Genre, History, and Hope as a Fan of Bones

(No spoilers here if you’ve seen the most recent episode, but there is mild speculation.)

I’ve been waffling all week about this post. I’ve had discussions about some of this before, and apparently wind up seldom making sense about what I’m trying to say.

But I’m seeing so many freaked out fans right now that I keep finding myself trying to explain why I’m not worried about where this is going (my trepidation about last week’s The Murder in the Middle East before it aired notwithstanding.) But it’s hard to do in 140 characters or less on Twitter, so I’ll give it a go.

First, what I’m expecting from Bones over the next three episodes:

• Tension between Booth and Brennan, with him staying elsewhere for part of the time
• Scenes between them, including case discussions
• Scenes where we see that both of them are hurting
• Scenes where it’s quite clear that Booth has made a choice to fight the addiction because he loves her and their family
• Scenes where it’s equally clear that Brennan loves him and wants him to beat the addiction; also where she’s trying to work out how she can best support him in doing so (which may not be letting him rush home)
• Scenes where we see them reassuring Christine and trying to minimize the damage to her
• That Booth and Brennan will be in a fairly solid place by the end of the finale – not necessarily the same as they were, but solid.

That’s what I expect to see because to me, those characters and those types of scenes are what Bones is, are what it’s always been. Booth and Brennan love one another, deeply and unreservedly, and that won’t suddenly be different here. Their bond didn’t cease in S6, nor did it change at either the end of S7, when she went on the run, or the end of S8, when he had to break the engagement.

On the other hand, I am not remotely worried about: Booth dying (yes, I’ve seen this one mentioned a couple of times by different people), Booth and Brennan getting divorced, or Booth moving out until sometime next season. I’m also not worried about the finale ending with them still not in a good place.

But why I’m so sure on those points is complicated, and has to do with my understanding of genre as well as my views of the story and characters.

Genre – what type of story it is – matters.  I’ve had conversations with fans who explain their fears of something happening on their show by saying, “Well, [show in a different genre] did it.” It doesn’t work that way. While there can be gray areas – sitcoms in particular often push the boundaries of genre, mining humor from tragedy – shows don’t simply switch genres overnight. They can’t.

Why? Because networks know that if viewers are expecting one thing, and turn the show on to find it’s become something else, they’ll stop watching. Genre is about audience expectation: I expect mysteries to be solved in mystery novels, villains to be defeated in action films, and comedies (of any kind) not to have too much angst.

Shows that are a mix of genres, as Bones is, have more leeway, but that actually makes it harder, because they still have audience expectations to meet, they just have more of them.  The show’s often been described as a ‘dramedy crime procedural,’ and that’s a lot of commitments to keep to the audience.

(Before I continue, it’s worth noting that meeting audience expectation is not the same thing as letting the audience determine what happens. If I read a crime novel, I expect a murder to be solved by the protagonist.  But I don’t get to stop in the middle of the story and tell the writer that the wrong victim just died.)

Anyway, Bones can have some drama, but if it goes too dark for too long, it will lose the viewers who watch for the humor; similarly, if it focuses for too long on the comedy, it will lose those who like the more serious stories. Rather than a mix of genres giving them endless freedom to do anything they want, it means they have to be careful about not leaning too far in any one direction for too long.

I tend to prefer the drama over the humor, but the difficulty they have in keeping that balance was brought home to me last fall when a co-worker told me after The Lance in the Heart aired that she wasn’t sure she’d continue with the show, because it’s ‘too sad now.’

That’s why the show began moving away from the tragedy of Sweets’ death in the next episode. They were aware of the need for balance.

Last September, Stephen said this:  “We’re not forsaking what makes Bones, Bones, which is all the humor, the romance, the oddities of our cases and the skewed comic nature of our show.” In the same interview, he later said, “We don’t want to mire the show in darkness.”

I think that quote’s not only important because of what he says about the balance, but also for what it reveals about his view of the nature of the show. Fans who watch primarily for Booth and Brennan, for example, may not realize that the humor and lighter tone are not an afterthought – they’re not something the show does when it runs out of problems to throw at the characters. Rather, they’re integral to the show itself.

In 2012, Hart went into some detail about how aware they are of that balance of humor and drama, not only in respect to the order of episodes, but even of scenes within them. They never stop being aware of whether they’re hitting that target of both humor and drama.

But the question isn’t just one of dark vs. light. Bones is also a romance. Or, as Hart told a roomful of writers in 2010, a romantic comedy.

(So yes, for those keeping score, it’s a romantic comedy-dramatic-crime-procedural. And, IMO, that’s both why it has such a loyal audience, and why it doesn’t appeal to everyone…though that’s a separate post.)

The thing about genres is that they have requirements. In the publishing world, for example, a romance-genre book has to have a happily-ever-after, where the couple is in some form of committed relationship by the end of the story. It’s non-negotiable. But! Not every book with a couple in a romantic relationship is considered a romance novel n terms of genre. (Confused? Here’s an example: Nicholas Sparks’ novels are not considered romance novels by the publishing industry – or by their author.)

Admittedly part of the problem with all of this is the issue of whether a genre designation has any objective meaning. I’d say it’s like most questions about language: there are gray areas and nuance, but if the terms have no objective meaning at all, then neither does language. And the reality is that writers mean something very specific by genres – whether the audience does or not.

It’s true that I’m not as familiar with how screenwriters and Hollywood define the terms, but if we assume that by ‘romantic comedy’ Hart was comparing Booth and Brennan’s story in some way to the films that are marketed as rom-coms, the takeaway is that, A) their relationship is central to the story, and B) it has limits as to its angst level (he didn’t call it a romantic tragedy, or even a romantic drama.)

That means that not only will neither of them die (even leaving aside the contracts that Emily and David just signed), they’ll remain the focus of the story – as they have always been.

About season 8, Hart said: “…One [question] was how long Brennan was going to be on the run. It took about 10 minutes for us to discuss alternatives, but the gold in our show, as far as we’re concerned, is Booth and Brennan being together. So, it’s not a good plan to start out a season with them apart, for any length of time.”

But since they were separated during previous hiatuses, doesn’t that mean that the show could separate them from now until S11? Sure. But there are two reasons why I don’t think that’s going to happen:

First, if we say that the last light(er) episode was The Big Beef at the Royal Diner, and they go from that through the end of the season and into next with unrelentingly grim stories, including where Booth and Brennan’s marriage is in trouble, then they’ve violated that need to balance the darker eps (girl bullied to suicide, innocent man on death row, Brennan telling Booth to leave) with lighter stories.

Second, there’s this quote, by Stephen Nathan, in Entertainment Weekly, in March. I’ve quoted it before, in a different post on the arc, but it’s important:

The finale’s gonna be a big game-changer for all of the characters. What we’re placed in the position of doing, since we didn’t get an official pickup for season 11—we fully expect that there will be a season 11. We could be deluded, but we hope there will be. But we couldn’t do the cliffhanger that we had planned. Because of this loyal and wonderful audience that we’ve had for 10 years, we couldn’t just end with a cliffhanger that wasn’t resolved. We had to resolve the series in some way, so we tried to resolve the series and keep it alive at the same time.

Do you see what he says there? “Because of this loyal and wonderful audience…we couldn’t end with a cliffhanger [in case it wound up as the series finale.]”

The show is Booth and Brennan’s love story. There’s no way on earth that they risk having the show end with them not together and solid, and no, it doesn’t remotely matter what other shows have done, because this is Bones, and they’re all about Booth and Brennan and love, and the same people who gave us TV’s best wedding are still telling this story.  And that’s even if Stephen hadn’t made it clear that they’d never betray the audience who’s followed them so loyally by risking ending the story that way.

It’s true that this is about trust – I trust the showrunners, writers, and the actors to continue telling the same kind of story they’ve been telling for ten seasons now, where hope is never completely lost, and love always wins – but it’s also about logic. They’ve got everything to lose and nothing to gain by suddenly becoming a show where people say, “It’s too sad now,” and stop watching. They can go a week or two like that, but not four weeks followed by a hiatus.

Bottom line? The show is about finding humor and love in the midst of murder and death; it’s about how they love one another. Brennan began her confrontation with him about the gambling by telling him that she was proud of him. I loved that, because it shows us where her heart is, and how much she loves him. That’s not going to have changed between last week and next week.

The whole point of the show is what these two mean to each other, and how they overcome things that life throws at them. That’s not just wishful thinking on my part – it’s ten years’ worth of story. And because of that, I’m expecting to see the same thing in the next three episodes. I don’t know the details, but I don’t need to. I know the story so far, I know the characters, and I know how much they love one another.

Fan Review: The Murder in the Middle East (Bones)

Confession: I was pretty freaked about this one.  I believe in waiting until I’ve seen an episode to judge it, and my faith in these writers is near-absolute, which I think they’ve earned.  And yet…I spent my adolescence with a drunk, and I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch what the promos made clear would happen.

My faith was rewarded, though, because this was brilliant. Not always easy to watch, but so well done.

First, do you see how much time they took to show us that Booth is still the man who both we and Brennan love? This isn’t an accident. Addicts are not one-dimensional. Often, even in the darkest situation, they’ll display compassion, or humor, or heroism, or love. (Think of Booth’s ‘one perfect day’ with his father.)

This episode reminded us of that, reminded us that he is more than the addiction, by showing us Booth being Booth: protective of Brennan (‘hell, no, you’re not going to Iran!’); protective and caring of Cam (not only that she not go by herself, but also when he intervenes with the guards, saying, ‘don’t touch her!’); and then in his commitment to justice and his compassion toward the victim.

“End of discussion. I’m going with you.”

The Booth we see through much of this is my favorite Booth.  I love the relationship he and Cam have, and that even though we don’t see them together that often, when she needs him? He’s all over that, because she’s one of his oldest friends and she’s part of his family.

As for Cam herself…when Aubrey showed up, she immediately wanted to know where Booth was. Aubrey’s great and all, but when your life has just gone down the toilet the way hers has, you want Booth.

But he’s also ‘not-Booth’ in some key ways. Not only in his lies to Brennan, but when, having asked for her input about the baseball pitcher’s elbow, he ignores what she says? This is not the man who may snark about her science, but who trusts her genius absolutely.

Fortunately for Booth, the story isn’t just about him. It’s also about Brennan, and it’s in her where hope lies. Why? Because she both loves him and she’s made it her business to understand addiction.

For starters, I don’t think she’s surprised when Jimmy shows up. She gives Booth the benefit of the doubt by not immediately assuming it’s a gambling debt, but she’s not surprised.  Angry and frightened, but not surprised.

The anger is winning by the time she gets to the lab, late from dropping Christine off with Max. It amuses me a little when she references getting Cam and Arastoo back, but not Booth – not because I think she wants that, but because it’s such a human, normal response to anger with a spouse.

(Can I pause to say that while Max will never win any ‘Father of the Year’ awards, I love that she knows for certain that he’ll protect Christine, and that even the slimiest of bookies won’t have a chance against him?)

What I find interesting, though, is that she doesn’t tell Angela, despite admitting to Aubrey that that’s unusual. Angela has proven she’ll always be in Brennan’s corner, and I think Brennan’s going to need that. But sometimes, having someone furious for you doesn’t help in navigating your own emotions, and that’s what Brennan is charged with here: figuring out the best, safest way to respond both to Jimmy and to Booth. And for that, she turns to Aubrey.

If anyone is entitled to an ‘I told you so’ it will be Aubrey to Booth, but his initial response is simple resignation and a commitment to keeping Brennan and Christine safe. We see that in what’s one of my favorite exchanges from the episode:

“It’s not your problem, Aubrey.”
“It is if I can help.”

 

Later, when it becomes clear that he’s also trying to minimize the threat to Booth’s career, it occurred to me that sometimes, someone ‘having your back’ happens in spite of you. I hope we see a conversation where Booth acknowledges that.

Meanwhile, with the immediate threat of Jimmy alleviated by Aubrey, Brennan refocuses on the case.  There’s never a hint of anything being off in her video exchanges with Booth because she doesn’t want anything to distract him – her first priority is getting him safely home, and her love and fear for him, never mind the gambling, are seen most clearly in that moment when the guards rush in with weapons and then the video feed goes dark. She’s terrified.

But he does come home, and she has to figure out what to do next. And this is what I love: it’s never about the money. It’s not even about the gambling for her. It’s about whether or not he’ll put their relationship first, ahead of the addiction, by simply telling her the truth.

Because she’s both made it her business to understand addiction, and because she knows how much being a good man matters to him, she begins by telling him how proud she is of him. That reassurance is important. If he’d been capable of seeing through his own lies, he would have heard what she was saying: “you’re still the good man I love, even though you’re gambling.” She’s not giving up on him.

None of the fan-anger I’m seeing at Brennan makes sense to me. He lies when she asks him why he questioned her about the baseball surgery; he lies again when she asks if he’s gambling, and then, most damning of all, he lies after she tells him about Jimmy: “What happened, it was just a mistake, all right? Look, I made one bet. That was it.”

But he’s made at least three other bets that we know of, so the idea that if she’d just given him another chance, he wouldn’t have lied again? He’s already disproven that.

Regardless of where he’s living, their relationship is now broken. She could pretend that the lies didn’t matter (could, in effect, match his lies with her own)…but they would still be there: she’d see him talking on the phone and would assume he was placing a bet; he’d say he was running an errand, and she’d wonder if he was meeting with a bookie. He’s done that. He’s damaged what’s between them, and now that has to be repaired.

Brennan’s always understood that he’s a gambler. But the lies…the lies rocked the foundation of everything they have, and before they can begin to repair it, he has to acknowledge that.

I would have expected a repentant Booth to demand to know what Jimmy did; the protective Booth we know would have been addressing it with Jimmy in short order, probably with this weapon out.  Instead, he’s focused on minimizing the consequences of his choices to himself, and until he can show at least some concern for the cost to her…the addiction is still winning.

The only way to change that is for him to be confronted with the choice that’s now in front of him: He can choose the high he gets from gambling, or he can choose the life with her that he loves. He can’t have both, and in asking him to leave, Brennan shows him that.

In doing so, she’s my hero. She could have taken the easy way out, let him continue to lie to both himself and her. But he means too much to her for that, and so does their life together. But when he leaves? She has no idea whether he’s going out to find a game, or whether he might, just maybe, love her enough to call his sponsor. She doesn’t know, and it breaks her heart.

 

She’s willing to fight for what they have, first by showing that she believes in him, and then by making him face that he has to choose what he wants. But she can’t do it all. The next steps have to come from him.

Meanwhile, there were other stories going on which I enjoyed very much, both in their execution, and the character moments they gave us:

• I’m quite ignorant about life in Iran, but I thought they did a great job, within the limits of the show, of showing a credible Tehran and Iranian culture. Whatever the reality, it felt authentic to me, and that’s important in terms of making the suspense work.
• I love the reference to Danny at the CIA, and Booth ‘cashing in those favors you owe me.’
• That scene where Arastoo, freshly kidnapped off the street, demonstrates everything he’s learned from Brennan, identifying the remains as Namazi’s son in a matter of moments? That was awesome. Go, Arastoo! (And go, Brennan-as-teacher.)
• I like that we see that Cam’s now on board with a wedding. It’s taken me a long time to get solidly behind her and Arastoo, but I like the slow, and therefore believable, character growth for her on that front.
• I may be dumb in terms of Iranian culture, but even I know public displays of affection are forbidden, so why the hell doesn’t Cam know that, when she’s been in a relationship with an Iranian for two years? That was stupid, and no, I’m not buying the ‘we’re in love, so I had to rush to him and kiss him.’ Teenagers, maybe, but not these two.

On the other hand, I loved Cam’s defense of Arastoo to Mr. Namazi. That wasn’t dumb, or impulsive, or culturally ignorant. She knew the cost, and did it anyway, and it’s beautiful:

“Why not? Because your son drank? Because he fell in love with a woman you don’t approve of?”
“I’m not surprised you defend him. In the eyes of Allah, you’re also a disgrace.”
“How dare you…You don’t even know Arastoo, and yet you condemn him. You don’t see what he does every day to uphold the pillars of your religion. Prayers, fasting, giving to the needy…the only acts of defiance he’s ever committed have been in the name of love. So I don’t care what you do to me. I will not listen to you judge him.”

Sometimes, things need to be said, whether or not they make a difference and whether or not doing so exacts a cost, simply because they’re true.

But I was also interested in Booth’s response to that scene: “Only God is allowed to judge. Our job is to show compassion and mercy.”

The theme of how we respond to people we love, even when they disappoint us, continues when Booth, Cam and Arastoo are having tea with Mr. Namazi and he says that yes, he still disapproves of the life his son was living, but…he loved him anyway.

It’s no accident that Booth was part of both of those scenes, nor is it a coincidence that the show reminded us in such a way that we are to be guided by compassion and mercy, and that we continue to love others even when they let us down.

A few weeks ago, I recalled something the show has said before, which I think is particularly relevant as we wait for what comes next:

“At the end of the day, we’re all going to make mistakes. We’re all going to do things we regret, even to those we care about. It’s unavoidable. But at the end what matters is how you address your failings…how you treat your family…how you treat your friends…how you forgive, and how you love.” (Charles, the victim in The Lady on the List)

Bonus Quotes:

“I used to work surveillance.”
“Domestic surveillance? I was just starting to like you.” (Aubrey and Hodgins)

***

“Mommy, what day will daddy be home?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“You always tell me to be precise. ‘Soon’ is not precise.” (Christine and Brennan)

***

“I don’t tell my name to strangers. I tell strangers that my daddy works for the FBI.” (Christine)

***

“I was told not to bother you, but I thought that you’d want to know. The CIA and the FBI are working on a plan “B” to get Booth, Cam and Arastoo out of Iran.”
“So you interrupted my work on plan A to tell me there may be a plan B.” (Aubrey and Brennan)

Fan Review: The Verdict in the Victims (Bones)

I’m a bit conflicted about this episode. It didn’t completely work for me on a couple of levels, but there’s a great deal here that I like, and some of it’s enormously important from a character perspective.

First, the nitpicks, just to get them out of the way:

The ticking-bomb plot:

As soon as the episode started, I knew how it would end: with them saving Rockwell with seconds to spare. This is just a personal preference sort of thing, but ‘defuse the ticking time bomb’ stories never really engage me, because I assume that of course they’ll be disarmed at the very last possible second.

To be fair to the show, though, the nephew I watch with – who’s seen every episode of Bones – actually thought they might fail, that they’d find the answer too late. The tension was real for him, so, just me, then, having that response. (Hey, I said it was a nitpick.)

The timing of the overall story:

I’m not talking about the mind-bending rearrangement of time and space where in the previous episode, Sweets has been dead six months, and in this one, it’s been over seven months since Rockwell was arrested – which was clearly after Sweets’ death. Oh, and Brennan is not noticeably more pregnant.

Though that sounds like a math story problem gone bad, I once spent a couple of hours trying to reconcile the time line between The Beginning in the End and The Bikini in the Soup, (hint: it can’t be done) and finally, for sanity’s sake, decided that Bones operates in a different universe than ours, on what I call BST: Bones Standard Time. In short, I take whatever they say in any episode that relates to time at face value and go with it.

But this feels a bit different, and I think it’s because, whatever is going on in the Bones universe, in this one, I had watched the events of The Baker in the Bits less than a month before, and that wasn’t enough time for me to relate completely to the time elements here – even apart from the idea that a capital murder trial/execution date could have happened so fast.

My initial reaction was that it might have worked better with more time between the two episodes, like, say, if Baker had aired last fall. But after thinking about it for a couple of days, I think I see the problem with that: as a standalone story, Baker is one where they failed. Not like in previous serial killer cases, where the team simply didn’t catch the villain right away, but one where they actually arrested the wrong guy. I can see why the show couldn’t wait too long to address that.

Tricky storytelling there, to show your characters making that kind of mistake, but doing it in such a way the audience doesn’t lose confidence in them. They did that very carefully, I think, by putting degrees of separation between the various bits of data Brennan needed to pull everything together, while emphasizing that she can’t see what isn’t there. Rather than discovering a single error that was made, we see her being given new information, and then pursuing it to find the truth.

And that gives us confirmation of what we already know: that they’re heroes not because they’re incapable of making errors, but because justice matters desperately to them, and they won’t give up. Still, in the conversation with Cam, what comes through is the toll the situation is taking on Brennan:

“Have you found anything yet?”
“No. I pride myself on my thoroughness, and not making mistakes, and yet I’ve made a mistake.”
“All the evidence pointed to Rockwell, including the knife they found in his car. This isn’t your fault.”
“Of course it is. It’s my work that put him on death row.”

Brennan knows that whatever the role the jury played, it was her evidence they were trusting, never mind that she didn’t have all the pieces at the same time. It reminded me a little of her reaction to finding out that her insistence that the jury follow the evidence in The Fury on the Jury had allowed the killer to go free. Other people make decisions, but she’s the one providing and interpreting the data for them.

Brennan’s not the only one feeling the burden of responsibility.  When Rockwell says this to Booth, my heart aches: “The truth is, once I’m dead? After a couple of days I won’t even cross your mind.” 

Because he’s wrong, and knowing he’d been responsible for an innocent man’s death is quite likely something Booth, like Brennan, would never have recovered from. Plus? I’m assuming that Booth is also viewing this through the lens of a man who spent three months in jail, awaiting trial for murders he didn’t commit. Yeah, that.

We see just how much it’s affecting him in the last scene:

“A society based on vengeance.”
“You don’t believe in the death penalty anymore?”
“No. Not after all this, no.”

The flat no is an important contrast to his words in season one’s The Man on Death Row:

“I have no problem with the death penalty.” (to Director Cullen)

“I think there are doubts, and when it comes to an execution, there shouldn’t be any doubts.” (to the judge)

(As an aside? I freaking love that this show gives us these moments, that we see them changing and growing.)

Another scene where that toll is clear is the one in their bed. They’re sleeping, but Brennan was apparently overtaken by exhaustion while reviewing case notes, and Booth is actually dreaming about it – either that, or is sleeping so lightly that his subconscious mind breaks through with an important piece of the puzzle.

I think this might actually be my favorite scene in the episode (and hey, that’s even with Booth wearing a t-shirt – did they not get the memo that David Boreanaz should be bare-chested whenever possible?)

Ahem. *Slaps shallow mind down.*

What struck me here is that their work partnership extends even to their marriage bed. There’s been a lot of discussion of what it means for them to be partners this year, and I know for a lot of people, they’re somehow not. I respect that, but as I’ve said before, for me, it’s the two of them, together, at the head of this team charged with catching killers. They work together to lead the team, tossing ideas back and forth, each keeping up with what the other one is doing.

They focus on their own areas of specialty, but they’re very much a unit when it comes to catching killers, and that’s never clearer than when they’re discussing a case in the middle of the night, in their bed.  Once upon a time, they tried to establish a no-murder-talk rule for home, but that’s gone by the wayside. Murder is entwined in every area of their lives, and at one point, I would have said that was okay, that it was just who they are. But I’m thinking that what we’re seeing this season build to is…maybe not.

They’re not the only ones showing murder-fatigue. Hodgins and Angela are both revealing that they, too, bear some scars from the last year.  It’s particularly telling, I think, that it’s not only Angela, who’ve we seen struggle before with a life focused on murder, but also Hodgins.

“I just started imagining what our lives would be like without all this death and shadow governments and serial killers. What a life would be like without my best friend’s house getting shot up. Where you could maybe teach at the Sorbonne, and I could paint stuff. Doesn’t that sound nice?” (Angela, when he finds her Paris research)

“If it were me, I’d vow not to put off any dreams until later, because later is not a guarantee… If you’d talked to me, I would have told you I thought you were dreaming a little too small. After ten years, I think we deserve to let life surprise us, don’t you?” (His later response to her, when he shows her his findings)

I’m tiptoeing here, because I don’t want to get too far into spoilers or speculation, but what we’re seeing is that all of them are damaged and tired, and that was before they nearly sent a man to his execution.

Writing on the wall, folks.

Finally, to end on a more cheerful note – how great was that scene between Aubrey and Christine? It’s a measure of the overall darkness of this one that the only humor was there, at the very beginning, but it was fun, and when I watched it the second time I was struck, again, by how happy I am to have another season getting to know these two. Whoo-hoo on season eleven!

“Can I see those gummy bears again?”

Bonus Quotes:

 “I’m starving. If I don’t eat soon, I’ll die.”
“What if I sneak you a snack?”
“Seriously? You carry snacks in your pocket?”
“Uh, yeah, in case of emergencies, like this one.” (Christine and Aubrey)

***

“I trust these two, your honor. If they say something’s hinky, then it’s hinky.”
“The last time I looked, hinky was not a legal strategy.” (Caroline and Judge Edwards)

***

“If it was Michelle on this table, I’d want the person who killed her to pay in kind. And so would you, if it was Michael Vincent.”
“I’d like to think that I’m better than that.”
“And I’d feel fine knowing justice was served.”
“And I’m grateful to finally be in a country where we can debate about this. But not right now.” (Cam, Hodgins, Fuentes)

***

“I’m not hungry.”
“Maybe you’re not, but that little person inside must be starving. It’s an eggless tofu omelet. Booth said it’s your favorite, which is upsetting, but eat, please.” (Brennan and Cam)

***

“Harbor no ill will.
Forgive those who might hurt and betray you.
Expect nothing, but give everything.
What others say is not who you are.
The love you hold inside is who you are.
Trust in the Lord for there is no other justice than in him.” (Rockwell’s final letter to his son)

Fan Review: The Lost in the Found (Bones)

(Housekeeping: My plan had always been to do two separate reviews, and I’d thought to get this one posted yesterday (I was off work) and the other one today or tomorrow…but then I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon participating in the collective fangasm over season eleven. (Whoo hoo!)  My thoughts on The Verdict in the Victims will be along either tomorrow or Monday.)

What a beautiful, heartbreaking episode.

From a case perspective, this is Bones at its best for me: a death I care deeply about, twists I don’t see coming, and character stories giving me the kinds of interactions I love.

Before I get to that, I want to comment on the criticism I’ve seen of the Brennan story here, all of which seems to boil down to it being impossible for her to be that confused about how pregnant she was, and/or that such a brilliant scientist could never be so wrong about her own body. They’re missing the point, though: It’s not about being confused or ignorant about how pregnancy it works. It’s about our mind’s ability to delude us about reality, and that’s something that reaches beyond IQ.

In fact, Brennan’s mind was probably using her science against her, giving her reasons to trust herself, for example, over whatever due date her doctor had given her. She wasn’t being rational about any of it, and from a story perspective, that’s good, because this is where we finally saw the emotional consequences to her of what happened last year.

She’s been the strong one from even before the season started: buying and setting up a new house, finding a way to free Booth; taking care of him when he was home; knowing the words Cam needed to hear to be able to autopsy Sweets; preventing Booth from taking an innocent life…it’s a long list.

And through all of that, we’ve not seen the cost to her of losing their home, of the months he was in jail, of Sweets’ death. It’s not that there wasn’t any; only that she put it aside, because that’s what she does with emotions she doesn’t know how to process. But the mind has a way of forcing us to confront stuff, and here is where and how it does so for Brennan.

It’s believable to me, and it not only allowed us to see Booth worried about her, which is always a win, but also gave us the scene with Angela where she finally works it out, as well as that lovely tag.

Angela quite often annoys me, but even when I’m frustrated with her, I know she both loves and gets Brennan, and that she’ll always be in her corner. And here? She nails one of those truths all of us can stand to be reminded of on occasion:

 

“We don’t like being shot at, or seeing someone we love die, or seeing them locked up. In one second everything can just change. Your children could be left with no one. And not being able to control that is really scary. But that’s just the price we pay for the things that we love.”

 

 

One thing I particularly liked is that Brennan needed both Angela and Booth – Angela to help her work out what she was afraid of, Booth to reassure her that their love is stronger than her fears:

“I have you now. I can tell you how scared I am.”
“Scared? You?”
“Yes, me. The reason I convinced myself I wasn’t as pregnant as I am is …I just kept thinking the more our family grows, the more we have to lose.”
“On the flip side, we have more to gain. Hey. We’re gonna be fine, Bones.”
“What, faith?”
“Love. Lots of love. Come on. Come on over here.”
“I’ll take love.”
“All right. I’ll give you love.”

“I’ll take love.”

Meanwhile, Daisy has her own issues. Four things touched me here: First, that we got to see her, Angela and Brennan spending time together outside the lab, second, that she was so startled by Jake’s interest – that felt very real to me; third, Hodgins’ gentleness with her, even though she retreated from the conversation; and finally, this scene between her and Brennan:

“If Agent Booth was killed in the line of duty would you go to bed with another man six months later?”
“Booth will not be killed.”
“Lance was a psychologist and he got killed. Booth is an actual agent. You have to admit that’s a high-risk job. Actually you both have high risk jobs.”
“This conversation is not pertinent to the case.”
“I know, but would you?”
“Sex is a need like hunger or sleep, Ms Wick.”
“Why won’t you just answer?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”

My favorite part of this is that Daisy won’t accept Brennan refusing to answer. She respects her, but she’s confident enough in her standing with her to push: “why won’t you just tell me?” And Brennan loves her enough to do so, never mind that thinking about it distresses her.

Daisy has always viewed Brennan as a role model, but Brennan’s never been where Daisy now finds herself, so there’s nothing for her to follow. But when Daisy needs that answer, Brennan gives it to her – and, in the process, shows us another side of her love for Booth.

Finally, there’s the heartbreaking story of Molly, the victim.

‘Issue’ episodes, where a television show tackles some current topic, don’t always work – it can be hard to communicate the message in a way that doesn’t feel like preaching, particularly while balancing the other needs of the story (in Bones’ case – humor and character subplots.)

I don’t object to such types of episodes because storytellers have been using stories to teach for thousands of years. But it’s better when it feels natural, the information shown to us through the characters rather than via information dumps.

This is the second such story Emily Silver has given us this season (the first being last fall’s excellent “Lost Love in a Foreign Land“) and this was another well-done example of tackling a difficult subject.

In this case, there were two take-aways for me.

First, that there are many ways in which we delude ourselves. Beyond what we see from Brennan, we’re shown that the adults in Molly’s life were all choosing not to see the truth, while Molly herself believed the biggest lies: that she had no value, and that her life could never be other than it was.

Second was a message of hope for anyone who’s struggling the way Molly was: hold on. It gets better.

Over the years, we’ve seen Brennan’s childhood/adolescent years in snapshots: as a young girl who would often not say anything all day apart from responding to her brother’s “Marco;” as a young teen, trying to fit in; then, older, when her closest friend was a janitor.

But based on what we saw in The Death of the Queen Bee, Brennan seems to have found some solace in her intelligence, enough to convince herself that she was valuable to the world for her scientific contributions if nothing else. It’s not that she wasn’t affected by what happened to her socially, though: when she told Booth, “I don’t have your kind of open heart” – that false belief about herself came from somewhere. But she had enough confidence in the value of her intelligence to keep moving forward.

Molly was lacking that, seemingly unable to see beyond the insults (“There’s something wrong with me,”) and that combination of believing the delusion that she had no value and the despair that it would never change, was too much.

 

 

 

 

Brennan, proving again exactly how open her heart is, gets all of that:

 

 

“Poor girl. She must have been really lonely.”
“The other girls ostracized her because she was different, and they felt threatened.”
“Making conclusions without all the facts is not like you.”
“I’m using my own life as a reference. Now I have perspective, but then, when I was isolated like Molly…it was difficult to imagine that I would ever find a life that I would enjoy living.”
“You never tried to cozy up to the popular kids?”
“I could accurately predict what their response would be, so, no.”
“I’m sorry, Brennan.”
“I have a wonderful life. I’m sorry for Molly that she never got the chance to realize that she could have one, too.” (Angela and Brennan)

Later, she says the something similar to Booth:

“And now, that beautiful, brilliant mind is gone because she couldn’t see a way out. I know what she went through. I just wish that instead of convincing herself that suicide was the only option, if she had someone to talk to, if she felt safe enough…she…”
“I know.”
“I have you now.”

One of the things I thought about while watching this episode is that a lot of young people watch the show, and statistically, some of them are probably being bullied, to varying degrees.

In the scheme of things, not very many people read this blog – a couple of hundred, give or take. But if you’re reading this, and are feeling like you could identify with Molly…what Brennan said? It’s true. It gets better.

When I was fourteen, I was not only dealing with bullying, but also with my mother’s death and my father’s alcoholism, and that feeling of hopelessness, of being unable to imagine a life other than the one I was living, overwhelmed me. When I tried to imagine the future, all I could see was more of the same. Like Molly, I deluded myself that that was all there was, all there could be.

I was wrong.

Last year, in my post on suicide, I said this:

“There. Is. Hope. You may not feel it, but it’s there. You may not be able to imagine a life without pain, but it exists, and it exists for you. I swear it. There are people who can help, who want to help…Death’s not the answer. If you stay, things may or may not be better tomorrow – sometimes it takes a while – but if you go, all is truly lost.”

If by some fluke you’re reading this, and are reaching the end of your rope, for whatever reason, please believe someone who’s been there: there is hope, for you. Call the National Suicide Prevention Line at: 1-800-273-8255. Reach out. Even if you don’t really believe it can make a difference, do it anyway (what do you have to lose?). Give others the chance to help you. They want to, more than you can imagine. We want to.

You have so much to offer the world. Don’t deprive us of that.

Bonus Quotes:

“Did you take a tone with me? What’s with the tone?” (Cam to Aubrey)
“He’s hungry.” (Booth)

***

“A bellybutton can’t touch a heart, that’s an impossible instruction.”
“Sweetie, it’s for visualization purposes.”
“Well, I can’t visualize it.” (Brennan and Angela)

***

“You think he positioned himself to find his own murder victim?”
“Fits the profile. Highly intelligent, narcissistic, like he wanted us to see his work.”
“So then he drops his pot brownie and runs? That throws doubt on your ‘highly intelligent” theory.”
“‘High’ part works, though.” (Booth and Aubrey)

***

“We have witnesses who say when you saw the body, you dropped your pot brownie and your walkie and you ran away.”
“It’s not illegal to run away from a dead body. You guys watch Walking Dead?” (Aubrey and Tyler)

***

“I want you to know that I remember every time we’ve made love.”
“Uh…That came out of nowhere. I guess I’m flattered.”
“No, I have an exceptional memory.”
“Yeah. That.” (Brennan and Booth)

***

“I guess guilt is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Everything’s in the eye of the beholder.” (Aubrey and Booth)

***

“The truth isn’t always easy to accept. Sometimes it’s hard to open our eyes to it.” (Brennan, to the girls)

Fan Review: The Big Beef at the Royal Diner (Bones)

No one who knows me, or who reads this blog, will be surprised that I loved this episode. Team moments FTW! Oh, so many feels, I don’t even know where to start.

But before I do, I want to say that from a season-plotting perspective, it was brilliantly done.  The show often has a lighter episode toward the end of the season, to balance whatever angst is coming, and I think this was that episode. But it did so while continuing to develop three major arcs (which I don’t think they’ve ever attempted before) and celebrating being the 206th episode of the series, and making some call backs to earlier episodes (always guaranteed to hit my happy button).  And it did all of that superbly. Well done, show.

Now, about those feels…

I’m a shipper. Booth and Brennan, and their relationship, is the center of the show for me. But I’m also all about the team (er, does that make me a ‘teamer,’ or perhaps for me, shipper just means ‘I ship everyone’?) because for me, Booth and Brennan, as individuals and as a couple, exist in the context of that ‘more than one kind of family’ they’re the center of.

Family dynamics fascinate me. (It’s the psych background. I can’t help it.) Sometimes we love people we’re not sure we like; sometimes we screw up and the waters are choppy for a while; sometimes we fall into habits with those closest to us, only occasionally surfacing to pay attention to those relationships.

I love watching all those moments, and this episode was full of them.

Hodgins and Angela:

I wasn’t one of the people who was desperate to see Hodgins reclaim his money, because I liked what we saw about both of them as a result of losing it. The world’s skewed value system prioritizes wealth above everything else, and from the very beginning, Hodgins has bucked that system.

We know that money doesn’t really guarantee happiness or a good life; Hodgins demonstrates that for us. He’s ‘all about dirt and Angela,’ and has remained so, happily, despite Pelant’s theft.

And now? He’s over-the-moon happy, but it’s still not about the money, but rather what the money represents: acknowledgment of his skills, science, and genius.  (In this way, he’s similar to Brennan – her wealth has always been less about the actual money and more that others were acknowledging her creative skills.)

“It’s not like I’ve never been rich before.”
“But that was family money – this is the first time you’re rich because of something you did, alone.”

(Hodgins is one of my personal heroes – can you tell?)

But getting his money back isn’t only important for what it shows us about him and Angela, but also for what it tells us about Cam: that she doesn’t always enjoy her role as official-herder-of-cats.

All of them – Booth and Aubrey, too – are brilliant at what they do, and they’re 100% dedicated to catching killers. But while they respect the legal system, if push comes to shove, they’re going to follow their own moral codes first. And that willingness to do whatever it takes is just as much a reason for their success in stopping bad guys as their IQs/cop skills are.

Cam gets that, which is why she’s as patient as she is with Hodgins’ experiments; why she finds money from who-knows-what-line in the budget to pay for his toys. But she also understands that they can’t completely ignore the rules for a Federal crime lab. So, no, you can’t risk putting someone in front of the jury who’s using marijuana, for whatever the reason; you can’t use the Jeffersonian to smuggle drugs to Cuba, even to save lives.

But that means she’s often put in the role of the bad guy, and what struck me here is that neither Hodgins nor Angela have understood that it was just that: a role. That she’s the rule enforcer because someone has to be, not because she wants to be. Her loyalty isn’t to the Jeffersonian, no more than theirs is. Cam is there to stop bad guys, too. She just knows that to do that, they have to give at least occasional lip service to The Rules.

So given a choice between the Jeffersonian getting all that money, and her friends getting it? She’s thrilled that, for once, her efforts to keep them somewhere in the neighborhood of those rules paid off for people she cares about. Go, Cam.

(Can I just say, though, that if I have a nitpick with this episode, it’s that she called them colleagues rather than friends? Angela has been in Cam’s corner repeatedly, including making some of those end runs around the law to catch the woman who stole Cam’s identity – surely that bumps them from ‘colleagues’ to ‘friends’?)

Cam and Clark

Confession: Clark is my favorite squintern. I like all of them, but yeah, Clark’s my favorite. I love that he’s so reluctant to be a part of this family, and yet, when they need him, he’s there.  He’s like the brother who’s busy with his own stuff, but whom you can always, always count on in a pinch.

Here, it’s that Arastoo knows he can ask Clark to reassure Cam, and that Clark will do his best to do so. I love that so freaking much.

Clark is damned good people, you all. (What the hell was Nora thinking?)

Cam and Brennan

But Clark can’t completely reassure her, because Cam can’t bring herself to tell him what she’s most afraid of: that maybe Arastoo didn’t ask her to go with him because she’s hesitating about marriage.  So who does she go to? Brennan, a woman who understands that ambivalence perfectly. Bonus? Cam knows Brennan will tell her the truth:

“Do you think…do you think Arastoo didn’t ask me to go to Iran with him because I’ve been so noncommittal about the whole marriage thing?”
“I imagine everyone is telling you he’ll be fine over there.”
“Yeah, but I can’t stop worrying.”
“Of course not. The truth is, Arastoo could be arrested in Iran, or even executed. If you were with him, you would have been in danger, too. He knew that.”
“Wow. Thanks for not holding back.”
“Arastoo loves you, Cam. Whether or not you marry him. That’s why he didn’t want you to go with him. I would have done the same thing.”
“So would I.”
“Then you should feel better.”
“I do. Yes. Thank you.”

I feel like jumping up and down and squealing. Look at that. Look at Brennan, who once lamented that her most meaningful relationships were with dead people, being the go-to person for knowing exactly what a friend needed to hear. Do you see it? She knows what’s happening (“I imagine everyone is telling you…”), and knows what Cam really needs to hear. That. Is. Awesome.

(Also? I love when Brennan calls her ‘Cam’ instead of Dr. Saroyan.)

Brennan and Clark:

Speaking of first names, I love this call back to The Ghost in the Killer, where she told him he should call her Temperance. That remains one of my favorite Brennan/Clark scenes, and it’s bothered me a bit that we’d not seen a follow-up to it – it felt like the show had just forgotten that that happened.  I should trust them more.

I’ve also been frustrated at times that Brennan and Clark’s relationship has been so competitive since he stopped being her intern because I wanted to see …this. Exactly what we got here, with the two of them sharing information. He no longer feels the need to prove himself to her, because he knows she trusts him; she no longer needs to compete with him in being the only one who can find the answers. They are ‘quite a team’ and both of them know and value it.

(And his helping her with the song for Christine? It was played for humor, but is also a reminder that Sweets wasn’t Christine’s only ‘honorary uncle.’)

Hodgins and Aubrey: 

This was a small moment, but I really loved the two of them together. I like this exchange a lot:

“In the field! It gives me a rush. It’s like I’m taking my own life into my hands.”
“I’m not sure you’re taking your life into your own hands. I mean, I’m armed, there are cops here.”
“Just saying, I’m not intimidated. Booth knows that.”
“Which is why he said, ‘you take him, Aubrey, I’ll stay here.'”

I like the reference to Booth and Hodgins’ relationship (though I suspect Booth sent Aubrey as much to keep a giddy experiment-prone Hodgins under control as to protect him), but mostly what struck me in this scene is that Aubrey is carrying some of the comic relief weight of the show.

There are no bad actors on Bones, and all of them have great timing and expressions that allow for a range of scenes from intensely dramatic to humorous. But Hodgins is often their go-to character for comic relief, and that’s understandable, because TJ does a phenomenal job with it. But allowing Aubrey to carry some of that weight (i.e., with the food fixation in this one) allows greater variety for all of them.

Booth and Brennan

Oh, Booth. You are mandibula deep in feces, my friend.

But that’s the way it should be – so far, they’re hitting every note with this story.

We don’t know how much time has passed for the characters since last week, but he’s gone from betting $200 on the Cardinals to his bookie knowing without being told to take winnings of $1500 and put it on something else. And this is on top of Booth’s having made enough to buy Brennan a necklace.

He’s winning, which is actually…very bad. It’s the hormonal rush hitting him when he wins that he’s addicted to, and the more wins he gets, the harder it is for reality to break through.

But it does, a bit, and that scene in her office shows us three things about this story and their relationship:

First, there’s enough guilt that he can no longer carry his GA token. We’ve seen him lie to Brennan and Aubrey, but he can’t completely lie to himself, and he’s too honorable to carry something he knows he doesn’t deserve. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know this.

Second, he appears to be using some of the winnings to show Brennan he loves her, probably as a way of calming the guilt. Founded on the delusion that the gambling’s not wrong if he’s doing something good with the money, it’s doomed to fail, but honestly, the fact that he’s responding that way is reassuring – as is the scene at the end, in the diner.

Funny pancakes at breakfast, rapping together at the diner – they’re still spending time together as a family. I’ve known addicts who, when they fall, skip work and family obligations, avoid people they love, etc. Booth’s not doing that, and it matters.

For the record, I’m not trivializing the gambling – just the opposite, in fact. I’m pissed at him because I love the idea of him giving Brennan a ‘just because’ gift, of seeing this look on her face:

But the gift is tainted. He loves her – there’s no question of that. But the gift isn’t being offered solely out of love, but out of guilt, and that hurts my heart for her.

Still…all of this is showing us that the man she loves is still there. Just as he’s always been an addict, the addict is also still the man who loves her.

Third, Brennan knows. I’ve described her before as the world’s leading expert on Seeley Booth, and …she knows. Maybe not the particulars, maybe she’s hoping to be proven wrong, but oh, yes, she knows something’s off. And that, too, is a good thing, because when they come out of this? I think the fact that he couldn’t fool her will be another source of strength for him in the future.

 

 

“How does it look?
“Like I made the right choice.”
“It is quite exquisite.”
“I was talking about you. I made the right choice. I’m just so lucky to have you as my wife.”

You don’t yet know how lucky you are, Booth. But you will.

Bonus Quotes:

“My grandmother can move faster than you, and she’s been dead twenty years.” (Fat camp drill instructor)

***

“It’s one of the best shows on TV.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. If I want to watch a guy put down a side of ribs, two milkshakes, and a double cheeseburger in half an hour, I’ve got you.” (Aubrey and Booth)

***

“Don’t turn your nose up at sweat, our armpits have a story to tell.” (Hodgins to Cam)

***

“I want to compose an anatomically correct bone song for Christine, but songwriting is more difficult than I thought.”
“Well it would help if you were musically inclined.” (Brennan and Booth)

***

“I got the test results from the blood in the back of the van. It isn’t JoAnn’s, and it isn’t Chili’s, either.”
“Well it could still belong to the killer.”
“Not unless Chili was murdered by a double cheeseburger.” (Cam and Brennan)

Fan Review: The Eye in the Sky (Bones)

Oh, Booth.

It’s difficult to unpack this one, because I’m responding to on it two levels: brain, and heart.

Intellectually, I think it was brilliantly plotted, written, and acted, particularly by David Boreanaz, Emily Deschanel, and John Boyd.

Emotionally, I’m a mess, and if I’m honest, I have to say I hated watching it. At times, I had to look away, and while I’m used to doing that when the bloody bits are on the screen, looking away when Booth is…well,  I’m not sure that’s ever happened before.

Which circles back around to …brilliant.

In my post on the spoilers, I said that one of the reasons I’d not wanted them to do this story was because we’ve seen so many years of Booth not relapsing that I couldn’t wrap my head around it happening now.

But that was before I saw the man who walked out of that prison last September; before I saw him broken next to his best friend’s body; before I saw him come way too close to taking an innocent life in revenge.

Booth’s faced some hard things in the past, but what went down as a result of the conspiracy? Too much. He’s strong enough to face fifty kills on his conscience, strong enough to face a brain tumor, strong enough, even, to watch the woman he loves driving away with his daughter.

But even that man has limits, and somewhere along the line of being shot to pieces, of betrayal, of prison, of watching Sweets die…somewhere there, he broke.

And then tried desperately hard to keep anyone from knowing just how broken he was, because if they knew, he’d have to face it.

They showed it to us in The Puzzler in the Pit, though. In my review, I said this:

I don’t think Booth’s that close to falling off the wagon (though I did notice he was playing with his poker chip here, and seemed more animated about the site than we’ve seen him about gambling opportunities in the past.)

But it was really more that I didn’t want to think he was that close to falling, because, truth?  I knew. It bothered me that he was that interested in the site Aubrey found, because it’s been a long time, if ever, since we’ve seen him look that animated over gambling.

Yeah, I knew.

What they’ve done over the course of ten years is show us a good man who’s an addict, but one who kept beating it, over and over, until life finally handed him more than he could cope with, and he fell.

I like that we’re seeing consequences of what happened last fall, because that feels real to me. There’s a point where the strongest person will break in the face of pain, and now we’re going to see how these people we love so much come back from that.

That’s the full context of this episode. The immediate context is something happy: they’re pregnant, and the contrast between the first scene and the last is stark.

We’re all reacting to this episode based on our own histories, and mine includes a background in psychology and a complicated relationship with addiction.  As I mentioned in the earlier post, my father was an alcoholic and another close family member is a gambler. (This week, his car is in the shop, so he rented a car so he could get to the casino.)

Here are two things that background has taught me, which are influencing my responses to this episode:

1. Addicts are not all the same. As individuals, our biology and psychology are unique, and to expect everyone to respond the same way, even to addiction, does more harm than good. Don’t pigeonhole people. Even gamblers.

2. Gambling as an addiction is often the hardest one for people to understand because unlike with drugs or alcohol, there don’t appear to be chemicals involved…but there are. The short version is that the hormones that control our responses to pleasure, motivation, and reward are different in gamblers.

So say that a man traumatized by his role in war goes into a casino to relax, and wins big. That’s a good feeling for anyone, but this particular man’s brain goes a bit haywire, and that win, coming after the hideousness of war, feels more than really, really good. It feels good enough that he becomes a bit desperate to repeat that feeling.

Or maybe it’s more complicated than that. Maybe he convinced himself that the win was because he’s damned good at whatever the game was: pool, cards, whatever, and suddenly that good feeling feels like a reward for being good at something other than killing people. Or for being in control of something when life feels largely out of his control.

The point is not that I’m making excuses for a gambler. I’m not. All addicts have a choice – to pick up the bottle, or not; to walk into the casino, or not; to pick up the cigarette that is killing them, or not. But as humans, we’re hardwired to respond to what gives us pleasure, and for gamblers, the hormones that control that are out of whack in respect to risk and games of chance.

I know that not everyone shares that perspective, but it means that what I saw in this episode was Booth being Booth. This is important: he has always been a gambler, just one who wasn’t gambling, one who was strong enough to say no to the lure of that win-fueled high.

And here? That strength fails, but he’s still Booth.

1. He still loves Brennan, Christine, and Parker. He knows in his head that no gambling win is worth compromising what they have. (But oh, he’s so screwed up inside, and he remembers that feeling of a big win…)

2. He’s still concerned for those around him. No matter how messed up he is, he sees Aubrey’s pain, and makes a point of saying, “It was never you, all right? It’s never the fault of the people who are close to you. It was him. It’s me.”

3. He’s still the good, compassionate man Brennan believes him to be; it’s still important to him to be that man. We see this at several points, including that he’s sincerely pissed that someone killed a guy who was fighting to go straight.

This is where it gets tricky, because we can actually see him balancing on that line between wanting to be strong, and in wanting to gamble. But I believe both are present – and when push comes to shove the good man wins enough to turn down that huge win, and arrest the killer.

(And damn it, I wish Hollywood would notice how subtle Boreanaz was with his facial expressions as he teetered back and forth across that line.)

Anyway…but the damage has been done, Pandora’s box re-opened. He remembers what it feels like now, to take that chance, make that win, and in the end, he lies to Brennan, and crosses the line.

It’s a given that he’s lying to himself as well: I was strong enough to turn down that pot in order to arrest Mid-life. I can do it again. There’s no harm in one $200 bet.

Oh, Booth.

But why now? Why the juxtaposition of this with finding out that she’s pregnant? Doesn’t that mean that on some level, he doesn’t view the baby as a good thing?

No. Absolutely not. Counselors know that change can be hard, even good change. On the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, happy things rank quite high (getting married is seventh on the list of forty-three life events; pregnancy is twelfth.)

In this case, I think it’s also quite possible that however happy he is about the new baby – and he is literally turning somersaults in joy – there may be some anxiety as well. Can he keep another child safe in a world where  the good guys aren’t always good, and where he had to destroy their home for a chance at living to see the next day? A world where he couldn’t keep Sweets safe?

Not his fault, no. But this is still Booth.

So I can appreciate all of that from an intellectual point of view. It’s a delicate balance of showing him gradually sliding into disaster, in a completely believable way.

But emotionally? It broke my heart. Repeatedly.

While I can be both clear-sighted about the reality of what gambling addiction is, and compassionate toward the mess this very good man is making of his life, it’s Brennan who I grieve for, Brennan who I identify with.

Sitting up all night, waiting for the addict to come home, desperately hoping he’ll be sober? Been there, done that.

Trying to figure out how to help him? Yeah, been there, too. If she pushes too hard against him playing in the game, is she saying she doesn’t trust him? Doesn’t believe in his strength?  Could his feeling like she doesn’t have faith in him actually then push him to gamble? At the same time, doesn’t he need people in his corner, saying, ‘it’s okay to protect yourself; please stop now’? It’s impossible to know which he needs more – her belief in him, or her tough love saying, ‘no, don’t go there.’

The worst scene for me in the entire episode is at the end, when she’s so afraid for him, for them, and her voice is so full of despair when she says, “he’s an addict.”

That’s bad enough, but it’s worse that it’s followed by pride moments later when he chooses to make the arrest…because even watching it the first time, I knew it was misplaced, that he’s going to let her down.

(And Boreanaz isn’t the only under-appreciated actor on the show.)

Oh, Booth.

So yeah, he broke, but the question is whether he stands back up. He can – he’s not the first addict to stumble and fall, and then get back up.

But he’s going to need her.

She can’t be his whole reason for staying sober – that’s not fair to either of them. But when he hits that bottom, he’s going to need to know that she still sees him as a good man, but that she also knows that he’s the only one who can decide whether he’s going to be a hero who just happens to be a recovering gambler, or if he’s going to sacrifice everything they have together for that rush.

I’m not a gambler, but my money is on him. It’s on them. Every time. Because he knows that this is true, and he’ll remember it:

“Because what we have here, this life, it’s better than any hand I could ever be dealt.”

Bonus Quotes:

“The safety system is being a little dramatic. It’s not that toxic.” (Hodgins.)

***

“So you came to tell me something?”
“Yes. We have to dig remains out of an industrial shredder.”
“Oh, good! I thought it was going to be something bad,” (Hodgins & Cam)

***

“I’ve got to say I’m getting a little freaked out by all the compliments.” (Hodgins, about Booth’s giddiness)

***

“I knew it!”
“You knew what?”
“Sore boobs. You’re pregnant.” (Angela & Brennan)

— (Ryn note: No time to discuss it in the review, but I loved Angela figuring it out.)

***

“Oh my God! That’s it!”
“What is?”
“I could…I should be able to…Oh my God.”
“Yeah, that didn’t clarify much.” (Hodgins & Jessica)

***

“Oooh, twenty-eight grand. That has got to feel good.”
“Yeah, until he was beaten to death for it.” (Booth & Aubrey)

***

“Relapse, okay, now you think I’m gonna become a gambler again, because we’re having a child. That’s how much faith you have in me?”
“No. No, Booth, that’s how much I love you.” (Booth & Brennan)

***

“What are you, my sponsor now?”
“No, I’m just some guy who’d take a bullet for you in the field, the same way you’d take one for me.” (Booth & Aubrey)

— (Ryn: I also loved Aubrey, all the way through this. Booth can’t really see it right now, but he’s a damned lucky man.)

***

“If the guy takes off, we might never find him – ask Aubrey.”
“Yeah, but what are you going to do? Go in there and ask the killer to raise his hand?” (Booth & Aubrey, with Brennan)

***

“I know you try so hard to let me in
But I can’t tempt you anymore with reassurance
well I felt daylight disappear with each explosion in my ear
this heart of mine might break and tear
but honey you’re not going anywhere.” (lyrics to ‘Anywhere,’ playing at the end)

Fan Review: The Putter in the Rough (Bones)

As always, I’m a little baffled by some of the responses I’m seeing online to this episode, because I loved what it gave us in terms of both Booth and Brennan as a couple, and Brennan as a character.

But before I get into that, I have to nitpick a little in terms of the eye-crossing pretzel knot they tied in canon here.

One of the perils of writing a show in its tenth season is figuring out how to tell new stories that respect what’s gone before; one of the perils of being an obsessed fan of such shows is that you know when they change things.  (Maybe it’s a pick-your-own-history-for-Brennan? When Max left, she was either young enough to be wearing the ring that Max returns to her, which fits Christine…or she was fifteen. If there’s a door number three where both scenarios work, hit me with it in the comments!)

Seriously, though, I think with a show that has as much history as Bones does (much of it very complicated), there’s no point in getting too tangled up in the details. They reference stuff from the past often enough for me to believe they respect their own history, and if they choose to fudge things at points in order to tell a new story, I’m not going to sweat it.

Here? I think what they’re emphasizing is that Brennan is still dealing with the ramifications of being abandoned, whatever the specifics were.  (Though since I’ve got The Woman in Limbo memorized, that’s always going to be the version I go with.)

So…with that nit picked, what struck me is that while her past is never going to stop affecting Brennan , we’re still seeing slow growth on her part in how she responds. Here, she’s worried, but she remains committed to finding out the truth; in season seven’s The Family in the Feud, her initial reaction was to sever the relationship over something as innocent as Max not noticing he’d lost his cell phone. (And yeah, I’m not discounting that she was a new mom there, but still, the response here seems more measured.)

The degree to which we trust someone after they’ve hurt us is often influenced by the full picture of what we know about them, by our relationship as a whole. In 2013, when Booth broke the engagement, some fans were predicting that she’d never recover from that, that her ability to trust is so fragile (due to Max) that she’d never bounce back from it. But that didn’t take into account that her history with Booth is completely different from that with Max, that her knowledge of him is different.

Booth is Booth, and Max is Max, and however much she loves her father, however often he’s come through for her in the past few years, she’s never going to completely trust him. She wants him in her life, wants him in Christine’s life…but there’s never going to be a point where she trusts him enough not to assume the worst when there’s a question of some kind about his actions. And that makes complete sense – her entire life has been shaped by his less-than-trustworthy behavior.

She’s never not going to see his current behavior in the light of being abandoned by him, both as a child and when he drove off with Russ in Judas on a Pole. (In that sense, I thought it very revealing that she labeled his canceling the weekend plans with Christine as ‘abandonment.’ That’s a rather extreme interpretation…which makes sense given their history.)

And yet, here, her knee-jerk response, rather than to walk away, is to keep trying to get the answers she needs. At the end, in response to Booth’s plea to ‘give him a chance’ she says, “I did. I tried to call, I tried to stop over, and he’d already disappeared again.”

I love those little steps of growth.

But what I loved more in this was how Booth responded. He’s always liked Max, has always served as a willing mediator between Max and Brennan. But there’s never a question that his first priority is Brennan. Whatever his own feelings about his father-in-law are, he is first and foremost Team!Brennan.

We see that first in the SUV on the way to the crime scene. She’s quiet, too quiet, and he zeroes in on that, wants to know why. So she tells him, and at first, he tries to put a positive spin on it, before giving up and acknowledging that there’s probably something to worry about:

“He’s hiding something, Booth, and with Max, that’s never good.”
“Okay, look, let’s not jump to conclusions. Max has been on the straight and narrow for some time.”
“Then why won’t he answer a simple question?”
“Look, you know what? It might not be as bad as you think. There could be an innocent reason for him taking off.”
“Really?”
“No. No, he’s up to something.”

There are two different ways of supporting someone who’s worried, and he does both: first when he reminds her that there might be an innocent explanation, and second, when he validates her concerns by acknowledging that there’s probably not. In either case, he’s right there with her – whatever Max is up to, Booth’s got her back.

With that in mind, he offers to put a tracker on Max and she gratefully accepts. I thought Aubrey’s response to discovering that, and Booth’s lack of any remorse, interesting. Booth may like Max, but he never forgets what he’s capable of – including murder, never mind his legal standing.

Brennan remains Booth’s focus, all through the episode, and the physical arrangement of the scene in the FBI conference room interests me:

As expected, she takes the lead in questioning Max, which not only makes sense given he’s her father, but also emphasizes that it’s a family matter, not a legal matter, seeing as how charges have been dropped.  But however much it’s her interrogation, Booth is very present, a wary guard who literally has her back. (And yeah, I’m over-thinking that, but hey, it’s my blog. LOL.)

The final scene between the two of them that I particularly love is when they’re walking. First, it’s always interesting to me to see them out of the usual spots (not the SUV, not the diner), more so because we’re not given context for it. Are they between the Jeffersonian and the FBI? Did they meet for lunch? Inquiring minds.

“I really don’t believe you’re this upset over bullet hits.”

 

What’s important to me, there, though, is that we see that Brennan still has trouble processing emotions at times, and that Booth both gets that, and gets what’s really going on. They discuss the situation with Max, and then return to the subject of the bullets. He gives her an opportunity to address her feelings about her father, but doesn’t press her on it, and …I sort of love that.

To me, Booth is never more the hero than in this episode, where he’s looking out for her emotionally, even when she’s confused and resistant.

Meanwhile, the other scene I particularly liked in this one was when Brennan slaps Wendell down for making an assumption: “Mr. Bray. I understand that fixing your new girlfriend’s clock may be a great way to impress her, but here? Your job is to impress me.”

We know she loves him; we’ve seen her heartbroken with fear for him. But she’s still a damned good ‘mom’ to him, one who isn’t going to let him slide, even when a girl’s involved.

And Wendell? His expression says he’d nearly rather go through chemo again than further disappoint her.

I adore that, adore what it says about their relationship.

 

 

So some nice character stuff for Brennan, Booth rocking it as a supportive husband, Hodgins at his best as a mad scientist and good friend…I continue to be a stupidly happy fangirl (give or take occasional canon pretzel knots.)

Bonus Quotes:

“I can’t get to the remains from the lower floors, so I finally get to use my superwinch.”
“Call the media. Bug boy uses a new toy.”
“I’m not going to let your cold dark heart ruin my lucky day.” (Hodgins and Booth)

***

“What’s that?”
“This? This is my new particle size distribution analyzer. Cam bought it for me. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
(Cam comes in, points to the analyzer.) “That looks very expensive. Did I buy it?”
“Yes. Yes, you did. And I am very grateful.”

***

“I’m a family values person. I was saving my marriage. That’s self-defense, right?”
“It’s not self-defense, Lori. Killing Troy was murder.”
“But Sammy would be lost without me now. Can I just get community service or something?” (Booth and Lori)

***

“What kind of psycho sneaks into a kid’s room like that to make a point?”
“Well, you don’t get on the Ten Most Wanted list for nothing.” (Booth and Max)

 

 

Fan Review: The Baker in the Bits (Bones)

“You know when you talk to older couples who, you know, have been in love for 30 or 40 or 50 years, all right, it’s always the guy who says ‘I knew.'” (Booth, The Parts in the Sum of the Whole)

Remember that heartbreaking moment?

Of course you do.

Not for the first time, it occurred to me a couple of days ago that we’re seeing those ’30 or 40 or 50 years.’ Right now. We’re living in them with Booth and Brennan. And that is a wonderful and lovely thing.

But something that’s always interested me is that if you talk to some of those couples who’ve been in love for decades, it’s not only the happy moments they reference as being most rewarding, but also the hard days, the two-people-working-out-what-it-means-to-be-one days.

I thought of that when watching this episode.

Booth’s messed up. He’s been messed up since spending three months in prison for crimes he didn’t commit, followed by watching Sweets die. He’s been trying to reclaim their normal – we’ve seen normal conversations, seen him smile, seen him be who he is, with Brennan, with Christine, with witnesses.

But he’s still messed up. He knows it, Brennan knows it, we know it. And here, we see it, in the form of a lost photo that’s a talisman to him. A picture of Brennan and Christine that helped him get through prison, helped him, I think, keep his focus on the life he was trying to return to.

And he comes a little unhinged because it’s missing. It’s not the image itself, it’s the actual, physical paper that matters to him. And when Brennan realizes that, she simply says, ‘Let me help.’ No judgment, no insistence that he’s being ridiculous to be so attached to the paper when they could just reprint it.

“That picture meant a lot to me.”
“Let me help.”

I love that she doesn’t debate, discuss, or try to convince him that the paper has no intrinsic value.  She simply finds it.

I suspect the fact that she understands him that well is what the picture represents to him in the first place: here are people who love me.

The story then shifts, to the case…which takes them right back to the consequences of the time Booth spent in prison. Brennan sees the facts about ex-convicts; Booth knows that there are men in prison who desperately want a different life when they get out, despite the statistics that are against them.

I have a complicated relationship with this part of the story, because I know they’re both right. Certainly the statistics about recidivism are depressingly real, but someone close to me, someone I love very much, did something wrong when he was eighteen, compounded it with stupidity, and then spent a year behind bars as a result. That was thirteen years ago, and he’s now happily married, is a good dad to two great kids – and spent the better part of a decade trying to find a decent job.

I see both sides of this. I understand why employers, given a choice between two candidates, one of whom is a felon and one of whom isn’t, will always choose the latter. But I also understand that there’s a connection between those employer choices and the recidivism rates.

So I knew they were both right – that sometimes, ex-cons only want a real chance, while other times, all the opportunities in the world won’t change anything.

But despite my own reaction, I kept feeling like maybe there was something else going on with Booth’s.

I thought of the man we saw in The Conspiracy in the Corpse, the guy who warned Booth he was going to be attacked, adding, ‘you watch my back, I’ll watch yours.’ And I wonder if Booth was thinking of him when he talked about the good guys in prison.

But mostly, I wonder if, despite knowing he’s innocent, despite Brennan’s reassurances (again, repeated here) that he’s a good man…if on some level he questions it. If the response to ex-cons bothers him because he identifies with them, not just in their experiences in prison, but also in their choices that put them there: “You know, I never like taking a shot.”

If we’re honest, there’s potential for some gray area with the men Booth killed in The Recluse in the Recliner. On one hand he was absolutely acting in self-defense – they were there to kill him. But on the other, he set it up, and the men themselves were either following orders, or being blackmailed. Killers, certainly, including of an innocent blogger. But not exactly in the same unambiguous category as, say, Pelant.

It’s entirely possible I’m reading too much into it, but this conversation, or rather, when he changes the topic at its end, struck me:

“But now I’ve been on the inside, right? There are some good men in there. A lot of them are just doing their best not to go back. Have a little faith.”
“I’d like to. But you were innocent, Booth. Connor Freeman was in prison for a reason.”
“Right. Where’s the address of this bakery where we’re going?”

However I feel about it (nail those suckers, Booth!) …this very good man might be feeling differently.

So there’s boggy ground there in terms of what Brennan knows vs. what Booth wants to be true, but did you notice how careful she was? During the investigation, she kept asking the harder questions, the ones he was hesitating to ask, but she wasn’t criticizing him for not asking them. Remember how in his face she was about not backing off the investigation in The Soldier on the Grave? Remember that? That’s not the Brennan we have here.

I think she handled those moments more gently this time because they’re in a different place now, as individuals and as a couple…and because she knows he’s damaged.

Cam and Arastoo aren’t there yet.

When a story doesn’t gel for me, it’s often because the conflict that’s driving it, whatever it is, doesn’t seem completely credible. But here, the struggle Cam and Arastoo face does, and because of that, I think this might be my favorite story involving the two of them.

There’s no right answer. Cam’s not wrong for wanting him to stay; he’s not wrong for needing to go. He could have handled it better by discussing it with her, but he was right that ultimately it was his decision, not hers, if they couldn’t find a way to be united over it.

I like the way the story plays out, too, as we see them gradually moving from her devastated ‘I don’t know what that means right now,’ to the end, where she lets him go. Plus? We see that Cam has been gradually coming around on the idea of marriage, and I think that’s well-done in terms of character development. It didn’t happen overnight; they’re not yet setting a date. But she asks what marriage means to him in the context of the choice he’s made and then, at the end refers to his brother as her future brother-in-law.

That all feels very solid to me in terms of character and story – and I’m really looking forward to the episode that follows up on it. It’s taken me two full seasons, but I think I’m finally on board with the relationship. I no longer need to understand how they moved from boss/employee to lovers, because enough time has passed that they just seem to fit together, somehow.

(Plus? I loved their shared embarrassment/amusement at being caught kissing by Hodgins. In some ways, that tells me more about them as a couple than any of the stories about them have.)

And then there are the conversations between the two of them and other people on the team.

In the past, there have been times when Cam was very resistant to any kind of sympathy or help from the others, but here, she makes only a token protest before opening up to Angela. I very much like that, too, for what it says about her development, and their friendship.

But the scenes I really love are the ones between her and Booth, and Brennan and Arastoo.

The team – and I’m including all the squinterns and Caroline in that – is made up of strong, confident personalities. But never doubt that Booth and Brennan, together, are the true leaders, the parents of this made-from-scratch family. They’re the center, the North Star from which the others take their bearings.

I’ve always loved Cam and Booth’s friendship. I love the complicated history that nevertheless allowed her to be the first one to say, “you’re in love with Dr. Brennan;” and here, it’s that she calls him, knowing he’ll be there, and he’ll give her the honest answer she needs.

“You want me to say everything’s going to be fine.”
“No, I want you to tell me the truth.”

Happy are those who have that kind of person in their lives.

Ditto those with a Brennan in their lives, who doesn’t wait for a call, but gives Arastoo her opinion, anyway, because she has something to say she knows he needs to hear:

“If you’re serious about going, you need to be honest about the risks – and honest with Dr. Saroyan, so if you never see her again, at least you know you didn’t lie to her.”

She doesn’t pull any punches with him, doesn’t sugarcoat what she sees as important: if you go, leave in a way where there’s nothing unfinished between you.

“You come back to me, Arastoo. Make sure you come back.”

Bonus Quotes:

“This is going to take a long time.”
“Then I suggest you start immediately.” (Arastoo and Brennan)

***

“Good thing you brought me instead of Aubrey. He’d eat everything in here.” (Brennan)

***

“These men are going to think you suspect them.”
“At this point, I suspect everyone. Even you.” (Flender and Brennan)

***

“Everyone knew, except Roger. That dude invented rose-colored glasses.” (Ex-convict talking to Aubrey about Connor)

***

“He was casing the place. He was planning to rob it.”
“Kind of stole my thunder there, Hodgins.”
“King of the lab, Aubrey.” (Hodgins and Aubrey)

***

“Keep your eyes open. You never know what we’re walking into.”
“I always assume bullets.” (Booth and Aubrey)

***

“He’s having second thoughts. I told him the world would have ended a long time ago if there weren’t more good people than bad.” (Booth, about Flender)

Fan Review: The Mutilation of the Master Manipulator (Bones)

What a fun episode.

The more attention I pay to other fans’ responses to the show, the more grateful I am that however much I love Booth and Brennan – and I do – that it’s never been solely about their ship for me. Not only do I enjoy all the episodes, far more often than not, but it also feels like I’m more likely to see stories about the two of them that others miss.

I was delighted by this, despite it being a ‘Booth-lite’ ep – an acceptable trade-off to me for next week’s Boreanaz-directed episode.

First, I liked the opening.  There are only so many ways to begin an episode, and starting mid-scene in the lab provided some variety to the standard hapless civilian body find or the team getting a call – while still giving us the humor of the civilians. (I think these two middle schoolers should get together with the two from the beginning of The Geek in the Guck and swap stories. The bowlers win over the porn-hunters, I think.)

Second, I liked the case. I’ve often griped about the show’s blunders with psychology (I adored Sweets but while he was a great profiler, he was a terrible, unethical, shrink) but this was very well done. The experiment Fairbanks was doing is real, first performed in the 60’s (and repeated a number of times since then, in different environments.) I studied it in several psych classes, not only for the results, but as a way of learning about ethics in research.

While I can’t imagine a university signing off on repeating the study now, it’s not hard for me to imagine the victim doing so on his own, given what we were told about him, so the whole case worked.  Plus? I thought the hydrangeas-turning-colors experiment rocked.

“Ooh…I didn’t know blood was so pretty.”

Third, I continue to enjoy Wendell’s story. I made a prediction over at Bonesology earlier in the week about how that would go, and was cackling with delight while watching the episode to be completely wrong. I love that the show so often surprises me – that lack of predictability is one of my favorite things.

Cancer is always a life-changing event, even if you survive it, and I like seeing those consequences play out. Having watched his father die of the disease, and then been so painfully reminded of how easy it would be to die himself, it makes sense that Wendell might hesitate to fully embrace life, and yet…as Andie says, “Death is just part of the deal. We all come with an expiration date.” If he turns his back on love, what’s the point in having survived?

While I liked what she said, though, Andie was the weak point of the episode for me. Sending him three (four?) text messages within a minute while he’s at work was moving well past the ‘crazy stalker chick’ line for me, and showing up at his work only added to it. The show’s never been afraid to show confident women going after what they want, but back off a bit, girl. Let him catch his breath.

Fourth, I loved Booth and Brennan.

When I’ve said I prefer quality to quantity? This illustrates perfectly what I mean. Each of their scenes gives us something different about their relationship, and I’d rather have that than multiple ones between them throughout an episode that don’t:

Booth’s trust in Brennan:

We know he trusts her absolutely where science is concerned; we also know he’s aware that she’s not really the world’s foremost authority on everything else. And yet here, when the clock is ticking down, he listens to her over his own instincts. That fascinates me. Why? Even if he was only almost certain of the answer, why not go with it, when he does know she’s not always right outside the lab? I don’t have an answer for that, and puzzling over it is going to amuse me for a quite a while.

Also, I love their faces here:

“You’re supposed to be a genius!”
“I’m never wrong!”

There’s more going on in the scene than that, though. While I like Aubrey’s snark, the best thing about him for me is that he allows us to see Booth and Brennan’s relationship in a new way.  His is a different dynamic from anyone else we’ve watched get to know them: he’s not in authority over either them (as both Cam and Sweets were), doesn’t have a history with either of them as Cam does, and never knew them at all prior to their becoming a couple. And while Booth is his boss, it’s not the same as with Brennan and the squinterns because he’s a fully credentialed FBI agent.

This is now the second time Aubrey’s wondered if a fight was imminent, and I think that’s important – not because one is, but because it’s a fair question if you don’t know them. We who do, know that no, they’d never have a real fight over something so superficial. But because we’re getting to watch Aubrey discover it, it’s allowing us to see them in a different way.

But more? Look at Booth’s response to Aubrey’s ‘is this going to turn into a fight?’ question, which is wholly directed at Brennan:

“No, it’s not going to turn into a fight, because I’m going to argue with Officer Stop and Go, and you’re going to go catch a murderer.” 

There’s been a lot of discussion about their partnership this season, but I can’t see that comment as anything other being exactly that. They’re a team, and when he can’t be there, he fully trusts her to get the job done for both of them.

Does he send Aubrey with her? Sure. FBI and all, but there’s no question that Brennan’s in charge, and they all know it: “What are you sitting here waiting for? She’s all yours now. Good luck. Just nod. Remember, nod. It helps.”

Booth’s response to Brennan and Aubrey’s shorthand:

I think he wants them to be able to work together…but maybe not this well. I wouldn’t call it jealousy, even of a professional nature. But he’s clearly uncomfortable with them hitting it off. I swear I’m not making this up just to beat a horse I’ve already knocked down – it’s what I really see: She’s his partner. They understand and trust one another in a way few others do, and he doesn’t want anyone else in that role with her, even temporarily. No one else is allowed to ‘get her’ that way.

His comments may be a little jokey, but they’re no less genuine for all that, and I love it.

Part of why it works, though, is that we get to see Brennan and Aubrey hit it off, and that’s fun. She and Sweets became family in spite of her lack of respect for his profession; here, we see that Aubrey not only respects her, but gets her science (in a way no one else outside the lab has done) while Brennan…she may have reached out to him about their common experience of abandonment, and she may respect him enough to want Booth to trust him at a time when he’s not trusting anyone else in the bureau. But actually working with him? She’s still making up her mind.

And when she does? Yeah, that’s pretty special, not only for what it gives us in Booth’s reaction, but also what it tells us about Brennan as an individual.

Handcuffs:

Seriously…what shipper hasn’t wondered about the two of them and those handcuffs? The scene fades to black while she’s still protesting (hello, broadcast network, 8PM) but it left me smiling, and my imagination filling in the blanks. (Tell me you can’t imagine her standing up to let him cuff her, prior to her ‘punishment,’ all the while still explaining why she’s innocent?)

Plus, this face:

“Instead of the fast and the furious, we’ll have the slow and the serious.”

Bonus thing I loved:

Cam’s response to seeing Wendell kissing Andie. Public displays of affection aren’t new in the lab, and she curtails it, but her threat about his job carries no heat, and later, she makes it clear that she’s happy for him. This is my favorite Cam, knowing how to balance the needs of the lab against the needs of her people.

Bonus Quotes:

“Enough of the squint-talk. If I wanted to talk squint, I’d go to squint-land.” (Booth)

***

“It’s like looking for a prize at the bottom of a cereal box.”
“Apparently you and I eat different kinds of cereal.” (Hodgins and Brennan)

***

“Has anyone told you you say some pretty bizarre things?”
“No, but I”m guessing that’s about to change.” (Brennan and Aubrey)

***

“Is it too much to ask for a complete skull? Sometimes these murderers are so inconsiderate.” (Angela)

***

“I hope I don’t regret leaving you alone.”
“That’s exactly what my mother used to say.” (Brennan and Aubrey)

***

“I’m pretty sure that two people liking each other like this is what everyone in the world is looking for, everywhere in the world, all the time. We were lucky enough to find it.” (Andie, to Wendell)