If Kate's mother had been a random-act-of-violence thing, without the conspiracy--and especially without the Captain being involved!--I would have been much happier. I think you could get a lot of drama out of "Bad shit happens and sometime you never know why and you have to learn how to cope." Or, heck, random junkie looking for 20 bucks for his next score. Because it doesn't always mean something--though this is Hollywood.

I think what I like best about Castle is the family dynamics between Rick, Alexis and his mum; that's what keeps bringing me back. That and I ship Castle and Beckett hard.

I don't watch the Mentalist at all, but I do watch Hawaii Five-Oh and all three of these shows sound like they're playing from the same crib sheet. Parent who is murdered by corrupt cops (Castle and 5-0) and bad supervisor (all three.) The amazing thing is that they are all different enough that most of us watch at least two of them, if not all three. So they're doing something right!

I like the Closer on the same ground. I mean the Chief has tons of issues, but they are neuroses and ordinary issues with family, not deep tragic angst.

I keep thinking I'd like the Closer, but I have an irrational bias against her voice.

Connie,

I got used to it, and the accent had changed over the years. Watch the pilot. If you don't like the pilot, bail.

I agree, Typo, but I am kind of glad to see them now acknowledging that she's basically killed two people.

Yeah, the whole rogue-cop-for-the-greater-good thing always got up my nose. But I do like that it was not deep angst or anything. She simply came up with a way to take on the bad guy, and did not even notice that she stepped over a line until the investigation not only started, but had been going on for a while. She was initially indignant at being investigated, and it eventually dawned on her that setting up the murder to be murdered himself was not the same thing as righteous bust.

BTW not a faithful viewer. Who was the other person she killed?

Kind of a similar situation. Mexican Federale who had engineered a cartel hit on someone - she had the Federale booked into gen pop under the target's name. Better and worse really - at least in that case she was arguably protecting the true target, but it was much more of a certainty that the guy would be brutally killed.

I think that was end of first or second season. It was really shocking at the time, but also they just replayed that ep in the weekend reruns.

It made me much less sympathetic this time 'round, and her protestations of - I don't know, obliviousness - ring a little hollow. I'm glad to see them grappling with it, and while I don't really expect them to take it where it should go, it is the final season so who knows?

She's done that more than twice. There was a guy with the Russian mob, an illegitimate son of a mob leader, who had run through a string of young prostitutes and then beat them to death when he was done with them. The FBI was protecting him because he was a key witness to some other case, so Brenda Lee couldn't get him on any of the murders. She arranged things so that he was released in the custody of the mob lawyer, so that the mob would know (by way of the lawyer) that he was cooperating with the Feds, also knowing that he would be killed as soon as he got out of the building.

There was another case where a pedophile had killed a young girl (Ruby?)... didn't they put him in general population, where he had been beaten so severely that he was terrified into committing suicide.

She has a tendency to be brutally expedient when it suits her.

Oh, I forgot about the Russian. At this point she's basically a serial killer.