The Ziggurat of Doom

Burn Notice has the easiest set-up in the world for awesome television: badass ex-spy with hot trigger happy ex-girlfriend tries to survive contactless and resourceless in Florida. It has no excuse to be bad, but it is. It’s sloppy directing: the pacing blows and their attempt to create a laid-back Florida atmosphere in their action show undercuts its tension. The dialogue is delivered like nobody really cares what’s going on.

Castle has the most generic TV show plot I can think of: homicide detective solves murders. But it’s really good. The dialogue is snappy at the right times to cut the tension, and serious when the tension needs to build. It’s funny, well-paced, good scoring. Characters have the right amount of screen-time. The minor mystery aspect of the murders is in the right place: you can figure out what’s going on before the characters, but won’t all the time: it’s a common mistake to make “mysteries” either intractable or trivial to the viewer/reader.

Castle also has some fun role reversal going on: Beckett is the strong female detective (but not in an annoyingly smug way), and Castle (Nathan Fillion) is a prissy writer who shadows her for story ideas and, usually futilely, attempts to help. This show only clocks in at 1 or 2 Mulder-Scullys, unlike Bones which seems to be maintaining something absurd like 7 or 8 (more like Boners, amirite?).

It is ten dollars on Steam. I just bought it.

This message brought to you by people who believe Psychonauts was a pretty great game.