; let them act like actual adults in a relationship. But the "relationship" between the leads has gone from obvious wink-wink-nudge-nudge "coyness" to artificially maintaining "tension" by requiring monumental blind stupidity on the part of both leads.

Eventually I may give Castle another try, but a season starter that's put the entire series on hiatus again already deserves no better than 1/10 from me.

After the storm - Been there done that.

[cool_rover32-211-191446 · 6/10 · 28 June 2013]

Castle's standard has drastically fallen down after season 3 ended. Season 4 was so formulaic with stories seeming like they've been put together by taking elements from other shows. After the storm was another formulaic episode with not so funny, the morning-after scenes, powerful and ambitious politician behind Kate's mom's murder. Smith getting killed in the hospital was so predictable and the CCTV cameras being disabled too was predictable. There have been so many television dramas with a powerful but corrupt politician who's the mastermind of some conspiracy. I seriously hope they go back to the fun and different police- procedural drama that Castle was in first 3 seasons. They could've played out the Johanna Beckett murder arc lot better. Disappointed. We want the old Castle back.