Food similes, spoilers, TV and other nonsense.

Most of the time, the TV episodes and movies I watch slide across my subconscious like melted butter-- they slide across and fall off and don't stick.  So it's a pleasant surprise when one sticks.  Like a marshmallow.  This week, I watched the season finale of one of my favorite shows:  ABC's Castle.

Over the last 3 seasons, I have enjoyed watching Nathan Fillion spar with his co-star, Stana Katic as author Richard Castle, and homicide detective Kate Beckett.  He is charming, funny, handsome, and compelling onscreen.  I have always liked him, so this show was easy to watch, but it has turned into quite a good TV show, as well.  I like the characters, and the actors (with the exception of the police captain) are all quite good.  Suspending reality, Castle follows Beckett around as she solves murders, supposedly to feed his muse so he can write crime novels. Their relationship has become complicated, however, as they are both crazy about each other, but she keeps him at arms length, the timing is never quite right, etc.-- pretty much standard love-interest fodder for prime time TV show characters.  I have enjoyed the developing relationship quite a lot, familiar formula or not, and I was looking forward to this finale, thinking surely this will be a game-changer for the two of them.  It certainly was.

I don't want to issue a spoiler alert, so I won't tell about what happens, but it was dramatic, compelling, and had me locked on the screen right up until the very end.  What bothered me at that "very end", however, was the back-to-basics end-of-season cliff-hanger.  OY!  I feel like I've seen it before, done this all before and didn't expect that again.  Which I guess is a good thing, that it surprised me, but it's one of those obvious situations that would end the show if it isn't resolved in a certain way, blah blah blah... I kind of hate that...

I will watch in the fall, happy to see the situation resolved, anxious to see how it will be resolved, and to revisit these characters I like so much again.  But I have a feeling I know how it will go.

Okay, SPOILER ALERT.  I can't continue writing this without telling a few things.

Beckett gets shot in the last scene, and Castle (finally) holds her and tells her he loves her, as her eyes close and the scene goes black.  Here's what I predict will happen in the fall:  First of all, she will be in the hospital, coma, maybe, but at least in a hospital bed.  Castle will be there, and when she wakes up, he'll hesitate to tell her again that he loves her, and as he's waffling, her "boyfriend" will arrive, sweep her into his arms and blah blah blah, you know the rest... so we have another season of Castle and Beckett not admitting what they feel and the sexual tension can build some more.  We'll see...

I hope they prove me wrong and do something new and original.  What I would love to see would be Beckett coming to in the ambulance, Castle holding her and she grabs him in a kiss; they profess their love, she's lucid and knows what happened, they get her to the hospital where she is admitted for emergency surgery, etc. etc...

I know that in the past it's been scary for shows to have the two leads actually get together. There have been many shows that having this occur, but smart writers manage to give the viewers what they want (i.e., Jim and Pam finally get married, etc.) and still have good tension in the writing.  I hope this is what they do with Castle.