The "Bones" Past Seasons Chat Thread: TNT, Netflix, and Local Reruns, Oh My!

[WendyCR72]

There is really no general thread for old episode chat...until now! So, do you want to chat about the early years when people remembered who poor Dr. Goodman was? Do you pine for Zack?

 

Chat about prior seasons here.

[immortalfrieza]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, these days there are way too many squinterns! I liked Zack and definitely thought the whole "he's Gomagon's apprentice" thing was completely nonsensical, but I quickly got over it when they very effectively put in a few interns with varying well developed personalities and rotated them in from episode to episode consistently. Then they started adding in more and more interns despite the originals being just fine as it was that they throw in at complete random to the point I frequently can't remember who most of them are and especially can't get attached to them, and that's if they aren't just a one off character. Most of the newer interns are annoying in some way or another as well.

Edited November 19, 2014 by immortalfrieza

[shapeshifter]

In about 8 minutes on WPWRDT (MyNetworkTV or My 50 Chicago) The Pilot and the second episode are re-airing.

edited to fixed typo

Edited December 20, 2014 by shapeshifter

[Shannon L.]

Hi everyone!  My husband and I are on the last season on Netflix and, after watching the episode where Hodgins has that bug growing in his neck, we're about at the end of our rope.  The show started off great and was strong for a while, but the last two seasons or so, it seems to have dropped so far in quality it's not even funny.  We were hanging in there because in the midst the silly stuff, we'd get some string episodes--especially in regards to their serial killers like Gormagon, The Grave Digger, Poulant, that guy who was after Booth, but got Vincent instead...--but it's getting harder.  Zach working with Gormagon was tough to take, but the reveal was still a good episode, however, the Poulant ending, to us, was disappointing considering that the storyline was somewhat intense.  In fact, I'm almost hoping that there's more to it somehow.  Sweet's story about working with inner city youth seemed promising (he's become my favorite character), but I haven't seen any of that in the last few episodes. Can anyone tell me if they get another serial killer to focus on or is the rest of the last season and this one more of what we've been getting lately? 

[Mama No Life]

Watching the first season on TNT.  OMG this show used to be so good.    The one with her mom's remains is on now...she and Booth used to have more chemistry just looking at each other than they do now.  Of course, she wasn't roboBrennan then so that helps, I'm sure.  I miss my show.

[WendyCR72]

One thing I noticed about the pilot is, while there was the occasional light moment, the show was, at its core, a drama.

 

Now it's dramedy with much more (too much, IMO) on the "-edy" part of the equation. Not to mention the savvy Booth in the pilot, whom I believed could be a capable FBI agent, is now a doofus to Brennan's more sterile self. And I realize this is unpopular, but it's part of the reason I never really took to Sweets. Once he was on the scene, Booth lost IQ points so Sweets could give Booth pearls of knowledge. But now that most, if not all of the original writers are gone from the show, Booth as sort of dim has stuck.  :-(

 

I guess it's a long way of saying I miss the early years of this show, too.

[mojoween]

I will never get over the fact that Kathy Reichs herself wrote that infernal bug in Hodgins's neck storyline. I'll never forgive her for that, even while I add to her fortune by buying every book she writes.

The flashback episode where they pretend that Bones and Booth hated each other on their first case was on TNT today and I actually like that episode...except that there is no earthly reason they needed to shoehorn Caroline or Cam into it.

I can fanwank most of the other stuff, but it is very clear when Bones is drugged in New Orleans that is the first time she and Caroline ever met. And when Cam takes over for Dr. Goodman (which also still makes me sad, I really liked him) there is no intimation that she and Bones had ever crossed paths before. So Cam and Caroline should have been given the day off from acting, because that always bothers me every time I watch the episode.

Edited April 17, 2015 by mojoween

[shapeshifter]

I will never get over the fact that Kathy Reichs herself wrote that infernal bug in Hodgins's neck storyline...

I make a motion that it must never be spoken of again. Can I get a second?

[WendyCR72]

I make a motion that it must never be spoken of again. Can I get a second?

 

<Raises hand>

 

Of course, the show has had gross corpses since early on, but the bug thing was just...ugh. But as the show got older, it seems like there were gross scenarios just for the sake of gore and to see how the props department could top itself than it did early on, when it usually seemed to be a more natural part of a case and not just an excuse to show an eyeball or what have you.

[BigBeagle]

I hated the neck bug, also, but I'll watch 20 more of those if the show promises not to show any more melting eyeballs oozing out of a skull.

[Lizzing]

I caught a few episodes on rerun this past week, and ended up wondering what ever happened to Parker and Booth's brother.  I guess I can write off the fact both Booth's and Bones's brothers have taken for the hills, but you'd think Parker would have turned up here and there to hang with his half sister.

[publius]

I know the actor that played Booth's brother Jared is a regular on another show, Night Shift, so that probably is why he has not been on.

[mojoween]

As soon as Heather Taffett gets her head blown off I get sad because I know my second favorite intern is about ready to bite it. Those eps are on this week and it bums me out, even more than the retcon of Zach's character.

[hnygrl]

Oh, so I was RIGHT to stop at season 8 huh? I only recently discovered the wonderfulness that is Bones, but I just don't "care for" it past season 7. When Mr. Nigel-Vincent died, the show kinda took a downturn. Well, if I'm honest, the show kinda took a downturn when Zack was the Gormagon's assistant, giving credence to the long-held belief that all super-smart people really are insane. Sad. I loved that weird kid. When Hodgins and Angela broke up and she started schtupping the newest Squintern, I kinda skip those episodes all together. That was just disgusting and wrong to me, and to flaunt it in front of Hodgins that way and expect him to be okay with it is beyond disgusting. What Hodgins even sees in that woman...

I'm really not feeling season 8, (I always skip the first episode) it's just not really doing it for me. There's enough good stuff in there to keep me watching, but I have yet to convince myself that it's time to give season 9 a try, and I am so not looking forward to Season 10, and my sweet little Sweets...no...if I don't see it, it doesn't happen.

[WendyCR72]

So MyNetwork is showing "The Priest in The Churchyard", and it occurred to me that Brennan used to speak normally. She still had the same voice inflection, but that's...her voice. But the pattern was a lot looser and freer. I wonder why ED started to speak in such an affected manner as the show progressed, unlike the early seasons?

[mojoween]

I cannot even articulate how much I hate "The Ghost in the Machine," the one where the case is viewed through the skull of the dead kid. Bones is generally a pretty fact-based show (Pelant's shenanigans aside) and I just cannot handle how fanciful that ep is.

None of the actors in that ep act the way they do in any other. Ugh, I hate it.

Wendy I notice that in a lot of shows I watch for many years. I complained about the same thing on "The Big Bang Theory" that Sheldon and Amy sound nothing like they did when they first started in the show. Temperance is one of the worst, with that stilted monotone. She makes every line sound like she's never heard those words in her life.

[shapeshifter]

I just saw S02, E20: The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House (First Aired: May. 09, 2007).

Booth and Brennan looked so much younger!

[WendyCR72]

I just saw S02, E20: The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House (First Aired: May. 09, 2007).

Booth and Brennan looked so much younger!

 

Well...they were!  :-)  (But I know what you mean!)

[mojoween]

As soon as I hear "Sleigh Bells ring, are you listening..." I get SO excited because I know it's time for "The Man in the Fallout Shelter". I don't care how many times I've seen it or that it's ten years old I just love it so much.

Although, the stupid writers should have watched this one six or seven times because the Zach who loved his family so much wouldn't have become Loner Zach who wanted to watch the world burn (perhaps some hyperbole, but you know what I mean).

[shapeshifter]

The Patriot in Purgatory re-aired today on an over-the-air station (S08, E06, First Aired: Nov. 12, 2012 "While examining bodies deemed unidentifiable, interns uncover the identity of a man who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.").

OMG, every time I see it, I swear I need one more Kleenex than the time before. I think I'm up to 5 Kleenexes. I may not be able to watch it ever again.

[Mama No Life]

So MyNetwork is showing "The Priest in The Churchyard", and it occurred to me that Brennan used to speak normally. She still had the same voice inflection, but that's...her voice. But the pattern was a lot looser and freer. I wonder why ED started to speak in such an affected manner as the show progressed, unlike the early seasons?

Preach.

 

And while her voice certainly has become more affected and shrieky, DB has gone the other way. He used to have expression to his voice, and now he talks like he's literally at a table read all the time. I miss the spark in his eye and his michevious grin.  If they are so bored, why don't they leave??

[WendyCR72]

I miss the spark in his eye and his michevious grin.  If they are so bored, why don't they leave??

 

Isn't it obvious?  $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

[Mama No Life]

How much do they need? lol

 

I guess they figure after 10 years their chances of getting something else this long-running are pretty low. And the chances ARE low, I suppose.

 

Still, it hurts my feelings the way they have dulled down these characters. 

[BigBeagle]

 

Still, it hurts my feelings the way they have dulled down these characters.

Tell me about it ... Brennan has always been a know it all, but now she's a smug, mechanical, joyless know it all. Booth, on the other hand, acts as if all the life has been sucked from him. Heck, he doesn't even have the energy to shave, anymore.

 

Jack and Angela are still great, but the show's not built around them, unfortunately.

[Mama No Life]

I have been doing a marathon of sort (summer!), starting with the pilot and I'm up to season 7 (I skipped over most of season 6, haha.....GO TO HELL HANNAH).  Before you think I'm a slob I've only been skimming and watching the good parts--ie, Booth and Brennan.  I've learned that season 5 was my favorite, that Cam has always been annoying, that Sweets was too important to kill, and that I'm still bitter that they did that time jump at the beginning of season 7 and we never saw the group find out about the baby and their hooking up.  I guess we know how HH views relationships, because I didn't realize you had to stop smiling and touching and sharing longing looks once you got together.....

[mojoween]

TNT started over with the pilot today and I forget that season one Booth was SOOOOOO good-looking.

I'm not saying he's not still good-looking, but in the first season? Yowza. Also, I didn't watch Buffy or Angel so Bones was my first exposure to him.

[Commando Cody]

I have been rewatching Buffy recently. It was weird seeing how young he looked compared to today.  I don't believe that Agent Booth would go for the pasty look with eyeliner.  I never noticed it with the first Buffy watch, but Angel's look was a little bit too much.  

[secnarf]

I have been rewatching Buffy recently. It was weird seeing how young he looked compared to today.  I don't believe that Agent Booth would go for the pasty look with eyeliner.  I never noticed it with the first Buffy watch, but Angel's look was a little bit too much.  

I am also re-watching Buffy currently, and I couldn't believe how much younger he looked! Especially season 1.

[dusang]

So MyNetwork is showing "The Priest in The Churchyard", and it occurred to me that Brennan used to speak normally. She still had the same voice inflection, but that's...her voice. But the pattern was a lot looser and freer. I wonder why ED started to speak in such an affected manner as the show progressed, unlike the early seasons?

 

That's the one where a teen/young adult in interrogation alleges that the dead priest was a pedophile and Booth cuts him off and is like, "watch yourself," right?  I have come to hate many aspects of Booth's character and that moment is a perfect example of why he is terrible.  I wish someone in the room had said, "and thank you for demonstrating exactly how the Church covered up decades of abuse worldwide, you insufferable ass."  Later in the episode Booth repeats the allegations to another priest, which I've always found even more annoying -- you shut down a young man who many have been a victim but when you want to come off as the righteous defender of justice you can make the exact same allegation??  In the end, the priest had not been molesting the kid (because this is Bones not SVU) but it still grates.

[mojoween]

TNT is skipping episodes which is so annoying.

Also, Booth and Cam in bed together STILL skeeves me out. So glad it only happened once.

[shapeshifter]

TNT is skipping episodes which is so annoying.

Hah, that's nothing compared to what MyNetwork TV does. They air 2 Bones episodes back-to-back on Saturday afternoons: One from an early season and one from a recent season. They've been doing this for years. I don't know why.

For example, today they aired 1.17 "The Skull in the Desert" followed immediately by 8.13 "The Twist in the Plot."

Anyway, about 8.13 "The Twist in the Plot":

Early in the episode they mention to Sweets that Booth's son, Parker, might want to move into his bedroom in Booth and Brennan's house someday, but then in the closing scene, Booth records a very moving video of himself to Christine for her to see if/when he dies, and he makes zero mention of Parker. It just seemed like a mistake. Did Booth have reason to believe that Christine would never meet Parker??

[mojoween]

I've seen the ep where Brennan gets shot with the blood bullet probably ten times and I still have a hard time following the plot. I somehow miss every time how the body she is evaluating in the lab is connected to the dead security guard and the slimy security guy.

[Panopticon]

Hi Bones watchers! I have a question for you if you have a few minutes: In retrospect, where would you have ended the show as a show-runner or stopped watching as a viewer? Or, if you could, would you just erase certain episodes/seasons from the show's history?

 

People have been telling me that I would like Bones ever since it was new, but I didn't get around to checking it out until this summer. I've seen about three seasons. Everyone who told me to watch way back when was right; those early years are fantastic.

 

General consensus, both in real life and online, is that the show became absolutely terrible at some point. I suppose that's to be expected... most shows don't manage eleven years for a reason. I've heard mixed, sometimes conflicting, comments about exactly when it took that downturn:

 

"The show was ruined when they started to reach for contrived reasons to keep Booth and Brennan from getting together."

"We stopped  watching when Booth and Brennan got together. Or was it when they actually got married? Or had the baby?"

"All the characters started getting pregnant and it just got to be about weird baby stories all the time."

"When they made Sweets a regular, they made Booth into an idiot so Sweets could be the only psych expert, and the show never recovered."

"When they killed off Sweets, that ruined the show because he was the best character."

"Brennan turned into a caricature who didn't seem to care about Booth's feelings."

"Booth became completely joyless and doesn't seem to like his wife."

"The show got more focused on the two leads and they're played out."

"The show got less focused on the leads and the supporting characters were all annoying. They never should have gotten rid of Zack."

 

So I'm left wondering how much of the show I can watch without coming around to hating it or the main characters.

 

(I have, I admit, watched the season 11 episodes. They have turned out to be weirdly complementary to the older episodes I've been catching up on. I got to the end of season three just when season 11 started. That meant that I was almost simultaneously watching two episodes set seven years apart with the exact same premise: someone tells Brennan that Booth is dead when he isn't. On the one hand, it was nice to see that Brennan became secure enough with her feelings and his somewhere along the line that she didn't punch him in the face this time. :) On the other hand, the weird speech affectation Emily Deschanel has adopted is distracting and takes a lot away from the nuances of her character.)

[Julia]

You're probably safe until the end of season 4. Brennan could still function socially, Booth was attracted but not poleaxed, the people back at the lab were still identifiable humans, and the people around him still noticed and reacted when Sweets did something grossly inappropriate (although season four did plant the seeds of ubiquitous Sweets, wounded psych messiah). The Gormagon denouement was gross and unearned, so you could probably skip the last episode of season 3, and you'd probably be happier in the long run if you tell yourself Booth never made it out of surgery at the end of season 4.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Julia

[rainsmom]

I roughly agree with Julia.

 

The show was best in seasons 1 and 2. I wish, wish, wish the writers' strike hadn't happened in season 3, because that began the show's downfall. They shortened (and thus made ridiculous) what could have been a compelling arc -- Gormagon -- and they dragged on through season 4 the most ridiculous nonsense ever -- Angela's first marraige.

 

It's not that I hate the series beyond that. I don't. They have some good shows in pretty much every season, but those shows quickly become the exception rather than the rule. I liked Sweets, and I like most of the interns, but Brennan becomes unwatchable pretty quickly. That's a problem since she's the titular character. And once Booth stops coming to the lab regularly, a whole lot of chemistry was lost.

 

Honestly, I focus primarily on seasons 1 and 2 and just glance at select episodes after that.

[Ava]

rainsmom is absolutely correct.  There was a lot of damage done to the show in Season Three because of the writer's strike.  What was supposed to be a season-long story arc with Gormogon, ending with Zach as his last victim, became, what, four or five episodes, ending with Zach as Gormogon's apprentice.  Competely out of character for Zach and just plain bad writing.  The character of Zach was always going to gone at the end of the season, but the way it was accomplished was incredibly disappointing.  

Emily Deschanel's current speech pattern is very annoying as well.  It sounds as though she's having great difficulty remembering her lines.  (Baby Brain?)  She didn't always speak that way, did she?

Sweets ended up being a great character, although they really did dumb down Booth for that.

[WendyCR72]

I'm going to hell for saying this, but I like it warm/hot: I don't miss Lance Sweets whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I'm glad he's gone since, as stated above, Booth had to take a huge hit in intellect to make the boy wonder shrink fly. It just bugged the crap out of me.

 

I didn't mind Gordon Gordon as he and Booth seemed evenly matched and he didn't stick around.

 

And I like Aubrey. He isn't second guessing everything Booth says and does. Also, I do agree that Emily Deschanel has affected a strange speaking pattern for Brennan. Maybe it was the idea of Hanson and Nathan, maybe it was hers. But I wish she and the new show runners would please go back and look at Brennan from S1 to 3 and use it.

 

Oh, one more thing: I don't miss Zack, either. But I do miss poor Vincent Nigel-Murray.

 

Bring on the marshmallows and hot dogs for the fire.

[Panopticon]

Thanks for the replies! I really don't want to hate Brennan. We'll see whether I have enough self-restraint to stop before I do...

 

The evolution of Sweets in the episodes I've seen has been weird. His decision at the end of season three to let Brennan think Booth was dead basically because he was curious to see how she would react was downright psychotic. I loved the scene where Brennan realized Sweets' actual motivation and very coolly told him that she wouldn't tell Booth because Booth would hurt him. It was a completely empty threat because Booth would never have gotten physical over that and she knew it. But it was a brilliant psychological play from the woman who didn't believe in psychology and was bad at people. Let the little rat Sweets waste his time worrying about something that was never going to happen...

 

Then in season four it was like Sweets got a whole new goofy-harmless personality, I guess since the writers no longer needed to tease him as a possible Gormagon ally. His fixation on the Booth/Brennan dynamic is still creepy, but at least he's amusing sometimes when he starts offering commentary on the metaphorical implications of Booth trying to get Brennan to eat pie and Brennan wanting Booth to throw knives at her when they were undercover at the circus. But yes, that was funny partly because the other characters told Sweets to shut up.

 

I don't think I'll be forgiving Sweets for the annoying girlfriend, though. She's the first recurring character that I just don't enjoy at all.

 

I just got up to The Hero in the Hold, which made me dislike Season 11 a bit more. I hadn't seen Jared showing any redeeming features prior to that episode, but now that I've seen him actually make a sacrifice for his brother I'm annoyed that he's dead. This episode is also the first time that I felt like the serialized love story aspect of the show was being dragged out too much. It's been over a year since Booth and Brennan kissed on command under the mistletoe. He has his hallucination/ghost telling him that he needs to say "I love you" to someone. She has Angela screaming in her face "you love Booth." It seems like if anything is ever going to happen between them, they need to take a major step forward right then... and they don't. Not that the final scenes where she replaces his cocky belt buckle and he tells her about the original Parker aren't sweet. They are. But they aren't any more intimate than a dozen previous episode tags. It was a nice touch that Brennan never said "oh, you named your son after him." The writing allowed the audience and Booth to assume, yeah, she's a genius, she gets it.

 

Speaking of little Parker... the show handled him way better than it handles little Christine at the same age. I didn't cringe when I saw Parker.

[WendyCR72]

Speaking of little Parker... the show handled him way better than it handles little Christine at the same age. I didn't cringe when I saw Parker.

 

Funny, I don't mind Christine, and kids do usually bug me. But in terms of Christine vs. Parker, the narrative also made it easier because there was no need to see Parker frequently since Booth was not the custodial parent. Obviously, the presentation will be changed because of that different dynamic.

[Panopticon]

 

But in terms of Christine vs. Parker, the narrative also made it easier because there was no need to see Parker frequently since Booth was not the custodial parent.

 

Fair point, but I think that in early seasons the show did an excellent job of establishing that Booth spent a great deal of time with Parker that we didn't see because that wasn't what the show was about. In one episode, a victim is killed in an animal park and Booth talks about having taken Parker there recently; a few episodes later Booth spouts off a random scientific fact and then explains that he learned it watching the Discovery Channel with Parker.

 

Show don't tell is usually a golden rule for fiction, but Bones turns that on its head successfully on a regular basis. It's also amusingly effective when the show makes it abundantly clear that Booth and Brennan shared a bed repeatedly before they were romantically involved but declines to show the viewers. That's especially true in Double Trouble in the Panhandle when Cam explicitly points out that there's only one bed in B/B's trailer, and the camera angle shows that Booth and Brennan have no choice but to share a bed (especially since for plot reasons B/B can't have the potentially snooping circus performers thinking they're NOT sleeping together).

 

Anyway. Having gotten some episodes beyond The Hero in the Hold I still think it's odd that all that climactic melodrama went absolutely nowhere in terms of the serialized storyline. It seems like the show got thrown a curveball with limited David Boreanaz availability in the very next episode. (I mean, I assume there was an offscreen reason that Booth spent the next episode alone in his apartment talking to the other characters by phone.) And then things get really bizarre two episodes later with The Bones That Foam.

 

Seriously? Brennan needs Sweets to teach her to recognize different facial expressions? When did she become autistic rather than socially awkward from a combination of personality and foster care trauma? And then it gets worse when Angela has to explain to Brennan that sometimes Booth lies in the course of an interrogation to develop a rapport with his suspect, and then Booth plays dumb with Brennan to please her.

 

Exactly one episode before, Brennan had called Booth on talking about their partnership and their mutual trust to manipulate her into doing something she didn't want to do (cracking his back). A few episodes before that, she called Booth on his habit of telling her that she was doing him a favor to make her do something good for herself, often at his own expense. Back in the previous season, she registered with no help from anyone else that he was calling Gormagon "Gorgonzola" because it amused him to have her  correct him every time, not because he couldn't remember  "Gormagon."

 

I would warn future binge viewers to skip The Bones That Foam... except it also happens to include the first time Hodgins yells "King of the Lab!" after losing Zack. I know that it's almost universal for viewers to hate the ending the show gave Zack, but Hodgins' season-long arc dealing with the aftermath seems to me to be excellent. It starts with his horrified realization that Zack was listening more intently to his conspiracy theories than he'd thought and hits on his refusal to move into Zack's spot in the lab; his refusal to conduct experiments until halfway through the season; his setting aside the conspiracy theories; and his need to work his way up through calling himself "MVP" before he gets back to "King of the Lab." (Oh, and his "King of the Funeral!!" in The Double Death of the Dearly Departed is seriously adorable.)

 

I digress. A few episodes later we have The Doctor in the Den. The victim is Cam's ex-fiance, and Brennan realizes that Cam is upset through-- gasp!-- a facial expression and nothing else. And she sees it before anyone else in the room (granted that Angela, who would usually be responsible for having a socially functional reaction, is busy leering at the picture of the dead man). And after that is the Girl in the Mask,  where Brennan repeatedly goes out of her way to make  Booth's Japanese counterpart feel involved and useful while insisting that that's not what she's doing.  So I guess The Bones That Foam was a blip on the radar at this point and we're back to the awkward Brennan who doesn't get pop culture references but is still definitely neither a robot nor autistic.

 

Then a few episodes later is Mayhem on a Cross, and there's more weight for the argument that Brennan's social skills are trauma-driven rather than the result of a brain development issue. Can I just say that the acting when Brennan talks about how her foster parents locked her in the trunk of a car for breaking a dish is beyond fantastic? The way she feels like she needs to explain that she doesn't think her foster parents were justified in that particular punishment even though they warned her is perfect. I'm annoyed with Gordon Gordon for triggering the scene by sending Booth/Brennan after the special snowflake Sweets, though. The moment where Booth and Brennan are just chilling with Gordon drinking wine and making dinner is very warm and fuzzy. They're relaxed and happy and pleasant and how often does that ever happen?

 

It seems that I have three episodes left in season 4. I know that the advice to just pretend Booth dies when I get to the season-ending cliffhanger is good... but I'm probably too weak to stop.

[Julia]

I really feel like the longevity of Bones is due to a combination of a small but steady influx of new viewers discovering the good early seasons in syndication to replace at least some of the viewers the showrunners have driven away, and the fact that there's a generation of Angel fans out there who have never experienced David Boreanaz not being on TV (I think Castle is on the same life support, but wasn't as good a show to begin with).

[Panopticon]

From the High Treason In The Holiday Season thread (sorry, mods, for dragging it off topic):

 

Then Sweets, acting as a psychiatric professional, manipulated Booth into not talking about his feelings by lying to him about what he knew Brennan's feelings were because he didn't want mom and dad pairing off and excluding him. And then once Brennan retreated into her shell and rebuilt all her defenses, using Booth's addiction to prod him into an admission she wasn't ready for and an ultimatum because now Sweets was getting laid and he had better toys to play with.

 

I've watched all of season 5 now, and you told no lies. Wow. I'd heard a lot about how bad the 100th episode was, and it still managed to be worse than my low expectations.

 

This show did fall in love with retconning itself once it hit season 5. There's not only the 100th episode flashbacks, which make less than no sense when put next to the pilot or anything from season 1, but:

 

• The sudden insistence that the FBI would have a problem with B&B being together romantically! (Sorry, you don't get to throw that out there for the first time after 5 years of the characters making other excuses.)
• The sudden reveal that Brennan has never had a full blown romantic relationship! (Even if we handwave Sully as less than he clearly was, when exactly did the man she threw out of her apartment in the pilot have the opportunity to move a television in if they weren't together in every sense?)
• The reveal that Angela was the one who really wrote Brennan's books. (I know some people liked that one. It bugged me.)
• And the one that bothered me the most... the quiet de-aging of most of the characters by about 5 years. It shifted them from being impressively driven and accomplished at young ages to "the timeline makes no sense and that couldn't happen."

 

The other really bizarre thing about season 5 is the sudden jump in marketing. A whole episode about Avatar? Plus the constant plugs for cars? I give them a free pass for the episode with Angela and Hodgins getting arrested for deliberately driving out of their lane to trigger the new warning features, though, because it was amusing and true to the characters.

 

The Season 5 Prize for Episode That Was Probably Better At The Time goes to The Dentist in the Ditch. For the A-Plot, we have Booth angsting about Jared's relationship with Padme and having trouble letting Jared make his own mistakes or trusting that Padme might truly love Jared. It's quite a depressing story if you know that five years later the relationship imploded, Jared died because he actually couldn't make solid life decisions without Booth's micromanagement, and Padme mutated into a bitter shrew. Meanwhile, the B-plot is the fantabulous Vincent Nigel-Murray scheming to get a compliment from Brennan. This is also quite a depressing story if you know that within a year Brennan will be tearfully telling him that everyone knows he's her favorite.... as he lies dying. And of course Sweets is also running around, but I think we've established that I don't feel bad about knowing that he will eventually die horribly. Couldn't the writers have killed Sweets three times and let Jared and Vincent live?

 

Speaking of Sweets, he proposes to Daisy and then when she says "I have a once in a lifetime career opportunity that will take me out of the country for a finite amount of time" he's all "I won't wait for you" like he's the wounded party? There's literally nothing likable about the man at this point. I don't like Daisy, either, but at least she wasn't fool enough to stay and stroke his ego.

 

The Season 5 Prize for Episode That Was Much Better Than I Expected goes to The Boy With the Answer. I was prepared to side-eye the hell out of the show for wringing the Gravedigger plot dry with severely diminishing returns, but I spent 44 minutes  mesmerized and happily suspending disbelief where needed. The acting and characterization were spectacular.

 

For all the retconning and advertising, there's a lot to like about Season 5:

 

I thought Hodgins' and Angela's reunion in The Witch in the Wardrobe was practically perfect. As with a lot of television shows, the B-couple gets better high points than the A-couple because there's less worry about stretching their milestones out for the length of the series.

 

"You don't look good today. Your smile is average at best."

 

"It was like we were both playing chicken and then we both swerved."
"What we should've done is crashed right into each other."

 

And the fact that all the wedding vow he needed was "I'm your guy" was wonderful.

 

Season 5 also has the first appearance of Ralph Waite as Booth's grandfather, and that's hard to pass up. The casting for the core characters' families (celebrity stunt casting and otherwise) is always so spot-on. So of course The Foot in the Foreclosure has a lot of death-by-cuteness as well as the usual kind of death. I can't hate on a season that has Hank calling Brennan to tell her to tell Booth that Hank's making grilled cheese for dinner, and Brennan bouncing on her toes bragging to Booth that she's invited.

 

Sooo.... on to season 6. I'm morbidly curious to meet the infamous Hannah.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Panopticon

[Julia]

Sooo.... on to season 6. I'm morbidly curious to meet the infamous Hannah.

Did you see an episode of House called One Day, One Room, where a rape victim refused treatment and attempted suicide to blackmail House into hanging out and randomly chatting socially, then screeched for the rest of the hour when he said anything which suggested she was being manipulative and trying to control him?

It was pretty much Katheryn Winnick's Hannah whittled down to an hour, if you want to save yourself some time.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Julia

[Julia]

Wow. I've been catching up on BDS episodes on TNT, and we just got back to the reintroduction of Booth's mom. And wow, I judge her _so hard_. Her big apology was for being insensitive about introducing the subject of her new family? How about not making a phone call from a bus station to let the cops know there are two little kids alone with a pissed-off violent drunk who nearly killed you that one time? That ever ruffle the smooth waters of your hard-won serenity, lady?

I increasingly think the original producers really must have loathed David Boreanaz.

[Panopticon]

I assumed that that was just in keeping with the show's really weird over-arching thoughts about motherhood.

 

A few weeks ago TNT aired Brennan's pregnancy with Christine. Angela told Brennan that the baby would mean Brennan would never be alone again. Setting aside the myriad real-world reasons why that's a bizarre and probably untrue thing to say...

 

Angela says it while talking to a woman whose mother abandoned her. Sure, she had reasons and ended up getting killed, but she still wasn't together-forever with her daughter. 

 

Angela says it while talking to a woman whose baby-daddy was abandoned to the tender ministrations of his drunken abusive father by his mother.

 

Angela says it although she herself, as far as I can tell, has never found her own mother worth mentioning. Apparently Angela appeared fully-formed out of Billy Gibbons' forehead.

 

Angela says it although her own husband, the fourth of the characters who lasted all eleven seasons, also lost his mother at a young age and mainly discusses his childhood in terms of expensive private schools rather than family.

 

And of course this took place as part of an over-arching plot where Brennan's own pregnancy/motherhood was a punchline and Brennan herself lost all vestiges of humanity. (Not so-oddly-enough with the exception of the very nicely done episode where Booth's father dies. Because fatherhood is serious and complicated, maybe, and worthy of bringing out human Brennan to talk about how time isn't linear and Booth's few happy experiences with his father are happening right now so he can keep them. That was glaringly lovely in the middle of a mess. As was Hank snapping at Booth to remember that Hank was mourning his son despite the conflicting feelings of having raised a child who would hit his own children.)

[Julia]

I'm sure you're right. But whoever was coming up with this stuff needs way more therapy than they're getting.

[Panopticon]

Yes, there's undoubtedly someone involved who should move into the psychiatrist's office, because s/he needs all the therapy.

 

But now that I've watched that episode (I guess I need some therapy too due to my questionable television watching decisions) I have to agree that it does look kind of personal toward David Boreanaz. To his credit, he did as well as anyone possibly could with a script that steadfastly refused his character any kind of remotely human reactions or feelings.

 

Here's my new theory: Before season 8, everyone behind the scenes divided up into teams and had a contest. Each team was assigned one of the main protagonists, and the winning team was the one who twisted the assigned character's backstory in the most bizarre possible way. Once Team Brennan came up with "she has no personality or agency of her own... it's all just a reaction to her mother telling her to use her brain one time!", Team Booth was left with nothing but "let's make a woman's decision to run away from her violent husband completely unsympathetic."

 

Team Brennan probably wins, but Team Booth gave it a great try with the incredible number of ways that that episode doesn't make sense.

 

Why the buildup of the Greek chorus thinking Booth was too calm/happy/forgiving if said Greek chorus was just going to turn around and judge him the minute he had a negative thought about his mother leaving him with an abusive drunk and not looking back for 24 years?

 

Why did this woman only want one of the two sons she'd abandoned to walk her down the aisle? Jared got name-checked a few times, but there was no mention of any attempt to contact him. And during her self-satisfied speech about how she "always knew Seeley was strong and special enough to grow up and have a good life without me," how could anyone resist saying "what about your other kid?" If Booth was so young when she bounced that she wasn't sure he'd remember her when he saw her again, was Jared a baby who she decided was also strong enough to deal with the drunk on his own?

 

Even the props made no sense. Why was a kid from Pennsylvania a regular at a playground in DC? If that stuffed Philly Phanatic she gifted to Christine had been baby Booth's, (and they were clear that it was his, not one like his) why was it so bright and fluffy and new? And how could Booth possibly be young enough to have had a stuffed Philly Phanatic as a baby, since the mascot was invented in 1978? And why would she be sentimental enough to get her son's favorite toy out of the house of horrors but not, you know, her actual sons?

 

Booth showing up for that wedding is further proof that he had a lobotomy along with the tumor removal at the end of season 4.

[Julia]

And why would she be sentimental enough to get her son's favorite toy out of the house of horrors but not, you know, her actual sons?

 

Dear son:

 

Leaving. Good luck with dad. I'm sure you can handle it.

 

I took your woobie.

 

Love, Mom

[Panopticon]

Cam wins at motherhood. She left little Michelle a half of a salt and pepper shaker set, which is way better than swiping a woobie. Actually, Cam/Michelle is the exception that proves the rule with motherhood and this show. I pretty much always enjoy their episodes, which is doubly impressive because the old soap opera staple "meet a major character's long-lost teenage daughter that she never mentioned before!" almost never works.

 

On another note, I skimmed through some of season nine and among the myriad in-episode advertisements was Hodgins saying he had set his DVR to record Sleepy Hollow so he was good to work late. Obviously this demonstrates that Hodgins has great taste, since season 1 of Sleepy Hollow was excellent and should have been on many more DVRs. But also... if Sleepy Hollow exists as a television show in the Bones universe, then the appearance of Ichabod and Abbie at the Jeffersonian in season eleven had to have been a mass hallucination caused by tainted Halloween candy, right?

[Julia]

Cam wins at motherhood. She left little Michelle a half of a salt and pepper shaker set, which is way better than swiping a woobie. Actually, Cam/Michelle is the exception that proves the rule with motherhood and this show. I pretty much always enjoy their episodes, which is doubly impressive because the old soap opera staple "meet a major character's long-lost teenage daughter that she never mentioned before!" almost never works.

Oh, testify. Case in point: Sarah Michelle Gellar was Erica Kane's long lost teenaged daughter, and look how that worked out.

On another note, I skimmed through some of season nine and among the myriad in-episode advertisements was Hodgins saying he had set his DVR to record Sleepy Hollow so he was good to work late.

Maybe he was recording the movie?