Castle (TV Series) (DVD)

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Here's a rundown:

1) "Flowers for Your Grave." A copycat killer begins by covering his nude victim tastefully in flowers, then progresses to other Castle books and other unique ways of killing people. And so Richard Castle is recruited to help them stay a step ahead of the murderer.

2) "Nanny McDead." A nanny is found dead in the dryer of a New York apartment building laundry room.

3) "Hedge Fund Homeboys." Castle worries about leaving Martha to chaperone Alexis' class trip to Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, friends of the son of a once-wealthy family try to thwart their investigation.

4) "Hell Hath No Fury." This time it's a body rolled in a rug that's found on the sidewalk, and that leads Beckett and Castle deeper into local politics than they'd care to be.

5) "A Chill Goes Through Her Veins." At a construction site the corpse of a frozen woman is found at a construction site, and the case prompts both Beckett and Castle to look to their own pasts.

6) "Always Buy Retail." Vudon? Apparently it's a religion, and apparently their worship includes ritualistic human sacrifice.

7) "Home is Where the Heart Stops." Residential break-ins are turning up more than missing jewels. A lot of corpses are being found too, and it's up to Castle and Beckett to figure out who's behind it all.

8) "Ghosts." A bathtub full of motor oil is a recipe for disaster, and that's where Castle and Beckett discover their latest victim in a case that leads them to seek out a true-crime pulp writer who may have known the woman.

9) "Little Girl Lost." A two-year-old girl turns up missing and Beckett's ex-husband turns out to be the lead investigator for the FBI, and a thorn in Castle's side.

10) "A Death in the Family." Castle frets over his daughter's first prom and also digs a little into Beckett's past. Meanwhile, the murder of a plastic surgeon keeps them professionally active.

Video:
"Castle" is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen and stretched to fill out a 16x9 monitor. Black levels are strong, colors are natural, and the picture is pretty sharp and clear for standard definition. It's the kind of quality we've come to expect from ABC-TV-on-DVD.

Audio:
The audio is also a nice, lively Dolby Digital 5.1 in English, with French and Spanish subtitles. The rear speakers actually come alive for most of the scenes, infusing a nice layer of ambient sound into the mix.

Extras:
Aside from four episode commentaries, there really isn't a lot here--just a short blooper reel and three very short bonus features. Cannell turns up in several of them. In "Write-Along with Nathan Fillion," which is done tongue-in-cheek, the star visits Cannel to see how a writer lives and works so he can better tell how to play his own novelist character. It runs around nine minutes. Then there's Cannell again talking with creator Marlowe and Marlowe's co-producer and co-director Rob Bowman, who pays tribute to Cannell for giving him his start in the business. But in this seven-minute feature there's really nothing that we don't already learn elsewhere. The only other bonus feature is ""Whodunit: The Genesis of "Castle," which is a bit of fluff that feels like a pre-release promo and runs just six minutes.

So the "meat," really, is to be found in the commentary tracks, which can feel as crowded as an LA freeway. Jamming into this virtual phone booth are Marlowe, Bowman, Fillion, Katic, and actor Jon Huertas for the commentary on "Flowers for Your Grave." It gets even more crowded when Quinn joins them for "A Chill Goes Through Her Veins," and "A Death in the Family." An alternate commentary for "A Death in the Family" features just Huertas and fellow actor Seamus Dever. I'd pronounce them average, because we never get just the right balance of information and anecdotes, or between professional insight and personal responses. The commentaries kind of veer here and there, sometimes getting too technical and other times too esoteric. Some may enjoy listening to people talk about their proms, while others will think, "Get back to talking about the TV show."

Bottom Line:
"Castle" is a solid crime drama that works because Fillion and Katic play off of each other nicely. The scripts and supporting cast are good enough to keep the crime-fighting duo from falling flat on their faces, but they don't add as much to the series as they could have.