Castle (TV series)/Headscratchers

So when're they changing the name of the show from "Castle" to "Beckett"?
Is it just me, or are they focusing waaaay more on Beckett than the titular character? I mean, Kate is a great character, but so far every major storyline has revolved around her - the serial killer stalking her, the case to solve her mother's murder - and now season four's plotline is going to be all about her too. Personally, I'd find it more interesting if we got a personalized Castle storyline, like something from his past or someone targeting his family.
 * I'd say that the reason they concentrate so much in Beckett's past is because most of the time the two of them are at Beckett's work, which is very closely related to her past. I think that, maybe, this season, with the potential start of their relationship and the problems that can carry from there. Maybe something like what you suggest could happen. For example, some girl could get obsessed with Castle and attempt to kill his family and Beckett, or something like that.
 * Part of it too is that while the show uses an omnipresent camera, for the most part, it tends more to show things from Castle's perspective. Even though Beckett is the main character, we are seeing police work and Beckett through Castle's eyes. It's the story of Castle as he talks about the story of Kate.
 * Well, with "Pandora"/"Linchpin", we have found out a bit more about Castle's past, including.

Castle is the title of the show. But I can't seem to figure out where the name actually comes from.
Martha is a Rodgers, so the natural assumption is that it came from a Castle in her past. In 'Suicide Squeeze', though, that explanation seems thoroughly nixed when we learn that Rick is "famously fatherless". So why the surname switcharoo?
 * He's a writer, he likes cool names. Would it not be easy for him to pick his own name?
 * Also, "famously" fatherless does not imply "actually" fatherless. Didn't he say once that he had tons of father figures (re: Martha's, um, Man-izing?
 * Given what we know about Richard Castle, I'm guessing he'd think that "Richard Rodgers" wouldn't be a suitable name for a mystery writer and simply gave himself a nom-de-plume (possibly, as mentioned above, from one of the men in Martha's life that he actually liked), adopting it for day-to-day business. Alternatively, 'Castle' could be Meredith's last name, and Richard could have adopted it and kept it for the sake of Alexis when they divorced.
 * There is also the possibility that Rick didn't want to be mistaken for Richard Rodgers, famous (though deceased) writer of musicals.
 * Or Martha could originally be a Castle. Rodgers is from a marriage and she kept the name or it is simply her screenname.
 * Martha strikes me as someone who would have been pretty flaky when she was younger. And, unless I'm mistaken, your last name doesn't have to be the same as your parents'. If she didn't know who the father was (or did, hated his guts, but wanted little Ricky to have a cool name) it's entirely possible that she named him "Richard Castle" right off the hop.
 * He says in "He's Dead, She's Dead" that he chose it and gives no explanation as to why. He does say his middle name is now Edgar after Poe. His birth name was apparently Richard Alexander Rogers.
 * Richard Castle? Mystery/suspense writer? You mean like Richard Bachmann, alternate ego of Stephen King, who writes a lot of stuff that takes place in Castle Rock, Maine?

So Castle believes in zombies, vampires, and psychics, but he doesn't believe in curses?

 * To me the whole not believing in curses thing came off more as him trying to convince himself that he didn't believe in curses. He did get rather nervous whenever the curse was mentioned and asked the guy how to cure himself.
 * Probably the idea that if he doesn't believe in it, it can't hurt him/he shouldn't fear it. He has an active imagination. Even if he doesn't truly believe that such things exist, he probably still can freak himself out over them.
 * I'm not sure he believes in any of it and is more interested in "Wouldn't it be cool if it did"

Why is a fiction writer allowed to be a part of police investigations?
"Castle: (Intro speech) ...and thanks to my friendship with the mayor, I get to be on her case."
 * I know this show is excused by Rule of Cool / Rule of Funny, but couldn't they have thrown in a mention of Castle being a former detective or something?
 * At first, he got to stay because of Screw the Rules, I Have Connections.


 * After about half a season, Beckett simply likes having him around, not to mention he's a pretty useful consultant. Despite lacking training in criminal profiling or detective work he's decent at both because he thinks like a murderer for a living and has an eye for "plot holes".
 * Pretty much - its not like it's really out of the question for police departments to have outside consultants helping out. Sure, maybe some of them are questionable (psychics), but hey, ultimately, they want to solve murders and such and if someone is helping them out and has a really really good success rate at it, why -wouldn't- they keep them around? Not to mention, as a professional writer writing about their very own police department, it's good PR.
 * Not to mention that he's proven a pretty good consultant, a source of good connections in various cases, and willing to spend his own dime to help the department, whether it is to solve a crime or get them a new espresso machine - and he does all this free of charge. The department has a pretty good deal, all things considered. Usually consultants expect to be paid.
 * As a troper in the WMG section pointed out, the premise of Castle isn't that different from the real-life TV show Cops (series).
 * Or embedded reporters for the military. Even, to an extent, any and all movies described by the Backed by the Pentagon trope.
 * Beckett's pretty clearly a special detective. She's been mentored by Montgomery for most of her career and is in charge of two other detectives, leading serious investigations. Her strength is in dogged pursuit. Castle? He's an outside the box thinker. As Verbal Kint put it, "To a cop the explanation is never that complicated. It's always simple. There's no mystery to the street, no arch criminal behind it all. If you got a dead body and you think his brother did it, you're gonna find out you're right." Castle's all about mystery and arch criminals. Thus he's the perfect foil for a dogged, by the book cop. She thinks literally, he laterally. Plus, they're totally hot for each other.
 * FWIW later seasons have Hand Waved this by having Castle be introduced to people by Beckett and the other police detectives as a 'consultant', the implication that he's now not just a writer doing research but is being retained by the department in a semi-official capacity to consult on the cases.

Where is Kate Beckett living?

 * We know that she stayed for a night at Castle's house when hers blew up in "Boom!" But that was only temporary. In a later episode, "Almost Famous", she mentions that she's still looking for her house. Is she living with Jesse, her new boyfriend-guy? Her father? Or her car?
 * I remember some interview in which they said she was subletting an apartment while looking for a new place.
 * Well as of "Knockdown", we know she's has an apartment. It's unclear whether it's shared with Josh, though.

Beckett's Shoes
Normally I'm fine with Beckett wearing heels even though it's wildly impractical for her job. My brain can still willingly suspend disbelief. What killed me was that in the episode "Setup" she was sneaking into an empty building containing terrorists and bomb with highly radioactive parts and the shoes she's wearing are making a sound so loud and distinctive she might as well announced her presence with a bloody bullhorn.
 * To be fair, they did as the bad guys got the jump on them. They surrounded the two of them before attacking.

Radiation Does Not Work That Way.

 * Writers, if Castle and Beckett are exposed to enough residual radiation to max out a dosimeter in the space of about five seconds (TWICE!!!), they are not gonna just walk away from the experience with no exposure symptoms whatsoever. The haz mat guy is not gonna just walk in and say 'nope, the source of the radiation wasn't there so even though your dosimeter was tripped out, you're clean'. Why not write about the characters having mild radiation sickness as a result of exposure? It would be a relatively unique plot idea for a TV show and it would be interesting! And more believable!
 * To be entirely fair, even mild radiation sickness would still see Castle and Beckett laid up in a quarantined hospital for a good long while, which would thus take them out of the action. Since they're the main characters, this is a bit impractical. Still annoying, though.
 * We actually have a few tropes for this (the maxed out meter thing). Suffice to say, it doesn't mean what people think it means.
 * Maxing out the dose rate on an active dosimeter and walking away from it is perfectly believable: they tend to go up to maybe a couple of Sv/h at best (acute radiation sickness sets in at around 1 Sv). However, IIRC she maxes out the dose. In which case, she's toast. The specific dosimeter used seemed to be custom for the show (I can't recall a model with an LED bar graph), but the normal active models from the same company max out at 10 Gy. Which in layman's terms means "dead, dead, dead".
 * There's also the question of why she had it in the first place? Do NYPD detectives carry them all the time, just in case? There was no reason to suspect anything nuclear up to that point.
 * I dunno if they're standard issue for the NYPD -- although post-9/11 and given the increased concerns about dirty-bombs, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to learn that the NYPD was willing to issue them to their officers -- but you can get a pocket geiger counter around the place if you really want one (apparently they go for about $300.00 for the lower-end models), and I wouldn't put it past Beckett to be Crazy Prepared to such a degree.
 * Alternatively, hers, which IIRC was given to her by the NYPD as a part of her equipment and could be calibrated at a lower setting to get police out of the way when there's even a chance of radiation poisoning. It could be a less accurate model used only as a warning device.

Castle shooting the perp in the Season 3 premier.

 * A civilian with a gun he doesn't own, shooting and taking down a suspect? I'm okay with Castle being badass, but it's never brought up again.
 * It was established in Season 1 Episode 7 "Home is Where the Heart Stops" that Castle is very capable of handling a weapon at the shooting range with Beckett.
 * That as it may be, you'd think there would be legal ramifications involved.
 * There would be... but it'd more than likely be ruled self-defense and/or a justified shooting since the person he shot had 1) shot first with intent to kill and 2) was at the time ready to shoot a police officer. Though he's not a police officer and doesn't have the same sort of legal protections against shooting people, let's face it... there aren't a lot of people in the legal system (much less the police department)that would hassle someone for protecting a police officer. And, being that he shoot someone while on a case, I'd hazard a guess that, if trouble did happen, the police department would simply drop the criminal charges (criminal charges are basically the State versus someone, thus it would be the city and by proxy the police department pressing charges). The other potential bit of trouble would be a civil suit from the person that got shot (one person pressing charges against another)... but again, that being said, said person was getting ready to shoot a police officer and had already established intent to kill. Thus by the time of the shooting, said person was a criminal (and everyone involved knew as such and thus was acting with full knowledge) who, by definition, had given up some of their legal rights.
 * Montgomery actually asks how Castle got Becket's Gun in a tone which clearly implies someone should be in trouble but then shrugs it off and covers for the pair.

Why does Alexis have so many horrible friends?
As someone who's tired of seeing bratty kids in shows like CSI and Law and Order, Alexis Castle is pretty much a breath of fresh air and the best thing ever. Yet, she seems to have an incredibly horrible taste in friends. To list... Does Alexis have some kind of problem when making friends? Is she a Horrible Judge of Character? Is this what high school was like for other people? Or is it simply that Alexis has a lot of friends and there are a few bad apples among them?
 * In "Vampire Weekend", she (quite rightly) calls her dad when her friend gets drunk at a party. Her friend's reaction? Destroy Feggin.
 * Well, in that particular case it wasn't so much that Alexis called her dad, it was that Alexis gave her dad the phone number of Paige's parents, and Paige (presumably) got in trouble. Granted, it still doesn't make it okay to murder Feggin.
 * In "Law and Murder", her friends go shoplifting, and her sense of responsibility forces her to go and secretly pay for it. I agreed fullheartedly with Castle when he asked her why she was friends with those kind of people.
 * In "Slice of Death", her friend pretty much gives her so much crap with the excuse being that Alexis was spending too much time with Ashley. The obviously logical conclusion is to try and steal Ashely away and treat Alexis like crap because... that'll make them friends again?
 * She's a teenager.
 * Plus, she's probably been friends with most of these girls all her life, or at least for a fairly long time -- they've probably gone through the various levels of school together. However, they're all reaching that age where not only are hormones starting to go wild (and almost anyone who's been a teenager would probably admit to eventually, hormones don't always lead to the best decisions you'll ever make), but teenage politics are starting to become a factor. People change around about this time, and not always for the better, unfortunately.
 * In answer to the original post: because they're teenagers. That's how teenagers act. If anything, Alexis is unrealistic - sure, there're a lot of teens who're mature and responsible, but they tend to slip up and screw up more often than not. Kids who get drunk, shoplift and steal boyfriends are a more realistic portrayal of teenagers than kids who pay for shoplifted items and instantly forgive the girls who steal their boyfriends.
 * also we need to remember Alexis is 2nd Generation child of Fame -- Richard is a Main Stream Author and Martha has/had a respectable acting career on film and stage -- it is no stretch to assume her social circle is just as rich -- I'm sure that IRL Paris, Lindsay and Kim and their ilk have some 'innocents' who travel in the same circles, and its just that Castle shows them from the Innocent's perspective

Amnesia
why didnt they just look at the name on the prescription on the inhaler to find out his name....
 * I don't know much about asthma, but do they put names on the individual inhalers / cartridges? In any case, it could have been a generic / brand asthma or allergy medication, not one that was specifically prepared for him.
 * Inhalers do not have the prescription on them, the box does. Unless he carries the box around, the inhaler wouldn't have helped identify him.
 * It's also possible (or was, at the time the episode aired) to get an over-the-counter inhaler.

The Superhero Episode

 * A few problems with the scene where Castle is assembling bits and pieces of famous costumes. One, why does he automatically assume a high collar means Black Panther? Two, many of those heroes aren't mild-mannered. Stark's a playboy, T'challa's a head of state, and Deadpool doesn't even have a secret identity, or a mild one. Three, why does he automatically associate Deadpool with swords? Four, not all of those heroes are driven by the loss of a family member, especially not Deadpool. And finally, five, why does a yellow belt make him think Iron Man instead of, say, Batman or Deadpool?
 * One, Three and Five: He's using them partly because Disney owns Marvel Comics and ABC and is probably more interested in cross-promoting their own product rather than the Distinguished Competition's, and because they're all perfectly acceptable and valid illustrations for the points he's trying to make -- Black Panther does have a high collar, Deadpool does frequently use swords, Classic Iron Man did have that kind of belt. They're also examples that a comic book collector is likely to have heard of and follow, whereas a layperson -- although they may have heard of them -- is probably not going to be that familiar with (while still being fairly reasonably well known characters for the benefit of the audience, both the detectives in-universe and the TV viewers). Lots of superheroes have yellow belts and costumes, but let's face it, only a dedicated comic book fan is going to fashion a belt on a superhero costume after a type of costume that Iron Man hasn't worn in forty-odd years or so, or base his costume's collar on Black Panther; your average layperson will more likely go for the classic 'cape-and-domino-mask' style thing. Castle also may only collect Marvel Comics personally and find it easier to draw on examples from his collection (or just geekily decided on a Marvel Comics 'theme' for his presentation -- let's face it, this is Richard Castle we're talking about). And ultimately, they do accurately demonstrate the point he's trying to make at that moment -- that the real superhero is probably an avid superhero comic reader -- so while he probably could have chosen equally valid alternative examples, does it really matter that he chose these ones?
 * Two: the mild-mannered thing doesn't refer solely to the costume or the heroes who inspired said costume; Castle's clearly riffing on the classic Clark Kent-style 'bold superhero = mild-mannered secret identity' archetype (as much for the purposes of humour as serious profiling).  Plus, let's face it, law of averages comes into play here; it's psychologically a bit more likely that the superhero actually is a quiet everyday person living out a power fantasy behind a mask and doing things they wouldn't have to courage to do in their 'normal' lives rather than, say, a flamboyant arms dealer, a world leader or a mutant genetically disfigured by his own healing power; the first two generally don't need superheroic secret identities to live out their power fantasies and the third is, well, let's say short on the ground.
 * Four: Similarly to two, Castle's just generalising and riffing on the classic archetype to construct a workable theory -- not all superheroes are driven by the death of a father figure or loved one, true, but a fairly high percentage are (certainly, enough to make it a fairly common theme in superhero works), and it's a lot more likely as a 'real life' inspiration for a superhero who actually does go around kicking the crap out of criminals in real life than, say, being grossly mutated by a super-healing ability that rapidly accelerated cancerous growths in his body or getting shrapnel embedded in his heart and having a life-crisis after building a suit of armour to house his replacement artificial heart.

The Frozen People Episode

 * Two things...
 * The car that carried off the victim is described as an unmarked white van. When they track it down, Esposito says that the license plates match. That sounds pretty much like it's a marked white van to me.distinct
 * I could be wrong, but I always assumed that when the police describe a vehicle as 'unmarked' they usually mean it's a plain colour and doesn't have any distinctive decals or markings on the sides (as in, it's an 'unmarked white van' as opposed to a white van with blue lettering or a black lightning bolt or an orange fireball painted on the side), not that it doesn't have a license plate.
 * Under what possible law could the company say that they are within the law to steal people's bodies and freeze them until they figure out how to revive their brains? Not even going into how the science is improbable, I don't think the law would be "murky" about it, much less murky enough that these people will claim that they still NEED to keep the body, or part of it, when Beckett acquires a warrant.
 * I don't fully understand the law in this issue but as I understood it, their argument was that they weren't stealing the victim's body in the first place; they had a legal contract with the victim to claim and collect his body immediately at the point of heart-failure and freeze it as part of the service they were providing for him after his death and, I'd imagine, that failure to act on this contract would open them up to legal repercussions (such as lawsuits for breach of contract from the victim's family). And cryogenics is inherently in a murky area, since it hinges on a point of science which, while I agree it's certainly improbable, remains neither conclusively proven nor disproven; the fact that it's merely 'improbable' and not actually 'definitely impossible' means it's inherently unclear waters for the legal system, since the idea challenges the very nature of what it means to be 'dead'. This opens up all sorts of murky legal issues about the nature and point of death, the right of an individual to determine what happens to their body after they die versus the state's interest in solving a crime, whether a homicide investigation can be considered as such or even proceed in a system where a victim may possibly be brought back to life at a later date, the legal validity of cryogenics -- and while I think it's unlikely as well, the fact remains that the possibility or improbability of it is hotly and passionately debated, which is going to carry over in any legal proceeding. In short, while I'd imagine they'd ultimately lose, the cryogenics company has the ability to really stall things on this particular homicide investigation while the courts try and sort it all out if they wanted to challenge them, which is something that the cops want to avoid if possible.
 * For what it's worth, this article agrees that the case law is pretty clear and falls on the NYPD's side (in New York at least), although it does also point out that the episode did address the more likely issues that would arise in such a situation even if they weren't resolved as quickly and straightforwardly as they would be in real life. I'm guessing they probably went with Rule of Drama over the reality (coupled with a bit of possible California Doubling, since it's also noted in the comments that the issue is a bit less clear-cut in California), since just having the police easily steamroll the cryonics company to get what they want probably wouldn't have been as interesting to watch.
 * Also, important to note, is that the law does not protect you against yourself. Cryogenics may not be viable at the moment (or in the foreseeable future) but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to attempt it.

T-shirt in "Heroes & Villains"

 * The guy at the comic shop wears a blue t-shirt with an asymmetrical, circle-based design on it. I think it has something to do with Marvel, possibly the Avengers, but I'm not sure. What is it?
 * It looks like the Avengers logo.

Safe deposit box in "Cops & Robbers"

 * The use of the safe deposit box in Cops and Robbers really bugged me. Using the priest as a Secret Keeper and intermediary makes sense, he's trustworthy and the grandmother already went to the church. Given that though why bother with the safe deposit box at all? It would seem much simpler just to have him pass the letters to the grandmother after ceremonies and then destroy them once she has read them (the grandmother could even become a volunteer helper, giving her an excuse to stay after the service).
 * The letters and photos are pretty much the last links the grandmother has with her daughter and grandson, and vice versa; she probably doesn't want to destroy them, they have strong sentimental value for her. Since it's too dangerous to keep them around her apartment since that's the first place her son-in-law would look, and since she already has access to the safe-deposit box beforehand, why not use it as a storage place? It's reasonably easy for both to access, and let's be honest; they probably weren't expecting the son-in-law to go to the lengths he did to access them.
 * I have one from the same episode: how exactly did the villain come to the conclusion that the letters are in the deposit box? It doesn't seem like he knew about the priest, since it would have been infinitely easier to jump him and take the letters from him when he'd go to deposit them. It seems kind of random for him to go "Of course, she must be receiving letters from my wife, which is delivered to the deposit box by some third party, which she picks up later".
 * He tracked where the grandmother was going.
 * And he had bugged the lady's apartment.
 * The priest seemed to give up the address pretty easily. Basically, Beckett just said "The old lady's been murdered" and the priest told her what she needed to know. He didn't try to confirm if what she said was true. For all he knew, they could just have been impersonating cops and came up with a story to get the address out of him.
 * We don't see it (the scene is briefly blocked by an establishing shot of the priest's office door), but presumably Beckett displayed her badge and credentials when identifying herself as a police officer, and they both seem very sincere about the danger the mother and son are in; he doesn't really have any reason to doubt they are who they say they are, and the nature of the job means that priests in general don't tend to be the most untrusting of people. In any case, if they're telling the truth the mother and son are in immediate danger, if not they're still several hours away so he assumes he has a bit of time to confirm the story he's been told and Beckett's credentials and warn them if necessary; under the circumstances he probably thought it was a risk worth taking.

Agent Gray

 * Why didn't Castle make use of his CIA contact more often? In "A Deadly Game," since everyone first thought they were dealing with foreign spies, I'm surprised Agent Gray wasn't the first guy he called. And then in "Setup/Countdown," dirty bomb + shady Syrian secret service man + suspected Syrian terrorists = should have had Castle calling him up sharpish.
 * Agent Gray is probably a busy man with all his shadowy CIA activities; he's probably not available for Castle to call just whenever.
 * Also, the CIA is extranational. It'd be the FBI to handle any domestic activities of that nature. If nothing else, Castle would call in an FBI contact.
 * And, as of the Pandora/Linchpin two-part episode, Agent Gray turns out to be completely wasted potential. Despite being a two-parter that dealt heavily with the CIA, he is not even mentioned a single time.
 * To be fair, they probably thought -- not entirely unreasonably, it must be said -- that 'Castle's ex-muse with whom he had a complicated semi-romantic relationship with until things got ugly reenters Castle's life' probably had more dramatic potential than 'someone who Castle knew from the CIA who we saw once several seasons ago for maybe a couple of minutes and a one-off gag reenters Castle's life'. Okay, it would have been a cool little Call Back to see him again, but it's hardly the worse betrayal of plot potential that we didn't.
 * He may also be trying to prevent the same mistake he made with his thief contact. Could also be that he knows he can't abuse his contacts with the CIA because he might compromise them or become a nuisance.