#that was long – @alwayswritewithcoffee on Tumblr

Anonymous asked:

Did you feel like Halley was kinda a slap in the face to fans. I mean fans tuned into see castle and Beckett work cases, it’s literally the plot of the show!

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.

#that was long #but i felt like i needed to explain #castle #abc network #nathan fillion #stana katic #kate becket #richard castle #hayley shipton #alexis castle #javier esposito #kevin ryan #Anonymous

alwayswritewithcoffee reblogged

writingonthecastlewalls

Anonymous asked:

In response to the previous anon regarding Variety. I've done J-school/work in the field and usually there is a two-source requirement when a journalists say they've confirmed something. So, if Variety is following the traditional two-source rule, they have confirmation from at least two independent sources. Now, Variety and the rest of the news sites may be going off of just one source and Stana's rep but even the response from cast/crew seems to suggest she was not asked back.

writingonthecastlewalls answered:

Whoo fellow writers! Well, it suggests that she’s not been signed, that I don’t doubt.

I’d assume that Deadline had a source (they broke it) and then got the statement from a rep. to verify, yes. But that doesn’t answer key questions of timing. It also doesn’t tell us if not being given an offer means she wasn’t approached. Or why there’s a carefully worded distinction between how Tamala’s thank you from the network and Stana’s were worded. Why ABC hasn’t given a statement from the top, for that matter.

Variety and others appear to just be effectively repeating based off the content of the info from Deadline.

It just feels as though there are details that raise some questions for me.

alwayswritewithcoffee

Putting on my professional journalist hat to add: Entertainment journalism is so grossly different from any other sort. Anon, you are right that journalists are told to get two independent sources to confirm information (some publications will not go to print without three of them) but there is no other genre of journalism except government where you have to jump through so many hoops.

If you put in a call to get a statement from an actor, you are going to get a publicist. That publicists job is to manage media requests and, if the client isn’t interested in talking, to make a statement on their behalf, release a statement the client has previously given to them, or refuse to comment. That’s all fine and well, except you always have to remember that the person you are relying on to confirm the information is being paid to make the client look as good as possible. If that means lying or twisting the truth, most of them will absolutely do it because their job is about doing one of two things: protecting the clients career and shutting down negative stories, or advancing the clients career by confirming things of media interest or that make the client look better. No publicist that wants to keep their job is going to deny a report if the client they work for has gone on record with a statement, no matter how vague that statement may be.

The other element is this: publicists are PR people. They manage the public’s perception of the client and that includes sometimes planting information via an unnamed source. It’s not just an actor or other celeb that will do this (you’ve all heard stories about how a celebrities representative will put in a call to the paparazzi to tell them that the celeb is going to be at this particular restaurant at this particular time to get a photo op to go in magazines and increase exposure), production companies and television networks will absolutely have someone contact a reporter with a tip to set of a chain reaction of events.

It’s all about the story you want to tell, and the spin you want to put on it when it hits the media. Now, maybe these reports we’ve had is all how it went down, I’ve talked about my feelings and my postion on that already and won’t get into it again, but no one involved in this situation at ABC wanted it to go like this. It makes them look incompetent and ridiculous, and it makes the only network ran by a woman (and a woman of color at that) look like they have zero respect for the gender. And that just doesn’t sit right with me given that Channing Dungey was key in the development of a trio of shows that feature strong women who anchor the three top dramas on the network.

Another thing about PR is this: when you want something to gain maximum impact, you make sure it drops first thing on a Monday morning. That happened, and it happened with five episodes left to air, episode that are now being boycotted by a group of fans who are rightfully upset. ABC definitely didn’t want another show to see lower ratings, so that leaves the following questions: where did it come from, and why did it arrive now? We’ve still got about a month before we likely hear anything about the future of Castle, and we’ve got a fanbase that has clearly stated they are outraged, upset, and won’t watch without Stana. However, there’s still time for that decision to be tweaked, for things to be sorted out and repaired.

Will that happen? No one knows, but none of this was an accident and because the information was leaked, everyone should be looking for the holes and at the other side of the story to understand the full situation and figure out what the agenda could be. There certainly is one, even if its not the one that I believe it to be.

#castle #that was long #sorry ya'll