It started off, because I enjoyed Nathan Fillion (the main actor) in his previous stint in Firefly and a friend of mine suggested watching Castle instead, after Firefly was viciously cut far too early by those faint of heart always profit oriented brutes from the FOX network.
Anyhow, after I borrowed the first three seasons on DVD from a store and had in each case 3 days to watch them... Well, let's just say that was a lot of Rick Castle for once, but it was enjoyable. One thing I came to notice, though, was that after the first half of Season 2, I was able to guess who the murderer was and in some cases even the motive. I am wondering whether this is the trick to the majority of written murder-mystery cases.
The general layout of a typical one episode murder case in Castle goes a little bit like this:
First scene, some innocent person/people happen(s) to come across a body in a strange place (if it is a woman, she screams...). They arrive on the scene and there is one strange detail that is first confusing them, then has a random explanation and the answer leads them to the right place. A good example for that is Episode 4 of Season 3 called "Punked", where the body was found naked down to his underwear, but the wallet was found in a trash bin nearby. Later it was found that a homeless guy took the clothes (Simple explanation that had no connection to the murder), but the clothes were actually a costume depicting a gentleman from the Victorian era, leading them eventually to their murderer.
I must say that, because I just watched Episodes 1-8 of Season 3, these are most fresh in my mind and will most likely be all the examples there are ;).
The next part is the crucial bit where they stake out the case. Almost invariably at some point during these first 15 to 20 minutes the murderer will have his entrance. But in all cases, his relationship to the victim will not be clear and he/she is entirely innocent looking. Examples for this are many and it is hard for me to explain why I knew this. An example that sticks out most freshly in mind is in Episode 2 of Season 3, "He's Dead, She's Dead", where they spoke with a mother and her daughter who had an appointment with the psychic shortly before she got killed. They "remember" a very angry man about to enter right after they left who happened to be a mobster who lost big on real estate because of the psychic. Usually I notice these characters, because they send the investigation on a new, invariably trail that will lead them back on track through several old 1966 Batman-esque deduction skills.
But obviously you don't know that it is a false trail, but they tend to be very eager to please the investigators' questions. Honorable mentions go to Beckett's old mentor in Episode 3 "Under the Gun". There I knew when he took a picture with Beckett just in front of their murder investigation board (And thus getting inside information). And the last, very obvious one, where I even got the motive sort of right was Episode 5 "Anatomy of a Murder". I knew it was the brother of the well-known hardcore evil gangster who got old and had a heart attack, but survived and fell in love with his young but hot, now murdered cardiac surgeon. That is another very strange little thing. It is never the obvious crook. There are always some characters with a history of illegal activities, but they tend not to be the murderer, at best an accomplice (Otherwise it would be boring).
In a last vain attempt at explaining how I know that these people are the murderers, here are some criteria: They are never the obvious choice. You always meet them in the first third of the episode. They generally send the investigation in a different direction and sometimes even give them a suspect with a history of illegal activity or a puppet shadowing their crimes or taking the fall.
Having said that, one fun Castle episode would be when they have a body turning up, then the evidence lead them to a guy who has a very strange alibi. Next scene, Lt. Esposito comes to Castle and Beckett and "instead" of saying: "Your guy <name>... His alibi checks out, he really was <his alibi>", he should say "You know, your guy <name>. I wish he really at least tried to come up with a better alibi. Not only is his alibi contradicted by twelve different people, he was also caught on camera by one of the parking lot surveillance cameras committing the murder and then he waved at the camera..."
Then the remaining 20 minutes of the episode you either see them just fool around playing Paintball with Beckett destroying them all at it, or they just do nothing apart from cracking very bad, but funny jokes all the time. To top it all off, the parts where Castle interacts with his family, his far too adult darling daughter will fuck up majorly and Castle really has to tell her off and ground her for a year or so. That girl is the least credible character in the series...
But enough of that. If you find any holes in my theory, let me know.
