Monday, May 7, 2012

My New Love

It is nigh on impossible to get me to start watching a new television show. It took an entire season for my best friend to convince me to watch Alias and it took YEARS for me to finally sit down and watch The West Wing, which is bar none, my favorite show ever, in its entirety and from the beginning. Part of this stems from my prevailing television abandonment issues. I became convinced, at a fairly young age, actually, that if I were to fully invest in a new show from its infancy and then happen to fall in love with it, it would be summarily canceled. Case in point, Rags to Riches, which may, in retrospect, be the most awful thing ever to happen to music and acting, but when I was eleven, represented the pinnacle of television achievement. I loved it. It was canceled. This happened to me several times over the years. I would discover something. It would be AWESOME. Networks would cancel it. When Alias was ending, to much wailing a gnashing of teeth at my abode, I knew that I had to find something new. Hence Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Look, I know that a lot of people thought it was relatively horrible. But I also know a bunch of people who LOVED it. I was one of those people. And I got all caught up and invested in the characters and, of course, it's canceled. Which sucked, but I guess I should at least be thankful that they knew it was happening and wrapped up the ending in a nice little package. I also fell head over heels for Pushing Daisies. Which had TWO WHOLE SEASONS. Okay, not really. There were two seasons. Sort of. It was on sporadically at best. Anyway. These and many other events in my television past have made me extremely wary of anything new. Which is why when daytime shows were being absolutely flooded with promos for a new ABC show three years ago, I studiously ignored it. No matter how adorable it looked. And so, into my world came Castle. I knew it was there. I knew it was starting. But it was a mid-season replacement, which can mean it's gonna go huge and be awesome. It can also mean it's gonna suck and last for twelve episodes as a filler until the fall season starts. It was also fortuitous that three years ago, almost EXACTLY when the show was starting was when I was making my first foray back into community theater in several years. So, it was easy enough for me to dismiss it with, "Well, I probably won't be around to watch it anyway." And I guess to be honest, a lot of the time, I wasn't. And even though the promos still danced adorably through General Hospital commercial breaks, I didn't watch. Which brings me to the end of January. I had just finished my run of Pirates of Penzance and had the first completely free weekend I had had in MONTHS. Which was great. Except for the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do. So on Friday, as I wandered through Target, I saw a display with the Castle Season One DVDs. And they were something like $20. So, I figured it couldn't hurt. When you think about it, twenty dollars is pretty cheap for a weekend of entertainment. Plus, if it turned out to be awesome, there were two more seasons on DVD waiting for me AND the current season. And, for real, y'all. I am in LOVE. It is one of the cutest shows EVER. And also, Nathan Fillion. Which rocks. I've had a thing for him since he was Joey Buchanan on One Life to Live when I was in college. It's a cop/detective show. Which usually, other than Law & Order: SVU, I avoid like the plague. Actually, there are things about it that remind me very much of SVU. It's certainly, as Buffy would say, "dark and twisty" from time to time. But where SVU is, at heart, a procedural and is always heavy and actually kind of dismal, Castle is delightfully funny. There are a couple of scenes that I have saved on my YouTube favorites that I can watch over and over and still laugh out loud. Every. Single. Time. It gets compared with Bones quite a bit, but I'm old-school and it feels like there's much more in common with Moonlighting and Remington Steele. It brings the banter. And the people in it are just ridiculously attractive. And it makes references to the late, much-lamented Firefly all the time. I'm pretty excited about tonight, which is the season finale. And by "pretty excited", I mean REALLY REALLY SUPER EXCITED OMG!!!!!!111!!! I mean, the promo at the end of last week pretty much showed Beckett (awesome lady police detective) DIVING for Castle's face, in particular the mouth part of his face. With the mouth part of her face. Castle being Nathan Fillion's character, who is a best-selling mystery writer who shadows Beckett for research for his books. And also because they are TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER. Anyway, the point is, this show is awesome. You should be watching it. Tonight. 10/9 Central. ABC. Or get thee to a Target/WalMart/Best Buy and buy those DVDs. Or watch on ABC.com.. And if you hear shrieks of joy or mournful wailing coming from central New Jersey in that hour? It's me. And I'm sorry for disturbing your peaceful evening.