Castle, Durham County and Dancing with the Stars

Wed, Oct 14, 2009

Columns

How’s that for a mixed bag! I’ve been stage managing a musical and so my DVR is overflowing with goodies to watch. Here’s what made the cut last night.

DWTS_Chuck_eliminationI started with a fast forward through Dancing with the Stars in order to get to the important stuff – there wasn’t much. Usually there’s a great Macy’s Stars of Dance number but all we got was Shakira shaking her groove thing. The pros did demo the Argentine Tango and Paso Doble, which the celebs will be taking on next week. It was good but it didn’t excite me. In the end MMA fighter Chuck Liddell was sent home. Aaron Carter barely escaped elimination and I don’t get that. The kid has a lot of work to do but there are others who are worse. Somehow Melissa Joan Hart ended up on top. She’s fun but not that great. Mya, Natalie Coughlin and Joanna Krupa are the best all around performers and it could be an all female finale this year.

Castle_10_12Next was Castle from Monday night. The story opened with a group of school children watching a webcam report from the North Pole. But that’s no polar bear poking around the tent, it’s a human, with a gun. Blam – explorer guy is blown away, mercifully without a lot of blood and gore. Castle and Beckett figure out that the guy was a scam artist who was broadcasting from his New York apartment. But what kind of con man takes 50,000 from the mark (in this case, the parents of the school kids) and then sticks around to play the part? Clever story with some fun twists and turns and I never saw the killer coming.

I also really enjoyed the side plot with Castle and his daughter and the sexy, new violin teacher. The father/daughter relationship on this show is so wonderfully normal, in a weird, and wacky way. But that’s the show in a nutshell.

Shifting to the dysfunctional family dynamic — I watched the season finale of Durham County and I was shouting at the TV all the way through. This show is seriously twisted and it hooks me week after week. In the finale, everyone believes that detective Mike murdered his mistress, and no wonder considering all the secrets he’s been keeping.  So who does his wife run to for comfort? Ray, the actual murderer! Then he caught Mike’s daughter sneaking around in his house, took her to “the farm” and things got really creepy from there on in. What I love about this show is that even the good guys are bad guys on some level. Everyone has a secret adn that’s why it’s so hard to figure out who is telling the truth.

Great show and I’m looking forward to a second season which is coming to ION in January.

Photos:

Dancing With the Stars: (ABC/ADAM LARKEY) TOM BERGERON, SAMANTHA HARRIS, ANNA TREBUNSKAYA, CHUCK LIDDELL

Castle: (ABC/KAREN NEAL) JON HUERTAS, NATHAN FILLION, STANA KATIC, DAVID RAMSEY

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This post was written by:

Cynthia - who has written 99 posts on TV Verdict.

Cynthia Boris is a pop culture writer. She is the author of the Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Pop Quiz and TV Toys and the Shows That Inspired Them. Her credits include celebrity interviews for magazines such as Inside Kung Fu, Cult Times, Star Trek UK, and Young Rider and websites such as SFUniverse.com and SheKnows.com She is a television fanatic with a true love for TV from Alias Smith and Jones to Zorro and everything in between. A collector of TV memorabilia (and boxsets) and she's been known to hang around on the set of her favorite TV show, even appearing in front of the camera every now and then.

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