To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Castle

Meh on the case, but I kind of loved that Castle was jealous about Beckett becoming another writer's muse (and not a romantic interest), and Beckett thought it was sweet. And "Always"! Awww! We can haz forward movement in this relationship nao?

The other writer was super-familiar, and upon looking him up, I found that he played Tyler on The Middleman. Aww.

In case you were wondering, RichardCastle.net exists, and looks exactly like it did in the episode. This show is such fun. :D

Awwwwwwwwwww, Esposito wants to be someone's muse! Awwwwwwwwww!

*

Body of Proof

Oh. Oh, dear. Um. Well, it appears last week may have been a fluke of an actual good episode, if this is what we come back to.

The idea of Lacey doing Take Your Daughter To Work Day with Megan is a good one in theory, but the execution was very poor. Two episodes ago, the kid was all, "OMG you're smothering me! Back off! I don't want to see you for a while!" And now she's excited about going to Megan's workplace and ends her project by saying how proud of her she is? Oooookay. I know twelve-year-olds are unpredictable, but this is giving me whiplash. It would've worked much better for me had Lacey been extremely reluctant about the whole thing, but slowly warmed up over the course of the day to the point where she and Megan had a bit of a truce, but didn't appear to have completely repaired their relationship.

On the other hand, Megan as a mother was utterly hilarious, so there's that. The schedule/map/interview questions were classic "I have no regular interaction with children and am overcompensating by planning everything out" (ask me how I know), and yet she was also believable as suuuuper pissed off/protective when her colleagues started breaking the rules she'd set up. I can well imagine Lacey at the custody hearings five years ago being all, "My mom's really mean!" because Megan was obviously the disciplinarian in that marriage, at least when she was around. Her icy cold shoulder to Ethan after he tried to point out that Lacey was seeing nothing of Megan but what she wanted her to see was also excellent.

I rolled my eyes a bit at Megan's speechifying about the body as proof, respect the body, blah blah, especially when we had to hear it twice thanks to Lacey's video (Dear Christopher Murphrey: We get the pun in your title, plz to not be beating us over the head with it in half the episodes), but at least this time the context was more appropriate. Plus I will buy pretty much any dialogue that comes out of Dana Delany's mouth; she's that good. She salvaged what could've been a horrible scene with Lacey there. And it was nice that they finally did something with that spiffy Latin sign in the morgue. (Not to mention with that spiffy balcony on the office building at the end of the episode.)

In regards to the rest of the episode...okay, I was hoping not to have to fanwank quite this much or this quickly, but I think it has to be done, because seriously, Megan got to question a suspect all on her own in the interview room, and just...I...NO. Even Brennan doesn't get to do that. Even Castle doesn't do that. So. Here is my fanwank: Though they haven't told us, Megan and Peter are part of a pilot program that fosters closer contact between the ME's office and the police. Where ex-cop Peter has received medical training in order to better assist on that side of things, Megan has received some reasonable amount of police training so that she can help with the investigations beyond just doing autopsies/forensics. Maybe she got picked for the program because she's new to the field of pathology and so won't be as set in her ways, or something, IDK. If the pilot program is well-supported enough, this might even explain her being able to treat Curtis, her direct superior, as an underling on par with Ethan. Or hell, maybe she's not even Curtis's direct report because of this program.*

* Speaking of Megan's place in the hierarchy, I really wish they hadn't completely punted on that issue. Given the current climate of layoffs and overqualification, I think it would've been really interesting to see a 40+ woman with a really prestigious former job having to deal with being the New Girl in an entirely different environment. Sadly, nothing. They very least they could've done was just have made Curtis a colleague of equal rank so that it's not so obvious they're ignoring this issue.

Caselogic-wise, I remain at a loss for why Walking Eastern European Stereotype Woman cut up the old man. She didn't want the body found before she had a chance to forge the last letter for her immigration case? Hmmm.

However, despite all of my complaining, there was one REALLY GOOD part of the episode: Sam got to lead the case by herself, and she's fantastic. Utterly believable, hard-assed without being bitter, and snarky. I would totally watch a show actually starring her character rather than just using her as a supporting figure.

This leads me to another thought: they have two too many characters on this show. Since they have Peter, they only need one other detective (I'd keep Sam, although I like Bud a lot after last week), and they definitely have no need for both Curtis and Ethan if they aren't going to use Curtis as Megan's boss.

A couple other good things: Kate's interview with Lacey was entertaining. Definitely loved Kate and Megan working together on the body (even the out-of-place contemporary rock-type music didn't bother me as much) because it is sadly still rare to see two professional women working together on network TV. And of course I enjoyed Peter snarking at Megan about her protectiveness/control freaking. You know who they remind me of, just a bit? Marcus Cole and Susan Ivanova. Not necessarily as character types, but the relationship; she's kind of frosty and overly professional and a bit broken, and he wants to get her to interact with him on a personal level. Plus there are large helpings of snark on both sides. He doesn't have Marcus's giant raging crush on her yet, but...I dunno. The situation seems similar somehow.

Finally, speaking of Peter, I figured out whom the actor reminds me of. It's not this Simon Baker fellow people across the internets are comparing him to, but rather a young Kenneth Branagh. It's a bit eerie, actually.