Hacker Cinema
Castle
2009 · TV series · 8 seasons
Created by Andrew W. Marlowe
After a serial killer imitates the plots of his novels, successful mystery novelist Richard "Rick" Castle receives permission from the Mayor of New York City to tag along with an NYPD homicide investigation team for research purposes.
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18 comments on Hacker News
> I honestly can never understand people who say there is not enough good content on streamers.
What is there that is worth watching? They don’t make anything good anymore: no Seinfeld, no Office, no Parks & Rec, no Castle, no Bones, no House. Everything new is terrible, often embarrassingly so.
It’s as though sometime in the last decade all the talent and skill left media, and now we have corporations and people going through the motions but not actually producing anything worth watching.
Honestly detective fiction is perhaps the worst format you could give for your example, because the structure of the story allows you to essentially tell a different short story with different characters every time. Moody Twin Peaks has almost nothing in common with the goofball Psych (except the one tribute episode). Inspector Lewis plots are complex and intellectual, while Castle is fluffy and predictable. Recipes for Love and Murder, Brokenwood, Midsomer Murders, and Murdoch Mysteries are more about life among the varied settings than the murders; the murders give us an excuse to explore the characters around them.
Though maybe the most important point of that is that watching TV from different countries will make your viewing more interesting.
They probably have better data on why they are losing subscribers than I do, and presumably they can see things like an IP address used by one subscription, then that subscription being cancelled, then the same IP address being used by a different subscription. But …
I have subscribed to Netflix for nearly twenty years, since it was a DVD delivery service, and I am very close to cancelling my subscription because they simply don't deliver good content. The presence of the red N in the corner of a video is a signal that the show or movie is probably garbage, and almost everything has that red N; the stuff that doesn't is typically middle- or lowbrow filler content.
Now, part of that is not Netflix's fault: there is a paucity of stuff worth watching in 2022 compared to decades past. There is no Parks & Rec, no Office, no Castle, no Monk, no Psych, no Bones, no light-hearted, innocent fun. At least, none that I have seen. For Pete's sake, we live in an era which managed to ruin Star Wars!
Still, their Netflix original content could be much better than it is; it is still for the most part bargain-basement stuff. Why subscribe to Netflix when I can read a book instead?
This is why I prefer mini-series to full on series. It's a complete self-contained story.
There weren't that many multi-season shows that I loved and had a decent ending - usually it gets milked to death that main actors quit and then either show cancelled (Castle) or get a new actor and suck (x-files).
Some shows have awful resurrection - 24, I loved the entire thing except for "reboot" and last season.
Some shows have honest writers, BSG reboot was clearly getting too convoluted and had to be ended before it cancelled.
Some shows try to pivot to tumbler fanfics for content - Supernatural. Which was dumb because people were interested in such stories were already watching it.
> If you have a new series, all potential viewers are potential viewers. If you have a season 3, the only potential viewers are season 2 watchers.
That doesn't always top factor. Some shows can generate money outside of screen - merch. That's how supernatural stayed so long.
> You should throw out all the games.
This resonates a lot. I used to be a huge gamer, but as I moved along my career I had less time and less mental bandwidth to game.
In a pique of nostalgia I tried one last hurrah recently and built a gaming PC (documented here https://www.leonroy.com/blog/2018/10/teeny-tiny-workstation/ ) but even with a machine which 20 something me would’ve drooled over I find I no longer have the patience to play something like the new Assassin’s Creed, Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3. It leaves me a little sad because gaming brought past me a lot of joy but after sinking 80+ hours into a game you question whether that time would have been better spent doing an online course or heck spending an extra hour each evening exercising instead of twiddling thumbs on my controller.
Same goes for TV IMHO - I ask myself what was the last TV show which affected my outlook or moved me in some way and heck The Wire maybe, Battlestar Galactica perhaps? I’ve watched all of Dexter, Chuck, Game of Thrones, Greys Anatomy, Castle, the list goes on and not one of them feels like they had a measurable improvement on my life. I do wonder when we go too far the other way though.
I don't think that Firefly is a show for nerds, I don't do 90% of the stuff that are considered "nerdy". I'm not into comics, I'm not into anime, I enjoy good scifi and fantasy because they are good not because of the genre.
Firefly is one of my favorite shows, but I can also see it's many flaws, and I honestly don't know if a 5-6 season Firefly would've been even as remotely good as the "Firefly" that fans imagine.
Firefly was very entertaining as a show and it set up a universe that allowed people's imagination to run wild with fan theories and fanfiction, but it doesn't mean that the show would ended up being half as good as the short preview we had.
The airing of the show was abysmal the episodes aired out of order and created a mess it was mishandled on every step but I can nearly guarantee you that if it would've went on the end result would've been considerably worse than the would be show the fans imagine in their heads.
Firefly is your highschool crush that you never had a chance of dating, it been put onto such a high pedestal that I could never live up to it's expectations, and when the fan base did get another chance with Serenity it flopped.
Serenity wasn't a bad movie, it was pretty well in line with the show in terms of quality of writing and performance, and the budget was considerably better but after years of imagination people just didn't came to watch it.
They got a movie that made 25M domestically (The DVD sales of Firefly made more), and about 14-15M world wide, it barely covered it's budget it made like 300K over the production costs which means that it most likely ended up losing money.
If Serenity would've been a huge success Fox would've greenlit additional movies (it's been 11 years since it came out so don't cry about spoilers) or even a renewal or spin off of the TV show even tho several characters died in the film.
But the fans pissed all over it, so I would have to say it's a good show but we all have a major selection bias because of our cultural bias, your mom might like the show but I can guarantee you her tastes are probably closer to yours that you might think since at least some part of your own cultural bias came from your parents.
And again I absolutly love Firefly, and I chuckle at the Firefly references and jokes in Castle (another show that was dragged way past it's lifespan) I do find the whole western/space opera theme extremely cool (one of the few animes I not only love but can actually bring myself to watch is CowBoy BeBop), but I'm not sold that it would've been a perfect show and a hit if it would've been let to run a full season or more.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. I obsessed over Buffy (which I consider a guilty pleasure as I wasn't the target demographic of teenage-at-the-time girls), and enjoyed Angel to a lesser degree. Firefly absolutely blew me away, and was a starting point for several of its actors who have become successful in the years since. I've followed those actors into the shows they went on to do, with the exception of Nathan Fillion in Castle, which I found too cheesy for my taste.
But Dollhouse...the cast was great, the story was intriguing even if a little derivative, but somehow the show fell flat for me. I found myself struggling to watch it and gave up about 10 episodes in. I still have the first season DVD on my Amazon wish list but it's been on there since December 2010 and I still haven't brought myself to buy it, despite its price dropping below $10 several times in the past.
Maybe one day I'll pick it up and try again, but there's so much good TV out today and so little spare time to watch, I may never get around to it.
This reminds me of an episode of Castle.
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
Louie, Season 3 stands out to me as the best show of the year. Every 'section'(between advert breaks) is extremely well written, directed, and even orchestrated. Each 'section' feels like an operatic movement, with each episode being extremely cohesive and emotive. From an artistic point of view, it's one of the best shows of the year. From a comedy point of view, it's probably the best show of the year, definitely the stand out show for me this year.
Homeland was also very good this year, it managed to keep up the suspense and excellent acting, I'm excited to see the new season next year.
I enjoyed Dexter, I'm not sure I like where they are heading though, it's getting darker and darker by the series. I also enjoyed Castle, I think it's very funny and well written, but perhaps I have a soft spot Nathan Fillion.
Most anticipated TV series for next year is the new Arrested Development. I love the first three seasons, I'm a bit nervous with netflix financing it, I hope the (probably) smaller budget hasn't meant too many compromises in terms of writing and production, but with the excellent cast from the previous seasons all returning, I'm excited to see how they're going to pick up from the end of season 3.
We're basically, Engineer, Designer, Writer. The Writer is the newest person and a recent college grad, what her role eventually becomes isn't clear (marketing? design?) For some reason this makes me think of the TV show Castle with him showing up with a bullet proof vest that says "writer".
The next stage of growth is hiring independant contractors for specific jobs that need to be done, and when we start wanting to have full time employees, they can be located anywhere. People want to telecommute and we like the sort of github style management policy.
I imagine that once a year we'd all get together in the same place for an annual meeting. Its also quite possible that we'll end up getting outside investors and have to start living in the Bay Area or something like that.
Yes we still watch about 30-45 minutes at dinner on the laptop. Usually a show like Dr. Who or Top Gear on Netflix, or Castle when new episodes are on. Some nights we just sit and talk. It's nice.
A laptop is plenty of screen if you're just sitting at the table. Also, if you want to watch a movie and get cozy on a couch, put the laptop on a chair in front of the couch and watch.
Frankly, I can get more work done and spend more time with my family if I don't have a giant HDTV practically begging to be watched. Removing that time wasting magnet makes a much bigger impact than you would realize.
Once you go TV free you start noticing things like how when you visit friends or family TV is almost always on. It's like a buzzing that people get addicted to, but don't realize it. Now I can't even go to many restaurants without there being a TV in there too.
It's like a bizarre form of mind control.
Also, since getting a Nook last year, I read a lot more, which is nice.
Quoth Nathan Fillion in the interview: "Yes. Yes. I would examine very closely Fox’s reasoning — I’m a little gun-shy. If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly, make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet."
Note that he's still committed to doing Castle, and the only definite thing giving Fillion the rights would get is free Firely for all. That's a good thing, but it's not new Firefly. What Fillion did not say is "I wish I had $300 million so I could make new Firefly episodes." Of course, Firefly isn't Firefly without Joss Whedon, and he has said nothing.
The season 2 finale of Castle used an idea similar to this, only with an excursion-style agency where people were given elaborate missions, equipment, etc., for a hefty fee.
I don't think you've tried the app he is talking about. The ABC app for iPad is for watching the streaming video of recent shows. It has nothing to do with articles or sharing.
Call me old fashioned, but when I want to share something with a friend, I either tell them about it myself when I see them, or worst case scenario I shoot a quick email that says "Check out the new episode of Castle on abc.com!" The only people I know who wouldn't be able to parse that simple message and then go to the website and watch the show also don't check their email or even have an active account. Not everything has to be an automatic, shareable mini-link that can be pasted into a twitter stream.
I watched both shows last night on their websites instead of Hulu, which I had become accustomed to.
One thing I noticed immediately: Way more commercials. Where Hulu only had a single commercial per break, Comedy Central had about 3 per break. Another thing was that the commercials they played were more "real." I don't know what experience others have had on Hulu, but it seemed a huge percentage of their commercials were repeats of the same one or two - and often they were a PSA-type of thing. I always found that strange as they only showed one commercial per break and, by all accounts, it was a ludicrously cheap one. They couldn't have been making nearly as much per show as Comedy Central is going to be making now if they can keep all those slots sold. The additional commercials were annoying, but not the end of the world.
It seems that Comedy Central's player is one of those that degrades quality when the connection gets slow whereas Hulu would just stop and buffer. After only watching two shows it's hard to know how well it'll work in general, but it didn't stop and buffer once last night. I often had much more frustrating experiences with Hulu on account of the sometimes frequent buffering pauses. (Mediacom is not the world's best ISP...)
The primary downside here is that I've been using Hulu Desktop as my television provider for a couple months now. After ABC moved Castle to Hulu, I lost all reason to play the website shuffle when trying to watch a show and (aside from the buffering) it had become a very nice self-contained experience. Now that The Daily Show and Colbert are off the network, I'm back to manually switching players which is certainly a hassle.
I'd personally rather have an iTunes-style downloaded media service for television than streaming. It'd be far more reliable. I don't care if the files auto-expire after a number of days of not watching an episode or if I don't "own" the copy. I just hate the unreliable streaming and I also hate messing around with all the players. I think Apple's in a great position to offer something like this (tie TV show downloads with their rental infrastructure, perhaps, and then offer up all TV as a subscription). I longly await for such a solution to appear.
Games, especially MMO's and Social Gaming exploit their addictiveness to keep people paying them.
Certain TV shows exploit similar addictiveness. CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial by Jury . . . all still supplying ~24 new episodes a year during prime time slots. To put it roughly, 9 days worth of programming that is essentially identical. Then there's the more unique (to some degree) procedurals (IE NUMB3RS, Castle, etc. Incidentally, the only procedurals I like, I can't stand the CSI crap as my mind is violently raped by unscience almost every other episode I watch) that appear.
I personally did stop watching TV for a prolonged period, but for no elitist reason as I love TV . . . perhaps too much. However, I'm satisfied watching only the show, so I'm more a DVD person.
Movies, again, strike at this addictiveness with the 'unnecessary sequels' market. It's one thing when a movie plans multiple parts, a la the Borne trilogy. However, then there are the Bond series that maybe only hit a good movie every 3rd or 4th produced, but still take in millions. Then there are the totally unnecessary sequels that appear because the studios dangled hundreds of millions of dollars off an ACME sized mousetrap to bag a producer.
Books similarly can get into this trouble of unnecessary sequels. I believe Agatha Christie inadvertently suffered this problem as her publishers forbid her from killing off Poirot, it took her 40 years for the novel that killed him off to be published.
Ironically, the most addictive TV shows and books appear to be detective dramas. This is easily illustrated by the fact that Mystery/Crime novels is the biggest market in literature, and by the fact there are over 9 procedurals routinely running during prime time slots, year after year for almost a decade.
I haven't had Cable/Satellite since 2002. I started watching all my TV on DVDs that I bought from Amazon, but then switched to iTunes around 2006.
Now it's mostly a combination of iTunes/DVD - I'm pretty certain it's less expensive than subscribing to TV.
The good part of this (and it should be emphasized) - is that you now watch for a _purpose_ - Latest episode of Lost, BSG, Dexter, Weeds, South Park, Doll House, BtVS, Angel, The Wire, DeadWood, Heroes, The Office, Dr. Horrible, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Californication, Dr. Who, Kings, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Torchwood.
Any time that might have been lost to just passively watching television, news, is now, of course, lost to passively reading ycombinator, nyt, wsj, groklaw... :-)