I've been thinking about Castle and the way Castle and Beckett have been handled, and after watching "To Love and Die in L.A.," I have a new mindset when approaching it. Yes, the writers do an inordinate amount of pointless teasing, but it ultimately falls under character development, which is always a good thing on procedurals.
In context of tonight's episode, we see, for the first time, that Beckett is willing to take a chance with Castle, and the counterfactual would be that there would have been heavy kissing had Castle not been in his room. Along with Royce's letter, these small changes seem to be going somewhere. We can see the natural progression from point A to B and beyond. Castle is only nearing the end of the third season and there could be more that could happen before a full-blown relationship.
If, on the other hand, there continues to be developments for more seasons without resolution, Castle will be in Bones territory, which has gone from point A to point B, exhausted the alphabet, and is now in no man's land. That would be a genuine problem, but it's fine for now.
Perhaps, though, my new ease about where Andrew Marlow is taking the show stems from the fact that I loved the portions of "To Love and Die in L.A." outside of Beckett and Castle relationship scenes. With Beckett and Castle in Los Angeles, the writers take full advantage of the situation to give Beckett and Castle unique Los Angeles stuff to do--visit the movie set, use the set for interrogation, the hotel, different clothes, etc--while giving Ryan and Esposito lots of fun scenes as well.
Score: 9.2/10
