One Too Many
I was rummaging through the interwebs for new (or old) television series to follow in every genre available. I came across Castle, lead by Rick Castle, a popular mainstream thriller writer. He was contacted to help out in a murder that seemed to have sprung to life right out of his pages. He develops a love-hate working relationship with Kate Beckett, the lead detective in the investigation. He was taken on as a consultant on the pretext that he is doing research for his next book. Does that sound all too familiar to you?
Seems like, civilians turned consultants has become a favorite among comedy-crime series. After one episode, I felt like I was in an episode of Monk. We have the quirky, ordinary citizen inadvertently caught in a police investigation, turns out to be amazing at making educated guesses and viola, a regular spot as the detective’s shadow. Sounds very much like Psych does it not? Or maybe reminiscent of Patrick Jane in The Mentalist?
I guess series like these last for a couple of seasons before dying out because people are fascinated with figuring out the unknown just by simple observation. I hope it does not take more shows to convinces us that simple observation is nothing but common sense drawn from context clues. People are not as deep as they pretend to be, they are actually quite transparent if you look at it right.