Started working on the new/old novella in earnest this morning. I qualify it that way because, though it is starting from a broken novel that dates back a few years, it will end up being a lot different from that earlier attempt. A lot different. And yet somehow similar. I hope. I think. Early days! I think it will be the first short work I’ve ever written that has chapters.
Spring has definitely sprung here. Daytime in the eighties, nighttimes in the mid-sixties. The azaleas have all bloomed.
Jonathan Lithgow as Barney’s father on How I Met Your Mother. How inspired. At first he seemed like the perfect explanation for how Barney got to be the way he is, and then it turns out that he’s just a normal, boring family guy.
This week’s House was a rare episode where the patient-of-the-week story was better than the off-stage drama. Oh, it was fun watching House play with his toys, including a Segway, remote controlled helicopters and a monster truck—oh, and a Russian bride, too. I think that counts. (And I think the logical side of Wilson was running the numbers on House’s profit-and-loss statement and saying, you know, that makes sense.) But the homeless guy who wouldn’t give his name was fascinating. His malady wasn’t all that important (thought the sensory confusion was interesting), but there was a twist at the end that made my jaw drop. Did not see that coming. The teeth in his intestines probably didn’t come from a back alley dumpster diving meal.
The best revelation of the week, though, was the preview, in which we see that Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) is back. Not for another three weeks, but yay!
Does it get any soapier than that? When I saw that Castle was going to take place primarily on the set of Temptation Lane, I thought it was going to feature call-backs to Fillion’s run on Desperate Housewives. Instead the tie-in was more with his mother, who used to appear on the soap opera. In one memorable three-week run she was kidnapped twice and trapped in a cave with bears, among other dilemmas. Good use of real soap opera stars (and, apparently, the real All My Children set) and Corbin Bernsen (who gets to do his Jack Nicholson “you can’t handle the truth” schtick), along with Jane Seymour as a con artist.
This was a nice, light episode, with lots of funny moments. The revelation that Beckett is a soap opera fan—or at least this particular soap opera. A run of dialog between Esposito and Ryan that goes like this: “Dude.” “Dood.” “Dude.” All with different inflections and chronicling Esposito’s dressing down of Ryan for ogling the sexy actress they were supposed to be interviewing. The wordless conversation between Beckett and Castle in which she told him to offer to read the barista’s script. After their tag-team, feeding-off-each-other breakdown of the case, Esposito and Ryan seem amazed, but if they’d seen that they would have been flabbergasted.
Castle calls her by her full name (Katherine Beckett) after her mind ventures near the gutter, and he’s glad to learn something new and personal about her. Despite their best timing moments, though, Josh is always there to break things up, even if it’s by phone.
The victim was the writer. “Why would anyone want to kill a writer?” Castle asks. “Oh so many reasons,” Beckett retorts. “Esplanie,” the portmanteau word for Esposito and Lanie. Loved it when Beckett told the detective his client was dead. “What do you mean, she’s dead?” Castle responded, “She’s dead. It only has the one meaning.” As soon as the assistant was invited to join the writers, I knew who the killer was, though I didn’t figure out the motive. “There are no shortcuts in writing.”
