ABC put a Derrick Storm spinoff in development between season 6 and season 7. It's a weird categorization because the initial press release made it clear it wasn't intended to be a Castle spinoff, but rather its own standalone show based on the character from the novels Rick wrote. At some point, however, ABC decided to pass on the project and my understanding was always that once that happened, the plan was to fold in a character tied to Castle's past/the Derrick Storm novels and use that to explain his disappearance. And for whatever reason, that didn't happen. We got the mess we got, and at no point did said mess justify not letting Castle and Beckett get married before he was kidnapped. But, as I've said multiple times before, it's fairly clear to me there was no plan from Andrew Marlowe for what to do with Castle and Beckett after they got together. They managed reasonably well with it in season 5, but season 6 was the 'throw it against the wall and see what sticks' approach, to the point entire chunks of the show just feel like a parody.

Same. It really made me miss Castle, though. Like I finished the episode and went “WHEN ARE WE GETTING A REUNION SEASON?” (The answer is not anytime soon, alas.) But it was cool to see the three of them back together, and I really enjoyed Jon’s storyline.

Sorry, anon! You sent this to me weeks ago and I was busy at the time and couldn’t reply and then I forgot about it!

But, honestly, it’s a pretty mixed bag. On paper, it looks good because the competition isn’t as steep as the show is only up against Madam Secretary (CBS) for scripted content, but when you factor in the fact that NBC will be showing NFL football from September to December, then it gets less exciting. However, ABC definitely isn’t putting The Rookie on Sunday with the idea that it will go toe-to-toe with the NFL, they’re banking on people who don’t particularly care about football (women) will love Nathan Fillion more than Téa Leoni and be inspired to watch the show live.

That basically means that if The Rookie can match or beat Madam Secretary (which is often delayed because of Sunday afternoon football overruns) then ABC will be pleased.

But I’ve got some reservations, namely because Shark Tank isn’t going to be any better of a lead-in for The Rookie than Breaking Up Together was last season. Shark Tank performs reasonably well wherever ABC puts it, and it actually has higher ratings than The Rookie, but I’m not so sure that the audience for a reality show about entrepreneurs will necessarily stick around to watch a bunch of cops patrol Los Angeles. But I’m happy to be proven wrong.

The other concern I have is that come 2020 there are going to be a bunch of interruptions in the broadcast schedule. I don’t remember everything they have contracts for, but I know that the Grammys and the Oscars both will be on ABC next year, so that’s two weeks where the show will be pre-empted. And I’m sure there are at least two more awards shows that I’ve forgotten about. You’ll also have some sporting events (like the College Football National Championship) that will get in there and muck things up, too.

If ABC creates a schedule that doesn’t equal to a new episode, three weeks off, a rerun, a new episode, a week off, etc. then it’ll probably be okay. But my worry is that the ratings are going to take a pretty big hit with all the changes.

No. That entire reaction over Hayley being introduced to the show was so ridiculous and unnecessary and prompted entirely by two things 1) TVLine stoking the fires of there being friction between Castle and Beckett in season eight (after releasing the easiest to solve Blind Item they’ve ever published) and 2) people jumping to conclusions that because there was going to be trouble in paradise that it automatically meant that a new character was going to claim Beckett’s turf.

As far as the show being Castle and Beckett working cases: I’m also gonna say no. Most people tuned in to see Castle and Beckett be in a relationship from season five onward. They could have sat in a room making googly eyes and kissy faces for 45 minutes every week and a large section of the fanbase would have been over the moon because their shipper dreams came true.

It’s not a coincidence that every time there was a non-Caskett focused episode that the whining kicked up a notch, just like people consistently whined and complained if they didn’t get enough shipper moments in case-heavy episodes.

The other thing you have to understand is that things change. Take out all the behind the scenes drama and the fact that the two leads acted like children for the last two years or so, and just consider this: Castle ran for eight seasons. I started this blog in season five and I spent seasons six and seven telling people that they better prepare themselves for the fact that things were going to change once contracts ran out. Nathan Fillion was always very vocal that he wished he could work fewer hours from season four onward, so there was no denying that getting that change would be a priority for him. Stana Katic might not have talked about it several times a year (in part because she largely stopped doing interviews related to Castle), but she also mentioned on social media a few times that the hours were intense and didn’t leave her much time to have a life. So, in the same vein, she was also going to ask for reduced work.

I’m not sure how anyone exactly expected the show to keep running as it did when the two leads were gunning for a maximum four-day work week. Most hour-long tv dramas have eight days to shoot an episode, if you are on network television you are going to film between 14-24 if you get a full season pick up and all that filming generally takes place from July to April. That is an insane schedule.

Likewise, because of that tight schedule, you can’t afford to start doubling your shooting days just because your lead actors want more time off. And even if the schedule wasn’t a factor, the amount of additional money and resources it would take to do that is ridiculous and absolutely not worth it (especially for an aging network drama). So what happens then? You still have to film up to 45 minutes of weekly television, but the availability of your lead actors essentially got cut by a third. What ends up happening is that the other characters have to fill the gaps.

If you watch season eight, Ryan and Esposito spend a lot more time working on their own without Castle and Beckett than any other season. Hayley and Alexis are around more/have their own storylines that they work on together and apart or with Castle. Ryan, Espo and Vikram regularly paired up with Beckett. That’s all an effort to pad the show and utilize the lead actors on the days that you had them. I know two days of shooting doesn’t seem like very much, but on average each shooting day nets about 5 to 10 minutes of footage for a 45-minute show. Two days equals a minimum of 10 minutes, sometimes 20, and that’s a quite a chunk of script/story.

I know people get all bent out of shape about Castle and Beckett being split up, and almost all of those reactions are directly tied to the contract stipulation that Nathan and Stana only worked together two days a week. But even without that clause, you would have seen them separated more in season eight because of that four day work week. Hell, the whole reason Beckett became Captain of the 12th Precinct was so that Stana’s workload could be reduced and that she could be contained largely to the precinct and the loft. Does anyone really think Castle would have been content to sit in her office and help her fill out paperwork? Even if they were separated for the first ten episodes or so, he would have still been out working cases with the boys and working with Hayley and Alexis. The only real difference would have been that you got a bookend pair of scenes with the two of them at the loft.

I’m not saying that the storyline for them wouldn’t have been interesting, I’ll always wonder what the plan might have been without that contract stipulation, but it wouldn’t have translated to Castle and Beckett pounding the pavement to investigate every single avenue of the investigation. As soon as the actors' contracts ended, those days were over.

No. Usually when a network tries to get the viewers of a certain television show “back,” they employ the creative team or the actors because there’s a ready-made fanbase to tune in to the show. Take Two was definitely an appeal to Castle fans, but it didn’t work. The Rookie has done okay compared to other shows airing on the network in that 10 p.m. spot (delayed ratings are where the show is doing well).

Whiskey Cavalier is more of an attempt to bring in the viewers that enjoy lighthearted, procedural-style television. Since Lucifer has now gone to Netflix, and by all accounts seems to be going a bit grittier in tone/style, there’s a pretty wide opening to fill the of ‘will they/won’t they’ cop shows since no other network currently has one where the sexual tension is focused on the two leads.

At the TCA’s last week, ABC made it a point to say that they really wanted to draw in younger, female viewers (which, I admit made me roll my eyes because this is the network with never-ending cycles of The Bachelor/Bachelorette, plus all of Shonda Rhimes shows, all of which are geared to that demographic) but they also have previously stated that they wanted to do more procedural television, which is a big part of why ABC went after The Rookie so hard last year. Whiskey Cavalier is kind of meeting both of those desires, and I’ve personally found the promos to be very engaging and funny.

Based on the promos, Scott Foley and Lauren Cohen don’t have the overt sexual chemistry that Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic had, but few couples do. And I also believe in giving it a few episodes before just throwing in the towel and saying that it won’t stack up to everything that has come before it.

Personally, I’m looking forward to watching the show at the end of the month, and I hope it’s good. I’m missing a good lighthearted dramedy in my life. For all its strengths (and I do enjoy) The Rookie lighthearted is not the word I would use to describe it.

As a matter of full disclosure, I still haven’t gotten to watch the episode (thanks, YouTube!) but this is one of those that I can kind of answer without having seen the ep. 

That storytelling vehicle is pretty common and I’d actually wager that a lot of cops would say that in a 14 hour (12 hours? IDK how many they say they are working) shift in a major metropolitan area, having that much stuff happen isn’t as abnormal as it might seem to us. I definitely agree that there wouldn’t be as many high stakes situations as it seems are presented in the pilot, but it’s also one of those things where you need to establish an idea of urgency and the type of high stakes drama that The Rookie will likely build itself on. 

But yeah, this is definitely meant to be more of an ensemble show and I think that explains why Nathan Fillion – a guy that’s spent the better part of two years talking about how he hated the schedule required to be the lead on an hour-long drama – signed up. He’s still #1 on the call sheet, he’s definitely the titular character but it’s also not a situation where he can’t have episodes where he fades into the background a bit as the audience gets to know all the other characters. And, as i’m sure all of you know by now, for every scene he isn’t in, that’s probably an afternoon or morning where he didn’t have to go to work which, in turn, allows him to have more of a life. 

I gotta tell you though, it’s not a bad marketing ploy. People know Nathan, ABC loves him, and if anyone in that cast has the name recognition to get people to tune in, it’s him. Even if the show is more ensemble-based, he’s a good strategy for getting people to turn the thing on and see what the show is about. 

If I’m honest, I think it’s pretty bland, Anon. I’ll readily admit that is in no small part because of Castle and how much I love that show, but even if I had never seen Castle, I just don’t think Take Two would grab me.

My issues are pretty simple and they start with the fact that Eddie Cibrian and Rachel Bilson have no chemistry. There’s no fire, there isn’t really even a spark, it’s just two attractive people trading banter that has no real life to it. It’s just words on a page. Of course, anyone who watches a lot of television will tell you that given a few episodes, things usually improve and I certainly hope that is the case here. Otherwise, this is gonna be a show that will be a tough sell as it all rests on the chemistry and the ‘will they/won’t they’ element of the main pair. So, if the audience doesn’t care or find them that interesting together, the show isn’t gonna make it.

I also want to add that I wasn’t expecting to see the lightning in a bottle type chemistry that Nathan and Stana created in Castle’s pilot, but I was looking for something that would grab my attention and entice me to come back for another episode, and it just didn’t happen.

I’ll also just go ahead and say that I definitely didn’t appreciate the barbs taken at Castle in the pilot episode. I don’t know if it was meant to be funny or what, but I certainly wasn’t laughing. There is a way to bring up your former show or even other famous/currently airing procedurals ( I want to say there was also a dig at Lucifer at one point, too?) without making it seem bitter or in poor taste, but the four or five swipes they took just seemed to be a bit disrespectful of the vehicle that, for all intents and purposes, got this show on the air. Maybe I’m just too close to the situation and reading way more into it than there is, but I certainly wasn’t impressed at the shade being thrown at a show Marlowe and Terri chose to leave and then proceeded to complain about in the years since.

And of course, there’s the question of originality. It’s not really a secret that I’m not as in love with Marlowe as a good portion of the Castle fandom, but I still cannot understand why, of all the other potential stories to tell, you elect to, at best, do a gender-swapped reboot of your most successful creation and, at worst, try to remake Remington Steele. Even if they wanted to remain in the light-procedural ‘will they/won’t they’ genre (goodness knows there’s a market for it), there are other stories to tell that aren’t side tracks to your most famous project, or a jerry-rigged reproduction of one of the classics.

Even tossing Castle and Remington Steele aside, I think it’s short-sighted given how many options are out there for viewers. I’m an advocate for network television and family-friendly television, those things absolutely have a place in the world and need to be produced and celebrated, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a reboot or a remake. Sure, Hollywood has been ripping off itself since it began, but I just expected more of a these two than taking what put them on the map, moving the setting to the opposite coast, swapping genders, and making the comedic role an actress versus a writer.

And that brings me to my last point: The writing was dull. I’ve said before on this blog that really, Castle’s strongest suit wasn’t writing. On Castle, there are far more average to subpar episodes than not strictly from a script standpoint. It’s really the acting that lifted the material and, to me, you see just how much good actors can lift so-so material. Beyond that, there are entire scenes in the pilot episode that are lifted directly from Flowers For Your Grave (there’s a ‘did you see that?!?’ in the denouement, for instance). So while I’m willing to give some leeway because these shows are formulaic by nature, I’m not going to be so nice when you are lifting your own material on the project that immediately follows. Especially when you do it more than once in an episode.

Am I still going to watch? Sure. I’ll give it another episode or two because it’s summer and there’s nothing else to tempt me late on a Thursday night, but Take Two has a long way to go before they convince me to join them for the long haul. Castle fans don’t want Castle with less chemistry, they want something with the same wit and tone that stands on its own two feet.

I mean, I’d also take a Castle movie, but most of the cast is busy, so.

It’s simple: Stana Katic hasn’t worked on anything owned by ABC since Castle ended and ABC uses the social media accounts of defunct shows (like Castle) to promote other shows on their roster to the people that still follow those accounts.

If ABC had broadcasting rights to Absentia, they’d be teasing it on the Castle twitter. It’s not an either/or situation. They also don’t promote Jon Huertas and This Is Us — they don’t own it, either, but people never seem to be bothered about that.

Hi Anon! I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t paid attention to what is going on with Take Two, but it could be a couple of things.

First of all, did they actually film the entire show? My impression — and again, I haven’t paid a bit of attention — was that they convened to film the pilot episode and would be going back to work in July. If they did film the whole thing, it’s a pretty good bet that it’s going to be a summer show and that’s been the plan from pretty early on in the creative process.

The other possible explanation is that various people tied to the show simply couldn’t commit to working from July to April for whatever reason. It’d be a weird thing for a brand new show without a huge star/showrunner (think Ryan Murphy/Shonda Rhimes/etc) with lots of projects to juggle to get that kind of shift in production, but it’s not unheard of, either.

As far as ABC making it a summer show, that’s maybe not the death knell that it might have been five years ago. The television landscape has changed so much and with each new television season, networks are trying to create year-round television schedules to compete with streaming services versus just existing on a summer of reruns and reality shows.

But, with that said, scheduling a show for a summer run doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Summer shows have a lot stacked against them, least of all that people are on vacation or outside/at the pool, etc. There are shows that have made a successful run by airing in the summer months, but it’s definitely harder to generate an audience without one hell of a marketing campaign. And that’s probably where the rubber meets the road.

It could very well be that ABC loves the show and feels that it will play better to a summer audience, and they want to give the show a chance without the clutter and clamor of the Fall tv schedule. If that’s the case, I’d expect all sorts of television promos/social media outreach/web page banners, etc. And I’d also expect them to start popping up within the next week or so. Though, if I’m honest, they’re a bit late for my taste. I would have started running stuff as soon as shows began their ‘end of the season’ storylines, which was THIS week for most.

I also think it’s a missed opportunity for ABC if they’re indeed going for a summer airing. They’ve already got The Rookie and, regardless of what a section of people’s feelings are about Nathan and Alexi Hawley, there is a built-in fanbase for both shows. They’re also similar in tone and two of about four light-hearted procedurals that ABC ordered for this pilot season in an effort to recapture the niche that was held down by Castle on ABC and now Lucifer (Bones before it) on FOX. To me, it’s natural to pair the two shows together on the same night and to go all in on the marketing campaign of targeting Castle fans to come back to ABC. But if Take Two ends up airing this summer, I’d expect The Rookie gets Castle’s timeslot.

The other thing I’ll add is that it’s not that crazy that Terri might have been told a premiere date in the fall. Take Two is already on a series order, there’s no decision to make regarding if they’re going to keep the show. Networks are currently making those decisions by viewing pilots/showing them to test audiences for feedback, but shows that already have a series order will already have tentative times in ABC’s tv schedule for the fall. They won’t be official until the schedules are released, but those dates would definitely include premieres so that crews can determine when writers need to convene/pre-production needs to begin to meet those deadlines.

But if I had to guess? It’s a summer show that’ll start sometime mid-June and run to late-August.

You’ll probably get a sizzle reel of some sort towards the end of May when ABC announces its fall schedule, but I wouldn’t expect any hard core promotion until late-August/early-September. They’ll probably start doing teasers in July, but it won’t really ramp up until they get about a month out from fall premiere dates. 

But I’d expect The Rookie gets a pretty big promotional push from ABC. So I’d just get ready to see it practically everywhere, and probably in conjunction with promotion for Take Two since I’d bet a considerable amount of money that they air back to back. 

(2/2) And considering how close we came to a potential Beckett-less S9 due to behind the scenes decision-making that ended up having to force Hawley and Winter to write the overall S8 arc/trajectory (I don’t blame them, just the circumstances that put them in that position), I just don’t know if I can bring myself to watch Absentia.  Cause it may bring back those feelings for me.  Does that make sense?        Well, first of all, that scenario was one of several that ABC Studios were considering for season nine sans Beckett so while TV Line touted that storyline as the only one, that wasn’t the case.   But more importantly, it wasn’t close at all. There was never going to be a season 9 for ABC without Stana Katic, the only way the show would have continued would be if they had tried to sell the show to another network or streaming service and given that ABC Studios owned Castle outright, not to mention to fan reaction over Stana leaving, there just wasn’t a point. In cases where a show has moved to another network (Nashville is a good example), there’s usually another studio in the mix that isn’t ready to let it die just yet. Absentia’s plot is also nothing like the proposed one for Castle. While it features a woman that had her death faked, sort of, (Spoiler Alert: They never actually find a body just say that she’s deceased in absentia after five years missing.) there’s no super-secret spy ring, there’s no one spending weeks on end grieving for the death of a wife, mother, sister, daughter, etc. There’s just a serial killer that’s kind of pointless when you get down to what actually happened to Emily, a lot of running around through the woods at night, and people yelling at one another and not listening to anyone. And more questions than answers until the final two episodes. Absentia is more about keeping you guessing (which I am not a fan of) and the case itself than it is about the characters. You learn very little about the background of all the main players because the show spends 95% of the time laying out dead ends and twists in the case to give you any exposition. The little it gives is very useful and sorely needed.If Castle had gone forward, the entire tone of the show would have changed with Beckett’s “death.” Castle wouldn’t be so ready to crack a joke or some smartass quip, I’d bet he wouldn’t even want to continue working cases without Beckett and it’d take some huge development to pull him out of a funk. The boys might still be the same - they’re cops, they’ll fake it even if they don’t feel it - but that camaraderie between the whole group would have been gone. And, again, you’d spend the whole show with a very obvious piece missing especially when you consider that more often than not, Beckett was the one driving the investigations and, therefore, the main plot of the show. For me, it’s comparing apples and oranges, even if the season nine had happened. It’s not like you would have ever seen Beckett or known what happened to her until the end of the season. You’d just know she’s alive somewhere. I’m also probably not the best person to encourage you to watch Absentia because I found it to be terribly written with a plot that moves at the pace of a snail and, when you finally get to something interesting, the reveal is a complete letdown. The acting is good, though all the characters are mind-numbingly selfish or stupid (except Alice at the end. You go Alice!). Stana’s excellent in it, but she’s playing a character that has no sense of power or ambition to drive the story. Emily spends the entire show reacting to other people, which is a terrible quality for your show’s heroine. On the whole, the show just isn’t entertaining nor is it suspenseful in my opinion. And that’s without the idea of having Bulgaria try to represent Boston and the surrounding area. There are a lot of places in the world that can stand in for others with a lot of success, Bulgaria as Boston isn’t one of them. I’m also not the type that lets a bad experience keep me from trying something new? Absentia definitely isn’t Castle, they’re night and day different in terms of tone, writing, and storytelling, and that would be the case even if they had gone with the season nine storyline you are talking about.  If you don’t want to watch it because you aren’t ready to separate your feelings about Castle fromAbsentia, then go right ahead. What you feel about it is your business and nobody else’s. But would I let it stop me from watching something I’m curious about? No. 

So hey, Anon, you sent this a couple weeks ago and I initially typed up a reply to you and then Tumblr decided to eat it and I didn’t have time to write it again, and then I forgot I didn’t answer. So my bad!

But, anyway, the answer is no. Nathan wasn’t going to walk on Castle - he was going to get a raise and basically everything he asked for, so it would have been ridiculous for him to walk away. Castle was canceled because of Stana (regardless of if you believe she quit or was fired, it’s pretty much irrelevant).

TV shows work in weird ways and, in terms of Castle, while ABC Studios was working behind the scenes to do whatever they could to keep the show going (negotiating contracts with actors/determining a budget for the next season, etc), ABC as a network had already pulled the plug and decided they wanted no part of Castle without Castle and Beckett. So, whenever someone blames the network, I usually roll my eyes because ABC is who killed the show and if you are in the ‘we support Stana’ (or whatever the hell it’s called) movement, then ABC is the entity you should be thanking.

Now, on the other hand, ABC Studios was just doing what any studio would do. Castle made a TON of money for them and it’s the most successful one-hour drama in terms of international success and distribution in well over a decade. The show was a multi-million dollar maker per season, and while I understand the frustration and the anger about continuing the show without one of the leads, I also get that television is a business and, like any business, they are in it to make money. If you can squeeze a few more pennies out of it, you’re gonna do it and taking it personally isn’t going to get you anywhere.

But here’s the other thing: you can’t have it both ways, Anon. You are saying that Nathan has ABC wrapped around his finger, and if that were the case, why didn’t he just keep Castle going? It’s an established show, it’s a much easier role than the one he’s taking on with John Nolan and The Rookie, and he finally had the schedule that he had been trying to get for several years. 

And there’s also one big flaw in that logic: ABC wasn’t the only place that The Rookie was pitched. I’m pretty sure that the show is a co-production between the Mark Gordon Company and ABC Studios, but it would be a co-production between MGC and whoever ended up getting the show. Most, if not all, the networks heard the pitch and ABC ended up winning the bidding war. That’s honestly the gist of it.

Why did ABC pick the show and give it a series order? A lot of that has to do with Nathan, which isn’t surprising when you consider that he’s spent the better part of a decade employed on an ABC show in some capacity (Desperate Housewives, Castle, Modern Family [though it’s produced by 20th Century Fox]), and that’s without taking into account his involvement in several Disney products in that same period of time. Basically, he’s someone that they have a good rapport with, he’s turned in good work, and his face in a title role has been both a success and made everyone involved a whole bunch of money. It’s a no-brainer for ABC, and it’s also why other networks wanted to get in on the action: Nathan Fillion in a dramedy is going to draw viewers.

But I’ll reiterate that they didn’t “give” him anything. If ABC hadn’t pick the show up, someone else would have.