Castle : ABC 2200 mondays
crime drama
Episode: Demons

This episode was a rerun i think it first aired around Halloween.

Nathan Fillion; claim to fame, buffy, firefly, dr horrible's sing along blog
plays Richard Castle, a mystery novel writer
Stana Katic: claim to fame, several movies including Quantum of Solace, plays Kate Beckett, a police detective.

Plot: This episode starts out with a man  in an old house. He is murdered off camera.  Then it cuts to Castle and his daughter watching a zombie movie. He is called to the scene by Beckett, when she mentions the house. Which has a history of being haunted, Castle suggest they call a man named Jack Sinclair. He is a renowned ghost hunter. It turns out the victim was Jack Sinclair. The forensic analyst, Lanie tells them his throat was severed, but the blood splatter is unobstructed. Castle suggest that maybe the blood went through the killer, Beckett just mocks his suggestion that a ghost killed the man. Jack was there filming his show so there were camera's positioned all over the house, but just before he is killed the signal is interrupted, Detective Ryan, one of Beckett's partners goes over the tapes and sees a camera tripod moving mysteriously before the signals go out. Castle gets more and more excited about the paranormal possibilities.
I am not going to spoil it all so you have to watch it to see how it ends.

Here is a Link to ABC's site

Overall it is a good show. I do think the premise is a bit over the top, i really don't see a police district allowing a writer to tag along on all those cases.

Advertisements: This show had four commercial breaks and while some of the ad's were pretty varied. I did notice a trend. Every commercial break had at least one tax advertisement, I think it is because its tax season. They also had at least one car commercial. First it was for a Honda CR-V, then it was for  Prius V, then it was for a Ford. Besides that i didn't see much of a difference in the commercials, they advertised for jewelry, Campbell's soup, TV shows and movies, and medications.

How this show reflects popular culture... I am having a hard time thinking of a response to that part. I can see how ad's are integrated into the show, for example Castle uses an iphone and whenever Beckett calls him about a murder the phone is emphasized. When apple came out with that voice recognition thing, it was used in the show almost immediately. Castle references a lot of what would be considered nerdy things. He even dresses up as his character in Firefly in one episode. The interactions between all the characters make this show really funny surprisingly i don't see stereotypes in the main characters. Detective Ryan is Irish i believe, Detective Esposito is Puerto Rican i believe, Lanie is African American. I think this show has done a good job avoiding and racial stereotypes in its main cast.

Here is the preview for this episode.

Overall it is a pretty entertaining show. Not too busy trying to be real, some of the plots are pretty far fetched. The character interactions work out really well. Here is a review from the New York Times, its from a different episode, and i dont think the guy who wrote this likes the show.

New York Times review

i don't watch it on a regular basis but i do keep up with episodes on hulu when i get a chance. Even though they do a lot of integration with products, it doesn't bother me that much because i am not buying them. I think its pretty funny that they have real books named after the books Castle wrote in the show. I don't think i really learned much more from doing this. However i did pay more attention to the ads, which i normally would've muted or turned away from the TV.