TV’s Favorite Most Romantic Law Enforcement Couples
By
Bobbie
L. Washington
In
the mystical realm of television, there exist portals to several
universes. We gravitate to them like
falling meteors into a planets’ atmosphere.
We never know what we might find in these universes until enough time
has swallowed us whole and we find ourselves becoming a part of the storyline. To hearken back to that most famous quote
from another classic TV show which proclaimed, “You unlock this door with the key of
imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension
of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and
substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... the Twilight
Zone.”
But in this scenario, the Twilight Zone is the TV Zone. It’s a place where we sometimes wish we were
there instead of the harsh realities of the real world. In that TV Zone we find people we come to admire,
their interests, their hopes, their desires and their love life can sometimes
exceed interests in their own lives. So
it’s no wonder that when we look back on some of the most romantic dramatic
couples, we devote long dedications to these unions. During the past two decades, there have been
many fan based sites dedicated to the coupling of their favorite star
characters. But as interesting of a
phenomenon this is, it began long before the advent of YouTube dedicated
channels and a slew of web sites shrines that serves as a religious gathering
to the devoted followers. As humans, we
become enamored with the plight of the unrequited love scenario. We know they belong together so why not get
to it? But the savvy producers and
writers know when they have something good and they bait you along. Here is a look at some of the most enduring
couples of dramatic shows starting with the original.
PERRY MASON & DELLA STREET
Perry Mason was the quintessential
criminal defense attorney of that generation.
Premiering in 1957 on the CBS Network, it profiled this more
than self-assured attorney with his trusty companions, private investigator
Paul Drake and Della Street
Della and Perry were always a mystery when it
came to their relationship. They weren’t
as demonstrative as one would like but the viewers got a sense that there was
something more than just a professional business relationship going on between
them. And since this was the 50’s, there
was a fine line with what the networks could show couples do and couldn’t do
being unmarried compared to what has gone on since the days of Archie Bunker
and the new uncharted terrain of dialogue.
Still, the bottled up 50’s was a powder keg of sexuality that would not
entire into the realm for network television during that era. Perry Mason was a staple of a show. It explored the legal elements to finding the
guilty party in a procedural fashion. Perry
Mason would have the put upon client where all the evidence pointed squarely at
their feet. And in a series of over the
top courtroom theatrics with the hapless prosecutor, Hamilton Burger, Mason
would have the guilty party admit their crime while under cross examination. A befuddled Burger, who looked shocked by the
turn of events, would cede his position.
If Perry Mason was around today, it would have been subjected to all
types of parodies based on this formulaic premise. Straying from that tried and true formula
would have been a sacrilege. And when it
ended its ten season run, there was no closure to what Perry and Della meant to
one another.
But
then, the powers that be that control the vertical and control the horizontal
had the brilliant idea of bringing back Perry Mason as stand-alone series of 26
TV movies. We had the duo back once more,
a little more matured, but still together.
Paul Drake and the feisty prosecutor, Hamilton
The TV movies had demonstrated that their
relationship had moved beyond the point of employer/employee but the elusive
dance of truth remained an enigma easing out of the hands from the viewers like
fine grains of sand.
Why was she still with him? Why him of all people to call and defend
her? There were other more capable
defense attorneys. She could have picked
a female defense attorney. In that era
of feminine equality being in the forefront of society, Della could have been a
beacon for something other than just Perry’s secretary. She was more than just capable, she was
smart. Why hadn’t she become an attorney
by now? Maybe she had and failed? It could have been one of those many back
story mysteries of Della and Perry.
In
this fantasy universe of alternate realities, you would have to wildly
speculate that they had secretly married and then divorced during that nineteen
year time gap? Did they have a secret
love child that they kept hidden in some English boarding school? Of course they did but the child, a daughter,
followed in her father’s footsteps and she is known as Sandra Bullock in the
real world.
When Della and Perry got
back together was this their way of reconciling the past when they realized
they were better together versus apart? What
they could not speak about or show during those uptight censored laden sponsored
controlled days of the 50’s and 60’s could now be peeled away in this TV movie
series that began in 1985 and ended in Perry Mason’s swan song in 1993. But the Perry Mason TV movies series stayed
true to its core, the law, the innocently accused and finding the guilty. And while the fans of that era enjoyed seeing
Della and Perry again, a newer more technically sophisticated generation a
viewers were becoming a more interactive generation of viewers thanks to
something called the Internet and fan based websites.
We didn’t just want the usual
courtroom theatrics, we wanted those human moments of unspoken words that Della
would give Perry whenever she looked at him or whenever he looked at her that
spoke volumes. How simple was it to see
a gesture of a touch to the face and what it signified in this long lasting
relationship? And in this fantasy world
at the end of the last movie when Perry took that last walk out of the
courtroom, Della would give him that look, that peck on the cheek that now bore
a gray salt and pepper beard, she would say nothing at all. What more was needed to be said after close to
forty years of being together? In the
twilight of their life, we imagine them sitting on a rattan bench seat on the
deck of their home staring out on to a California
DANA SCULLY & FOX MULDER
Perhaps
no other couple in the history of television that inspired a new generation of tech
savvy fan devotees was the X-Files Dana Scully and Fox Mulder that premiered on
the Fox Network in 1993. Here were two characters of polar opposite
ideology to life, religion, truths and what constituted a conspiracy. By all given parameters, these two were never
meant to be the subject of such lengthy literature and dedication.
But it was something about these two, along
with the unique storytelling, innovative approach to the retelling of science
fiction and tossing in some governmental conspiracy twist and a needed shaking
up from the run of the mill TV fare, the X-Files found is niche the first time
out and created an industry onto itself that other shows dedicated to the
science fiction and paranormal fare have tried to duplicate with little admiration
like the X-Files. It was not only about
the cases these two agents investigated but the genius of the series was
incorporating the id, ego and super-ego of Mulder and Scully. Scully was given the new partner, Mulder, to
counter or as they said “debunk” his theories of what he investigated.
But her strident core beliefs began to shift
when the unexplained couldn’t be logically categorized and placed in a nice
neat manila folder and filed away if a basic tenant of scientific fact was not
involved that could easily explain away the event. And when one or the other’s life was put in
harms way and the other came to the rescue, we begin to see the glimpse of
something more. That co called chemistry
started to come forth.
They
began to rally for one another. There
were the subtle touches to the hand as their fingers weaved around one another
in such a manner that seems to be a forbidden dance if they were to truly hold
hands. That simple gesture of Scully holding
Mulder’s hand for maybe three seconds but it was the way Scully held Mulder’s
hand, with slight caresses to let him know he had her support or she needed for
him to support her. The unspoken
language of affection became an art between these two.
Perhaps this was the truest form of how on the
job relationships began in the manner that they took. In Scully’s words, “It
seems to me that the best relationships, the ones that last, are frequently the
ones that are rooted in friendship, then one day you look up at that person and
you see something more you did the night before.”
And
because the Internet had become a more viable instrument for fan input, the
amount a fan sites devoted to Scully and Mulder was in full bloom. The
fans of this show who were devoted to this romance had been given a new term by
the other fan devotees, they called them “shippers” derived from the word
“relationship” and mytharc which is
short for mythology archive that was solely created by the fans and creators of
the X-Files that links all given stories to a particular story line. Whether it was by grand design, by
conspiratorial factors or by the natural flow of the show, there lay dormant a
love affair like no other. And it would
not be an easy one to surrender to, not by X-Files standards. From abductions, to bureaucratic intervention
of separating the team to Mulder’s old girlfriends or Scully running to his
side on a case he was working on alone and finding smoking hot Dr. Bambi, this
would not be an easy walk through the rose garden.
But
who started to fall for whom first? Mulder
did proclaim that he loved her following the time travel episode of him on the
luxury liner in the episode “Triangle”. It maybe hard to pinpoint when or where who
may have started to have feelings for the other but it is a safe bet to say
that the cancer that was given to Scully caused any barrier to fall between the
two. We began to see the kisses to the
forehead, the hugs of support, the silent crying at her bedside as Mulder
fought to find a cure for his dying partner.
She was becoming more than just his
partner; this was the making of the game changer. And that was witness by the note Scully had
written that she left out by her hospital bed and he read it:
“I
feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning.
The luminous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening
clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in it’s
passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were a weight being lifted from
me, knowing that you will read them and share my burden, as I have come to
trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the
memory and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me now
as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a
journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shaken
and strengthened by your convictions, if not for which I might never have been
so strong now. As I cross to face you and look at you incomplete, hoping that
you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you.”
And through one of their most
trying times, her life is spared by design and by a price to be paid later.
Through
that looking glass, they find that they have strength in each other and no
words are spoken about the condition of their hearts for one another. They move forward with the dance. They spend more time with one another. They learn to laugh at the end of the day
after a long and harrowing case. He
invites her out to a ballpark one night on her birthday to teach her how to hit
a ball. Does she really need to know how
to be taught to hit a ball? She does
have an older brother after all. But
it’s a moment that is another defining moment for the two. The somewhat by the books uptight Agent
Scully from the beginning has found a solace of comfort with this man who
slides his hands over her body while making sexual innuendos. We still do not get to see them make the
ultimate step and that is the kiss.
And
when they turned it into a movie, The X-Files: Fight The Future, and
when we thought we were getting close to what the fans were hoping to see, the
kiss reveal, she falls to her knees after getting stung by a bee. And we have to know by this time that
whenever one of them falls into some life peril that they know that the other
will do anything to see that the other will survive without having to say a
word. And when they returned to
television, the separation by the bureau became their next hurdle. No parasitic ameba spore, no liver eating
serial killer, no teenage pubescent lighting boy but old fashion paperwork
stalls out what is now two co-dependent people who have maintained a level of
energy for such a long period of time.
This moment in their lives forces those to see how much they have come
to rely on one another and that no new partner could replace what they had,
professionally and personally. But when asked if Mulder had a significant
other in his life, Mulder would respond “Not in
the wildly understood definition of that term”.
But
we know other wise and they know one another now. In time, they are back together again. They move closer and closer to one another
emotionally and in one moment, we see some under lit scene of Scully getting
dressed and a shot of a sleeping Mulder looking satiated in his bed. No explanation is given to the juxtaposition
of what was shown. It’s just there. You figure it out. But this is the X-Files; it could have thirty
reasons and forty truths. But we do know
that something has occurred and as much as that was long in waiting, the fans
should have at least gotten a look. And
when the latest of Mulder’s quest leaves him missing in action and discovered
“dead” from some torturous body probing examination, we find that Scully is
pregnant with his child. But he isn’t
dead-dead and he returns to her once again.
But know there is a child on the way and they must face this new
journey. And when that child is born, we
finally see them all together, as a family, in a moment of true bliss and we
get to see the kiss, with all of its anticipation now muted by the stark
contrast of the events that lead up to this. It is not to be a family of a right design, as
the child is marked for death by others who fear his existence. William is born under the direr of
consequences. As his life is put in the
most ominous situations, Scully makes the unenviable decision to give up her
son, a decision that is still being debated to this day. But
in that decision, she writes in her journal to William about live and love that
went:
"One day, you'll ask me to speak of a truth ---- of the
miracle of your birth. -----To explain what is unexplained. And if I falter or
fail on this day,---- know there is an answer, my child,------- a sacred
imperishable truth, but one you may never hope to find alone. ------Chance
meeting your perfect other,------- your perfect opposite - your protector and
endangerer. -----Chance embarking with this other on the greatest of journeys ------
a search for truths fugitive and imponderable. If one day this chance may
befall you,------ my son,------ do not fail or falter to seize it. ------The
truths are out there. ------And if one day you should behold a miracle, as I
have in you, -----you will learn the truth is not found in science, -----or on
some unseen plane,----- but by looking into your own heart. -------And in that
moment you will be blessed - and stricken. -------For the truest truths, are what
hold us together, -------or keep us painfully, ------desperately apart.”
And in its last season, Mulder is MIA again and finally returns to the
fold in the series finale. Their union is poignant, more sustained, more
established as we see them kiss this time with a more sense of purpose, of
love, of time lost and found, of future heartache. William is gone out of their lives based on a
decision made in desperation by Scully.
It is perhaps the biggest piece of unfinished business of a scripted show
because the fan base could not believe that Scully, who had gone through so
much to have him, would give him up so easily.
Surely this can’t be how this ends?
They deserved a better ending, they’d earned a better ending and the
fans earned a better ending. But maybe
there were other things in play. The
movie franchise would solve this quagmire.
But that’s a different tale set in another world. This was the land TV and this is how it
ended. Two people whose paths in life
took them to journeys they never thought imagined and in the process,
discovered that the truth to everything was them. Find your son, he is not safe.
SEELEY BOOTH & TEMPERANCE BRENNAN
Premiering
in 2005, Bones joined the stable of Fox shows.
Set in our nation’s capital come this socially inept but highly
intelligent forensic anthropologist who goes by the name of Dr. Temperance
Brennan who is assigned a self-assured FBI Agent by he name of Seeley
Booth. In most cases, there is an inkling
of some similarity from first blush but these two in the beginning were
complete and totally separate planets orbiting separate suns.
She and her fellow colleagues at the
Jeffersonian Institute never associated with anyone other than their own
intellectual peers thus leaving them lacking in certain contemporary social
graces. Seeley Booth, an ex U.S. Army
Ranger sniper, request Brennan to assist him on a case but she will only go
along only if she is granted full partner on the case. And so, this unlikely pairing to crime
solving is created through a little armchair twisting and “I won’t play with my
toys unless you pick me” attitude that’s a bit juvenile.
Brennan’s
type-A personality demands that she and her subordinates be the best at what
they do without fail. She also wishes
she had he skills Booth has in reading people.
If there isn’t data to go along with empirical evidence, she is lost on
human behavior and she has no point of reference for such social interaction
that has lead her way of speaking to people more than off putting but down
right insulting. But it is Booth who
gives her balance rather than the other way around. He points out her character flaws in a world
that’s not lab coats and Bunsen burners.
He does it in a way that doesn’t harm her ego, though she may claim that
her ego was not harmed, because he knows that someone in that façade if a
scientist is a woman who’s built this wall of technical journals and best
selling books to mask away a less than ideal childhood. It was Booth who gave her the nickname of
“Bones”, a name she protested at first but relented only for Booth to call her
that and not her colleagues or even Dr. Sweets.
Booth has taken upon him to humanize her slowly to the world so she can
see how people really are outside of the clinical barriers she had come to
create for herself.
But
this pairing comes with certain elements that could be seen as more relatable
to a more mainstream society. Booth is a
single parent to a son. This revelation didn’t
come about until much later into the series when they were in forced
quarantine. What was interesting about
that moment was how surprised everyone was when they found out he had a
child? It also brought about a different
point of view for Brennan because now she has started to see what drives
Booth’s actions. He has to be a role
model for his son. Some of the pieces
begin to fall into place for Brennan.
She now starts to understand why Booth is the way he is about his
approach to the law and how he relates to people. She finds out that the mother of his child
didn’t want to marry him, his father was a drunk and that he and his brother
were raised by his grandfather.
She,
on the other hand, has a brother, and that their parents went missing when they
were younger and they would put in the foster care system. The foster care system held little pleasant
memories for Brennan.
And as unlikely a scenario these two went
through as children, they do share a common theme of unpleasant childhoods that
marked their behavior as adults. Booth
wants nothing to be like his drunken father and tries to cleanse it from his
memory by doing deeds of honor as if it will make amends for the failure of his
father. Brennan shrouds her in academia
where she can insulate herself from any sort of emotional conflict. She has consigned away any notion of what is
considered the normal family dynamic.
Above anything else, work is a better ethos than religion and sex is
just a basic behavior in all animals that shouldn’t warrant the importance
humans give it.
And
yet, with all that is going against them, they forge this alliance of the
spirit, the mind and the bodies are the unlikely partners. The separation of personal and professional
becomes blended. Brennan learns through
observation, through Booth and through osmosis from the cases that people’s
lives aren’t black and white textbooks.
She finds that her way of thinking all of those years left her missing
out on the simpler things that contained the most meaningful moments for anyone
ele. When she discovers that her mother’s remains were found and identified, we
find Booth wading through that emotional field.
She may have forced out those memories of her mother but she realize
those memories had not left her when the truth is revealed when she finds
herself holding a dolphin figurine that belong to her mother.
For
Booth and Brennan, they are surrounded by a compliment of a character that
sometimes help and sometimes creates a speed bump along the evitable. We even wait the all anticipated kissing
moment. And it seems when you think
they’ve figured it out between them and they make an attempt to go for it when
Booth openly declares his love for her, she shuts down. Something as simple as this one man caring
for her is more complicated to her than the double helix band from DNA. He is shattered by her rejection as are
we.
What
gives? What is the problem, Brennan? It’s not a textbook. It has variables and dynamics that come with
unknown outcomes. And so it stops. He
moves on. She stagnates. They go their separate ways, he to the
military, she to do some cultural dig.
They come back together, a little tattered, a little mended, to help a
colleague in trouble. Booth has found
someone new and Brennan still is fixed position until she meets the other woman
and sees how happy she is with Booth.
She realizes that she has allowed her happiness to be sacrificed for
some superficial ideology and pours out her regret and true feelings to
Booth. And how does this ex U.S. Army Ranger
sniper turned FBI Agent with 53 kills under his belt respond? Not like she had hoped but she now sees that
telling how she feels is not the end of who she is. She would have never known that if not for
him being more open with her. So the
dream is delayed as Booth finds a temporary fix with what has been lovingly
called the “obstructionist”. And just when he thinks he’s found the rebound of
his choice, he proposes and she turns him down.
It’s not a good time for the cupid that’s following Booth for this is
strike three. He’s sullen and rightfully
bitter with the women in his life and just wants nothing more out of Brennan other
than to just solve the cases that come along.
And so we wait again. But the
wait isn’t as long as we would have thought.
It comes heavily weighted with unexpected consequences.
A
major nemesis, The Gravedigger, is facing her last appeal for her crimes. In perhaps one of the most intense scenes in
Bones episodes, The Gravediggers head is literally blown off her shoulders by
sniper fire. In this story arc, the
elusive sniper is identified and Booth uses his sniper training to track him
down. But the cat and mouse chase takes
an unexpected and shocking twist when one of the most beloved characters,
Vincent Nigel-Murray, is mistaken for Booth and takes a bullet to the heart, a
bullet that also pierces everyone else’s heart as well with grief and sorrow.
Booth
must now protect everyone at the Jeffersonian and we find Brennan staying with
Booth. She comes to his room not
understanding what Vincent meant in his dying declaration as Booth explains to
her that he didn’t want to die. As she lies next to him for comfort, the scene
fades to black. Booth eventually catches
the sniper and Brennan has a more relaxed spirit. Angela and Hodgins have their child and
Brennan has questions. In the final
minutes of Booth and Brennan coming from the hospital, they are walking slowly
and Brennan, in her quintessential scientific speak, she announces that she is
pregnant and that it’s Booth’s. No words
are spoken, just a broad smile for Booth.
ANTHONY DiNOZZO & ZIVA DAVID
NCIS:
Naval Criminal Investigative Service is another long running series that’s
found a home on CBS. It follows a team
of skilled investigators, some with military backgrounds and some law
enforcement backgrounds, who investigate criminal activity perpetrated against
military personnel. So after nine
seasons, we are starting to see a little thaw in the relationship between
Anthony DiNozza and Ziva David. Now this
is interesting because Ziva was a replacement for another one of Tony’s love
interest, NCIS agent Caitlin Todd.
Tony’s affection with Caitlin was intriguing because she didn’t make it
easy to be one of Tony’s latest conquests.
But when you looked a little deeper into the type connection they had,
you would have to come to the conclusion that they could only be friends,
really good friends and nothing more.
But before anyone could see
them come to terms, she was shockingly killed by an assassin’s bullet to the
head. That messed with Tony for quite a while as we saw when Ziva came to
replace her. One of Tony’s strong
virtues is loyalty. Replacing Caitlin
with Ziva the interloper took him time to adjust to. Ziva, on the other hand, wasn’t a shrinking
violet either. Foreign to the ways of
American culture, her misuse of American phraseology took a beating. Those stumbled upon sayings showed that she
wasn’t above being made fun of by the team when they corrected her. And that also made them warm up to her as she
kept trying to get it right.
As
Tony slowly slipped his hold on the memory of Caitlin away, he allowed himself
to place his friendship with Caitlin deeper inside of him and started to see
Ziva for who she was finally. He had
mourned long enough for Caitlin. Tony
saw that she was fun or that she could be fun and not just a deadly Mossad
officer. With Tony interjecting his
personal observation of who the real Ziva David is versus the actual Ziva David
who makes protest on what the opposite of what Tony thinks of her, his
observations chips away with some factuality that Ziva is forced to reflect
upon.
She has always been groomed to be trained in
the Mossad and nothing more. Now there
is someone who is psychoanalyzing her and even though she is resisting the
observation, she finds that Tony might hold some accuracy as to who she is and
who she can become if she would open her mind up to other possibilities.
So,
what did happen in Paris Paris
and neither would talk about what happened in Paris
Time
moves forward, Ziva is not necessarily waiting on the sideline for Tony. She has her own life that she secretly keeps
at a distance from the ever intensively inquisitive Tony. An old love comes back with deadly
intentions. Tony is forced to kill him
in a close contact battle. Ziva comes a
minute too late to see the aftermath.
She doesn’t believe Tony’s take on the incident. He doesn’t care. This rift shatters them as Tony stands his
grounds on the cause of action. In time,
Ziva finds that Tony had been truthful and that she was being used as a pawn in
her father’s personal war.
But
the trust between Tony and Ziva had been badly brutalized. It will take time for that to heal, for her to
heal from the betrayal done under the control of her father. The cases come and the cases go. A new team comes in to track a suspect. Ziva is clandestine in her new
boyfriend. Tony try to find out clues by
snooping around her work station. Tony,
in the meantime, finds a little solace with the new team leader.
Ziva
finally reveals her new boyfriend, a CIA operative. Tony continues his dissection of Ziva’s love
life. She defends it as best she can
because the CIA operative is too secretive and isn’t there as much as she
likes. But Tony isn’t having it any
better with the new team leader of the visiting team. His boss finds it’s a conflict of
interest. Tony stands his grounds on
it. In time though, that relationship is
short lived because the visiting team leader sees that Tony isn’t the one for
her. She sees that it’s Ziva. And Ziva finds that her CIA operative has
faulted and failed and lied to her.
And
at the end of the day, Tony and Ziva assess on where they go from here. Do they walk away or do they run that risk to
see if it’s worth it?
RICK CASTLE & KATE BECKETT
At
times heavy and at times light, the ABC Network has found success in the police
adventure series, Castle. It’s the story
of a successful crime story novelist who’s penned his female detective, Nikki
Heat, after the three dimensional New
York City
What began as a
collaboration of the minds turned into a good working relationship as Castle’s
creative solutions into the criminal thinking process and his unorthodox crime
solving techniques turns out to be a valuable asset to Kate. Right away, you can see the chemistry that’s
starting to blend between these two.
Although Castle is rich, he’s earned it through hard work and struggle. If he hadn’t, he’d be more insufferable with
Kate and the rest of the team. Kate is
just your bread and butter middle class family working girl. She keeps her beauty turned down
intentionally at around six rather than the unchecked eight.
She’s a blue collar working detective, that’s
what she prefers. She could easily have
turned her beauty into a vehicle to get anything or any promotion that she wants
from any guy or gal but she knows that at the end of the day when she looks at
herself in the mirror, she knows that it was her intelligence that got her
through the day. As Castle interacts
with her more and more, he sees these qualities in Beckett. She’s genuine and honest and at times, she
can get the joke as well as give one, three of the seven things a guy looks for
in woman. As picture perfect as Beckett
may be, she is flawed. The death of her
murdered mother haunts her. With the
help of Castle, she discovers that there is someone powerful involved in her
mother’s murder.
In
her quest for the truth to what happened in her mother’s investigation, Castle has
done more for her in the investigation that she could ever have thought. This has caused her to reassess the very
aspect of who she has been dealing with these many months. He’s in the trenches with her. He pushes back whenever he feels she has crossed
the point of no return and where it might have come close to costing her
life. She pushes back harder because she
wants to get at the truth. At the end of
the day, Caste’s intervening prevents a conflict into becoming a dire
consequence. But sometimes she doesn’t
see that his presence was the thing that tipped the balance in her favor.
The
cases that have come their way have ranged from the simple domestic murder
squabbles to cryogenic headless corpse to homegrown domestic terrorism. And in between all of that, they have begun
to forge this unrequited passion for one another. Just like hot ash smoldering underneath a
stack of fresh wood, Beckett is primed for Castle.
A
glimpse of that was seen when they went and improvised a situation as a
romantic couple to infiltrate a crime organization. It caught Beckett off guard when Castle
planted a kiss on her and her response was that of a person who’s been walking
in the desert for twenty days and this was their first drink of water. She consumed that kiss for every ounce it was
worth. If there ever was the possibility
that you could achieve an orgasm with a kiss, she definitely would have gotten
a few.
But
Castle has demonstrated patience and at times impatience with Beckett and her
feelings. The kiss, he felt, should have
been discussed. He’s angry that it
wasn’t. It was important. He had intentionally steered clear of her in
the beginning, even going back temporarily with his former wife and that was
because she was a closed book. So we
wait and they come back, he’s still single and now she with a companion, pretty
boy doctor. But it’s an empty calorie
relationship. It looks good on the
outside but there’s nothing going on inside, nothing sustaining. Castle keeps a respectful distance up to a
point. The unrequited journey
continues. They get a few more gut
checking cases that test their friendship.
He challenges her involvement with pretty boy doctor and she defends it
with not much of a fight. They nearly
succumb to getting frozen. Close to a
declaration of truth in their final hours, they nearly reveal their true
feelings but both pass out from the bitter cold. They find themselves alive, close but still
distant.
It
is the continued investigation of her mother’s murder that becomes a turning
point for the entire team. New leads and
suspects come into play following the assassination of a retired cop right in
front of Beckett and Castle. And in this investigation, a trusted key member is found to have known of who may be involved in her death of Beckett’s mother. Castle runs to her aide in hopes of stopping her from meeting the shadowy figures. He gets there to find her with the Captain, the other person who knows the people in this game of death. Castle literally lifts her out of harms way but you have to ask, would any other person have been able to take her away from that situation?
The
Captain loses his life defending Beckett.
The inner circle keeps the secret of the Captain’s involvement amongst
them. At the funeral, Beckett is hit by
sniper fire and as Castle runs to her, he finally tells her how he feels, he
loves her. The right questions are asked and the wrong questions are asked that
prompts a mysterious figure to get in contact with Castle and inform him that
if Beckett continues, there stood the chance that she would not live. In her
subsequent recovery with a psychiatrist, she claims some memory loss in the
shooting. She eventually reveals that
she remembers everything on that day she got shot. And Rick is still waiting, hopefully, not in
vain.
PETER BISHOP & OLIVIA DUNHAM
The
paranormal returns to the Fox Network with the series, Fringe. Although there are some who want to compare
this with the X-Files, it is not in that same vein. This is a new world of science and the mad
masters who manipulate the laws of time and space. The things, you will need a road map to
figure out who is who as you jump from one universe to another. Peter Bishop, the wayward drop out genius son
of Walter Bishop is called in to explain an unusual anomaly. He meets this FBI agent, Olivia Dunham, a
somewhat of a plains farm type woman with simple unorthodox features. She strikes you as a woman who has the need
to pile on makeup in order for her to do her job. The bareness of her face reflects the
bareness of her life when we are introduced to her. Even though she is in a relationship in the
beginning, you don’t feel that connect with that person. It’s a perfunctory by the numbers
relationship. It’s a matter of bodies
occupying a space at a given time so it’s a matter of convenience rather than
passion. So we get to walk through the
inevitable as the characters are folded out.
The initial love interest is a casualty of procurement. The plot moves on, the story thickens. Peter enters the fray. And somewhere in this evolution of
orchestrated chaos, we follow a meandering journey and find ourselves turned
around. We will wind up needing a road
map to stay connected.
Two
dimensional becomes four dimensional as we jump from one Olivia to two to three
or is there a fourth? There us a red
haired Olivia who is a mother, this red haired Olivia appears to not be a
mother. Which theorem is being
applied? There is Peter; there is a
voided memory of Peter. Has the voided
Peter negated all that he did in the past and wouldn’t that alter the time
construct of his presence ever impacting all that he done?
The
red headed Olivia invades Olivia’s world by taking over her life while the real
Olivia is held captive in the alternate universe. As we follow this journey, the former red
headed Olivia waste no time in infiltrating and assimilating the very thing the
original Olivia had come to discover, desires for Peter. The much anticipated union goes to the fake
Olivia. Everything appears as normal as
can be. Peter is happy while the real
Olivia is in peril. But the real Olivia
is tenaciously ingenious. In addition to
enduring the punishing interrogation techniques, Olivia figures out how to remove
herself from captivity.
She wills her
presence to merge back into her universe to leave a message for the others. Peter begins to realize there is something
amiss with this Olivia. By the time he
figures it out, she also figures out that she has slipped up. The real Olivia slips from her captors and
makes her way to a portal to get home.
The fake Olivia prepares for an actionable offense to this universe with
the assistance from colleagues from the other side. But Peter and company figures out the game
plan and thwarts the effort. The fake
Olivia is captured but the other side portals her back to her home while the
real Olivia portals her way back to her real home.
Now
safe in her own home, Olivia looks around to see signs of the other Olivia
living her life. She feels that presence
including that of Peter knowing his unfettered emotions went unchecked. She’s angry on a number of reasons and she
needs someone to blame. Peter gets the
unwilling honor. She feels Peter, of all
people, should have known who the real Olivia was. Peter and the other one were intimate. Even though they were getting close, she
feels just as betrayed as if the were already a committed couple.
Peter
already feels guilty for not recognizing the other Olivia was a fake. Still, he pursues Olivia to understand his
point of view and his willingness to go along was based on his feelings of
wanting to be with her. If anything, he
was guilty of the heart before being guilty of the act.
This may be a case where Olivia would have
easily forgiven Peter if he had hooked up with a prostitute versus being with
her doppelganger. In time, she comes to
understand that it was not him she was angrier with than with the other Olivia
and herself for denying her feelings for Peter when someone else easily saw the
kindness Peter had. And when she comes
to terms with that, she was finally able to be with him.
