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Tonight's film noir episode was much anticipated, and it almost lived up to its hype. To be honest, I'm not sure what else they could have done to make it better, but after all the built up anticipation it was impossible for them to achieve complete perfection.
That being said, check this out:
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| Real Film Noir |
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| Castle Film Noir |
The episode centers around the story of a present-day treasure hunter who is found murdered during his search for a necklace in the shape of a butterfly. Castle and Beckett discover a journal with his body, and it turns out it was written by a PI in the 1940s. Throughout the episode Castle imagines events from the journal, envisioning himself as the PI, and Beckett as the PI's love interest/a gangster's moll. The episode shifted back and forth between these distant flashbacks and the present day case.
The journal parts of the episode used a lot of film noir tropes, including a vaguely femme fatale character (Sally, who in an interesting twist is played by Molly Quinn, who normally plays Alexis), a controlling gangster, and plenty of traditional voiceovers and repartee. Even the use of the journal as flashback is a play on the use of time within traditional film noirs. Many film noirs play with temporal shifts, using both remembered and real time...and this episode of 'Castle' certainly did that.
My favorite part of the episode may have been near the beginning, when the writers gave film noir enthusiasts a laugh. Present day Castle started verbalizing his thoughts, like an onscreen voiceover, and suddenly interrupted himself, asking, "why am I narrating?".
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| Molly Quinn as Sally |
Now that I think about it, you know what I could have used more of? Innuendo. After that visual innuendo (hand stroking) last week, you'd think they could have given us a little more verbal innuendo this week.
Perfect inneundo:
Come back tomorrow for my complete summary of "The Blue Butterfly"
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