I don't mind if they want to go in a direction to create some "epic" arcs but that's not the show to date and they don't pull it off well at all.
We can't have Castle cracking wise about sex clubs while Kate hints she's into something freaky while Esposito and Parish fight and everyone stares at them. And then the next week it's a massive secret plot to start World War III that Castle's somehow involved in.
The stuff around Beckett's mom's murder was backstory and part of Castle's personal interest in figuring it out. That worked in context, even when they started adding in the escalation.
Not saying I would hate such a "new direction" or it couldn't be done well, I like Burn Notice (which does this same type of thing) and such after all, but Castle hasn't shown me the ability to try and pull these type of plots off. It hasn't been about elaborate plots, but more some fun procedural with some character based stuff that they develop over time.
And this week and last had a lot of "THIS IS SRS AND TOTALLY HUGE!!!!!" without the laid back and even subdued drama I'm used to from the show. The fact that other people dominated large parts while Castle and Beckett just stood there in awe did not help things. When they did these crazy two part plots where ARE THEY GONNA SURVIVE before it had plenty of Castle and Beckett bantering, working together, etc. And this story had lots of being shuffled about unable to really doing anything and left them ultimately sorta irrelevant in the whole affair.
I think it actually could have been a solid normal single episode with the core plot, they've done ones like this before, but introducing all the CIA crap derailed it.
But that's me responding to just these episodes and no idea of where they'll be taking it.
