There's a dilemma facing every show that relies heavily on unresolved romantic tension between two leads. On the one hand, if you don't pull the trigger on the relationship eventually, then your audience might get frustrated and turn against you. On the other hand, if you do pull the trigger, the whole status quo of your show is going to change, and your audience might not like it and turn against you. TVTropes has a whole page dedicated to this concept of "Shipping Bed Death", which you should not look up, because it's TVTropes and you will be lost for hours.
The Beckett/Castle romance has been one of the two defining features of the show, the other being the goofiness of the crimes they investigated. Without getting into specifics, I'm pleased to say that this season of the show does a pretty good job of cutting through the "Will they or won't they?" Gordian Knot. It's definitely a big step up from season four's rather laboured efforts to maintain the status quo.
On the other hand, every silver lining has a cloud, and I think it is fair to say that the "goofy crimes" element of the show is starting to get a little tired. If you'd told me before watching that season that "the episode where the murder weapon is a Star Trek phaser is not the silliest thing they'll do this year", I would not have believed you. But there's a two-parter this year that is sillier than both that and the "Santa falls out of the sky" episode. A two-parter which frankly compounds the sin of its own goofiness by seeming completely unaware of how stupid it is.
I also suspect that I'm going to be a bit disappointed by the start of season six, because the last couple of episodes of this season dangle the idea of a fresh and interesting direction for the show, but I'm pretty sure they won't have the gumption to go through with it. So instead we'll just get more of the same basically entertaining light dramedy. Which isn't a terrible outcome, I admit, but I'll always have that "What if?" feeling now.
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