You call that a gun?

Working my way back into the novella by reading over and editing what I’ve already written. Tomorrow I should be able to tackle new material. I’ve been cutting mercilessly so far. I’m hoping that it will be a very lean long story.

It was great to see Thirteen back on House. The whole patient of the week thing was almost an unwelcome distraction, though it did allow for the scene when Thirteen chimed in on the telephone diagnosis, thus surprising everyone at the hospital who didn’t know where House was. Plus the case put a tiny different spin on the hoarders thing. On CSI, they found a dead body buried among the detritus of a hoarder. On this episode they found a living person.

I’ve argued before that Thirteen is the perfect foil for House. She knows him, he knows her as well as he knows anyone. Somehow he found out she was being released from prison and he surprised her by picking her up outside the gate. I guess she must have caught up on Lost while inside because the one personal stop she asked to make en route to wherever House was taking her was to knee Damon Lindelof between the legs. Oh, she said it was someone else, but we all know that she was delivering a message on behalf of Lost/House alum Cynthia Watros. Lindelof was so far in the background that you wouldn’t have realized it was him if you weren’t also following his Twitter feed, where he proudly posted a picture of him writhing in agony.

Where they’re heading, it turns out, is a country festival where House has finished twice three years in a row in the spud shooting contest. Thirteen, it seems, is a rocket scientist who knows about internal pressures and trajectories, so she helps him replace his gun, which sucks. House finally worms the reason for Thirteen’s incarceration out of him and promises to do the same thing for her when the time comes. I hope Olivia Wilde is going to stick around for a while. Great to see she’s making movies, but she really brings House to life.

Two of my favorite crime writers, both of whom I’ve met, had cameo appearances at Rick Castle’s poker game: Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly. I think Connelly has been on once before, but it was Lehane’s first appearance and he was impressive. I think he could have the makings of an actor. They even gave him some good reaction shots. Rick brought along his protégé, who was starting to get on his nerves by elbowing his way in with Beckett. Together, the three seasoned writers deliver a smackdown on the newbie who fawns over the two authors. “It’s not a book signing kid—we’re here to play poker.” The kid  has published only one book (“And has writing one novel made you a crime-solving genius?” Lehane asks him) that has not been optioned as a film. When the rookie offers his opinion on the case and they shoot that down, too, Connelly asks, “You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote 23 more.” A fun scene that also paid tribute to Stephen J. Cannell by pointing out his chair at the poker table, which they were leaving empty for a year in his honor.

Always lots of stuff for writers to laugh at. His mother and daughter describe Castle’s writing process as “procrastinating until the very last second and then writing out of desperation in a caffeine-induced haze.” When visiting a seedy apartment, Castle comments that it reminds him of the first place he lived. “We used to have cockroach races. I wonder if that’s where Kafka got the idea.” When the young writer shifts his attention to Ryan and Esposito, Esposito asks, “Dude can be a muse, right? That’s not weird or anything is it?” Castle reassures him that it isn’t weird, before rolling his eyes at Beckett.

The murder of the week did its job of moving things along, and there was even a Shawshank moment when Castle discovered a clue hidden in a hole in a wall covered by a poster. The payoff at the end, though, was Castle admitting his jealousy about the young writer. Beckett tells Castle she thinks his jealousy is “cute” and reassures him that from that point on she would be a one-writer girl.

I watched the return of Law & Order: Los Angeles with one eye. They killed off Skeet Ulrich, which didn’t sit well with me, and the storyline was a convoluted one involving Mexican drug lords that didn’t hold my attention. Not sure I’m going to keep up with the show, even with Alana de la Garza joining the cast.