Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

There are a lot of less-than-impressive elements to the ABC mid-season replacement show "Castle", starring Nathan Fillion -- including the fact that, for a professional and supposedly very successful mystery writer, the title character doesn't seem to know much about classics of the genre (for instance, the pilot episode's murder plot screamed "Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders!" at the top of its lungs, but Castle appeared to have just discovered the concept of the false pattern to conceal the one murder that really mattered for himself) or about police procedure and criminal investigations.

But none of that matters very much, because I sort of fell in love with watching Rick Castle (Fillion) interact with his 15-year-old daughter. For all his personal faults and appearance of smarmy self-centeredness, you can tell that this is a guy who would walk through fire for his kid, and that she knows and trusts that about him.

Plus, I kind of like it when the detective Castle is shadowing treats him like an undisciplined puppy that somebody stuck her with -- and that he bounces right back from every rebuff, but seems to take very much to heart the times in which the real human pain of murder is brought home to him (usually by striking the parents'-worst-nightmare-chord, so far).

Yes, the fluffy style of most of the characters and the fast-paced banter are amusing, but watching Castle's bond with his daughter, and the reversed parent-child dynamic with his mother (whom he seems to have been taking care of in some ways since his own early childhood), along with the no-nonsense pseudo-parenting he's getting from the detective . . . well, that's what's keeping "Castle" prioritized on my DVR.