S11.E05: The Ressurection In The Remains (1)

[WendyCR72]

To make up for the other episode thread being late, I'll put this one up really early!

 

It’s Halloween time at The Jeffersonian as the team gets a surprise visit from Lt. Abbie Mills and Ichabod Crane, who have traveled from the spooky town of Sleepy Hollow to help on a murder case of a young woman whose body is found on top of a 18th century military general’s headless body. The new foursome must figure out how to work together to discover who the 200-year-old headless corpse is and how the two murders are linked. Meanwhile, Booth and Brennan come up with the ultimate Halloween pranks to play on each other.

 

Crossover episode with Sleepy Hollow Season 3, Episode 5.

[Watermelon]

That unnamed school's gross anatomy lab isn't in the hospital in real life. And if the unnamed school ISNT St. Francis, the director did a terrible job of hiding the real name of where they were filming.

 

ETA: Was happy to see Fake School/Hospital was indeed named St. Francis.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Watermelon

[Browncoat]

I don't normally watch Bones -- do I need to watch this ep for tonight's Sleepy Hollow to make sense?

[secnarf]

I don't normally watch Bones -- do I need to watch this ep for tonight's Sleepy Hollow to make sense?

Well, since we don't know how the story will go, we can't say for sure.

Usually they do some sort of recap with crossovers but I don't know for sure if they'll do that.

I am just hoping that I don't have to watch Sleepy Hollow to get a resolution to the story on Bones :P

I'm not a fan of crossovers, especially when I don't watch one of the shows.

Edited October 30, 2015 by secnarf

[bmoore4026]

Ultra Atheist Bones teams with the Sleepy Hollow gang.  Bit like water and cyanide.

 

I'm not as religious as I once was, but this show's constant bashing over the head of "NO GOD!  NO AFTERLIFE!!!  SCIENCE!  SCIENCE!  SCIENCE!  ALL IS SCIENCE!" is goddamn tiresome.  I'd feel the same way if a certain religious denomination bashed everyone over the head with those beliefs. 

 

Why have this crossover?  The two shows are completely incompatible.  One show's based on scientific orthodoxy and the other's into pseudo-historic supernatural conspiracy theories.  This isn't like a Law and Order show crossing over with Chicago PD.  The mixing of characters from shows so starkly different was a bad idea.

 

There.  I'm done with my rant.

[Browncoat]

I guess I should have asked if this ended unresolved, with the resolution to come in Sleepy Hollow (which might have been mentioned at the end), rather than asking if I needed to watch this Bones.

 

I ended up recording it while I watched Heroes, and am recording Sleepy Hollow now, so I'll watch them both later. 

[editorgrrl]

I guess I should have asked if this ended unresolved, with the resolution to come in Sleepy Hollow (which might have been mentioned at the end), rather than asking if I needed to watch this Bones.

Bones was a self-contained story, and Sleepy Hollow picks up after Bones. So I think one could watch either/or.

[Watermelon]

If you only want to watch Bones, you can.  There's a reason why Ichabod/Abbie are there, but it doesn't REALLY have much to do with the main case.  There's only a passing reference to Ichabod's age that hints to the Sleepy Hollow/otherworldly nature of the other show.

[editorgrrl]

The best Bones content on Sleepy Hollow was

their kids' Halloween costumes: Jane Goodall & a chimp.

[Panopticon]

I appreciate both shows' spunk in trying a crossover. But even setting aside the supernatural of Sleepy Hollow (which could be and was brushed aside with little things like Brennan writing off magical fire as napalm), I don't think it worked.

I thought it was needlessly hackneyed to shoehorn in Booth somehow knowing and feeling deeply loyal to the Sleepy Hollow sheriff who mentored Abbie. Since both Booth and Abbie spent their respective shows' inter-season breaks at Quantico, why not have them know each other from crossing paths there? And Angela's comparison of Abbie/Crane to Booth/Brennan was both heavy handed and inaccurate. It was pretty clear that Sleepy Hollow never meant for Abbie/Crane to be more than besties until last season's story about Crane's wife and child was an unmitigated disaster. As a result, the underlying dynamics between the two sets of partners are very different.

I did enjoy Booth shooting the tomb open rather than letting Abbie crack the code.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Panopticon

[Julia]

What's left, however improbable...

...

I mean, the science wasn't there for authenticating the paper and ink that closely in time, and a signature being point-to-point identical is evidence of forgery rather than authenticity, but let's say in her inimitable fashion Angela deployed analysis of the isotopic decay of the handwavium and proved Ichabod absolutely did write it 200+ years ago and George Washington signed it (and Howe didn't actually make it back to England where he only became a Lord after the war).

How is it more improbable that the guy with the identical archaic handwriting got it through a genetic link with an ancestor than that he was somehow there? She's not a physicist, but she knows way more about genes than that.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Julia

[Commando Cody]

I found the acting in this episode kind of stiff and awkward. 

 

I missed something. I didn't understand how they could match a face in the historic archives without a skull. 

 

It was convenient that Ichabod just left his notes lying around so Angela could compare handwriting. 

 

I didn't get much out of this episode. It has to stand on its own in order to watch it in repeats/syndication without the Sleepy Hollow episode. I just didn't find the main murder story very interesting. 

[AuntiePam]

 

I missed something. I didn't understand how they could match a face in the historic archives without a skull.

 

I don't think they can.  That was just silly. 

 

The face-matching they used to identify Sarah's body was also pretty far-fetched.  They have access to millions of photos?  And they don't come up with more than one possible match? 

 

Sarah's body was in pretty bad shape for someone who was only dead for a day. 

[Raja]

Ultra Atheist Bones teams with the Sleepy Hollow gang. Bit like water and cyanide.

I'm not as religious as I once was, but this show's constant bashing over the head of "NO GOD! NO AFTERLIFE!!! SCIENCE! SCIENCE! SCIENCE! ALL IS SCIENCE!" is goddamn tiresome. I'd feel the same way if a certain religious denomination bashed everyone over the head with those beliefs.

Why have this crossover? The two shows are completely incompatible. One show's based on scientific orthodoxy and the other's into pseudo-historic supernatural conspiracy theories. This isn't like a Law and Order show crossing over with Chicago PD. The mixing of characters from shows so starkly different was a bad idea.

There. I'm done with my rant.

Yes and in the end we know that even if she can explain the science behind the happenings like the Egyptian scientist in Exodus Gods and Kings last winter Crane existing in her universe means she is wrong. So Crane and the Sleepy Hollow audience can chuckle at her.

[mertensia]

Why are residents retaking anatomy? Anatomy is covered the first year of medical school.

[paulvdb]

I don't normally watch Bones, but I watched this one because of the crossover. One question: I'm not an expert on facial recognition software, but would it really not have recognized the dead girl the first time because she had colored her hair?

[Mama No Life]

So my son accidentally deleted Bones from my DVR while I was watching football.  Did I miss any hint of affection with Booth/Bones?  A kiss? A hug? A compliment? The ten minutes I saw was arguing over candy and Bones pranking him, because, you know, that's what brothers and sisters do.....

[Badsamaritan]

Aw I liked the episode. I thought they did a decent job of mixing the supernatural with the science. The spell book for instance - Ichabod was looking at the contents while the scientists were looking for clues from the book itself.

And I'm such an Ichabbie shipper that I may have squeed when Bones suggested Ichabod and Abbie should begin sleeping together...Bones is an Ichabbie shipper too!

Also thought all of Brennan's facial expressions wrt Ichabod were on point. And I liked that Booth knew Sheriff Corbin as I think it's awesome how he is still name checked. I think, from all his investigations, that Corbin knew a lot of people so I didn't mind at all that he knew Booth.

[Panopticon]

 

So my son accidentally deleted Bones from my DVR while I was watching football.  Did I miss any hint of affection with Booth/Bones?  A kiss? A hug? A compliment? The ten minutes I saw was arguing over candy and Bones pranking him, because, you know, that's what brothers and sisters do.....

 

There was a hug, although technically that happened in the Sleepy Hollow half. I also thought the episode tag of the Bones half where Booth/Bones are walking out of the lab and his hand starts on the strap of her bag and then goes to her waist was pretty clearly affection of the romantic variety.

 

 

And I liked that Booth knew Sheriff Corbin as I think it's awesome how he is still name checked. I think, from all his investigations, that Corbin knew a lot of people so I didn't mind at all that he knew Booth.

 

I think it worked from a Sleepy Hollow perspective but not from a Bones perspective. They were starting with a premise that would inherently have the Bones universe bowing to the Sleepy Hollow universe (Brennan can explain the supernatural away but according to Sleepy Hollow her science is wrong). So I don't think they should have thrown in the extra name checking of the small town sheriff  who Booth so!deeply!respected! even though he never previously mentioned him. Plus I didn't think DB sold it. Honestly I thought both of the Bones leads were projecting some serious boredom.

[benteen]

This was only the second episode I've seen of Bones (the first being the JFK episode) and I enjoyed it.  I thought all the characters from the two shows worked well together.

[Julia]

So my son accidentally deleted Bones from my DVR while I was watching football.  Did I miss any hint of affection with Booth/Bones?  A kiss? A hug? A compliment? The ten minutes I saw was arguing over candy and Bones pranking him, because, you know, that's what brothers and sisters do.....

Booth told Ichabod and Abbie that being romantically involved with your partner is a good idea, and when Ichabod told Brennan that there was obviously more between her and Booth than a biological imperative to have offspring, she told him they have sex a lot.

Or did you mean did they behave in a way that you could tell that they weren't a brother and sister who talk dispassionately about sex more often than most siblings? Of course not.

[Trey]

I enjoyed it too, probably the most of any Bones episode lately. I don't watch Sleepy Hollow but I'm familiar with the premise of it so the guest stars weren't total strangers to me. I do like Ichabod Crane - he reminds me lot of Jonny Lee Miller's version of Sherlock Holmes - and I thought he and Bones interacted very well. Still, I was glad that I didn't have to watch Sleepy Hollow to see the mystery resolved.

 

Angela making a facial reconstruction based only the size of the body was ridiculous - of course I think most of what Angela does is ridiculous so that wasn't new.

[jhlipton]

So let me get this straight... On this science-y show:

Joel has his heart stopped and started and he's able to find, hold and whack Sarah with a 200-year-old skull, which does not crumble or even break.  Her artery opens which causes her blood to shoot straight up, with no drops at all hitting the table or the floor.

 

I may have missed something when the illium carpesium was struck by the titanium oxide hitting the scapular frisbee.

 

From what I'm seeing there was very little crossover effect -- I doubt either show picked up many new watchers.

Edited October 30, 2015 by jhlipton

[Clanstarling]

So let me get this straight... On this science-y show:

Joel has his heart stopped and started and he's able to find, hold and whack Sarah with a 200-year-old skull, which does not crumble or even break.  Her artery opens which causes her blood to shoot straight up, with no drops at all hitting the table or the floor.

The unshattered skull took me right out of it too. Unless I missed it, neither the pretty pastel dress she was wearing, nor the rest of her body, had any evidence of blood (which, gravity - no matter what position she was in). 

 

I watch both shows, and won't see the Sleepy Hollow one until tomorrow (everything is recorded at my house due to my schedule). But I thought it was a little stiff at first, but improved. As much as I don't like Halloween, and Halloween shows in particular, I enjoyed Hodgins' demon eyes and wish he'd kept them on. 

[Raja]

There was a hug, although technically that happened in the Sleepy Hollow half. I also thought the episode tag of the Bones half where Booth/Bones are walking out of the lab and his hand starts on the strap of her bag and then goes to her waist was pretty clearly affection of the romantic variety.

I think it worked from a Sleepy Hollow perspective but not from a Bones perspective. They were starting with a premise that would inherently have the Bones universe bowing to the Sleepy Hollow universe (Brennan can explain the supernatural away but according to Sleepy Hollow her science is wrong). So I don't think they should have thrown in the extra name checking of the small town sheriff who Booth so!deeply!respected! even though he never previously mentioned him. Plus I didn't think DB sold it. Honestly I thought both of the Bones leads were projecting some serious boredom.

From a Sleepy head perspective Booth/Corbin link works if Booth is one of the Masons fighting the eternal war. That was mostly dropped in Sleepy Hollow's second season.

[Dobian]

I've only watched a handful of Bones episodes over the years.  I watched this one because of Sleepy Hollow, figured there might be information in this one related to the other show.  Really boring episode, in my opinion.  You'd think they'd come up with a crime that had a little action/adventure for the Bones team and Ichababbie to solve together.  Basically the whole episode was forensic research and interrogating people in offices.  Snore.  And the Flatliners premise just made no sense at all.  I agree with above, how do you slice someone's artery bashing them over the head with a skull, and the blood shoots out so hard it sprays the ceiling like a fire hose?  The whole plot was half-baked.  Bones making a comment about Ichabod and Abbie having sex was weird.  Tom Mison at least got some amusing lines in the episode.

[pcta]

Bones comment was typical of her social autism. She has no sense of "propriety". It isn't the first time she has blurted out something that would be considered inappropriate because she found it interesting

[Dobian]

yeah I don't watch Bones enough to remember that she puts her foot in her mouth a lot.

[Julia]

She wasn't always like this. Hart Hansen and Steven Nathan went to Bruno Bettelheim's playbook around season seven and retconned that Brennan's absent mother withholding approval from her turned her autistic as a teenager. At the beginning, she was just blunt and socially awkward.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Julia

[WendyCR72]

She wasn't always like this. Hart Hansen and Steven Nathan went to Bruno Bettelheim's playbook around season seven and retconned that Brennan's absent mother withholding approval from her turned her autistic as a teenager. At the beginning, she was just blunt and socially awkward.

 

I'm not so sure there. I do agree Brennan acted much more human and less robotic in the earlier seasons, but that line of dialogue when Brennan was talking about Russ and their "Marco Polo" game and how "Polo" was "sometimes the only word [she] said all day!"...well, that certainly doesn't sound simply socially awkward.

 

But SN/HH did ramp it up to a billion to Brennan's detriment. And I notice it happened after Zack left, so they likely piled his social inadequacies on to Brennan and made her the de facto science robot/weirdo. Sad.

[secnarf]

Why are residents retaking anatomy? Anatomy is covered the first year of medical school.

They were medical students, not residents. I think they said third year, and were thinking about applying to residency which is why the murder victim had changed her look.

Also, I don't think there's any indication that it was first-year anatomy. It could have been something else that they were learning.

But more likely, it was a plot point and nothing more.

[Julia]

 

I'm not so sure there. I do agree Brennan acted much more human and less robotic in the earlier seasons, but that line of dialogue when Brennan was talking about Russ and their "Marco Polo" game and how "Polo" was "sometimes the only word [she] said all day!"...well, that certainly doesn't sound simply socially awkward.

 

But SN/HH did ramp it up to a billion to Brennan's detriment. And I notice it happened after Zack left, so they likely piled his social inadequacies on to Brennan and made her the de facto science robot/weirdo. Sad.

 

I remember that, but I took it as lack of popularity based on her poor social skills. She was supposed to have been much more open with her family. But then, if you remember, she retroactively became a super popular and 'wild' girl until her mom traumatized her into autism by disapproving of her behavior and then disappearing.

[dr pepper]

Ok, i had heard that there was going to be a crossover, but had mercifully forgotten. Bringing a fantasy program into one that, for all its inaccuracies at least tries to focus on science and the real world, can only damage it. This is much worse than The Finder, or Cindy Lauper ocassional wandering through to offer a clue. (btw, i feel kind of sorry for her losing all her colors). On a smaller note, it means that in the world of Bones, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was never written. Also, Sleepy Hollow is not even a decent fantasy show; i bailed on it after 3 episodes and don't really want to revisit it.

 

That being said, i thought i could with this, but i couldn't. Especially with the thought that it would be a two parter, with the conclusion happening on the other show. I made it 19 minutes.

 

Hopefully we'll be back to normal next episode and this will be completely ignored by the writers.

[Panopticon]

I remember that, but I took it as lack of popularity based on her poor social skills. She was supposed to have been much more open with her family. But then, if you remember, she retroactively became a super popular and 'wild' girl until her mom traumatized her into autism by disapproving of her behavior and then disappearing.

 

Oh wow. I knew that there were rewrites but I didn't know exactly what they were. Yeah, I'm going to need to stop binge watching previous seasons before I get there. I assume the episode will be easy to spot because it will be called The Ridiculous in the Retcon.

 

What did they do about the episodes set at high schools or colleges that happened at least once a year in the early years? Those always had friction between Booth and Brennan because he'd been the popular jock and she'd been the kind of kid who got publicly humiliated by the popular jocks. The last one I watched had him theorizing that you can't become a fully actualized human being if you didn't rebel/act wild as a teenager and her panicking because she'd never done anything remotely like that. You know what, no one answer my rhetorical question there. I'd rather convince myself that the show just ignored the previous episodes rather than know it went all-in with the rewrite by having her say that she lied about having a wild-popular phase or was so traumatized that she suppressed the memory.

 

yeah I don't watch Bones enough to remember that she puts her foot in her mouth a lot.

 

 

This particular aspect of socially inappropriate isn't even unique to Brennan in Bones-world. All of the main characters on Bones over-share about their own sex lives at work. (Some do it less often, but they still do it.) A vast majority of the main characters are mildly obsessed with their colleagues' sex lives at one time or another. And some of them happily question complete strangers about their partners' sexual proclivities just out of curiosity. Occasionally a minor or temporary character will be horrified by the pervasive inappropriateness of it all... but that doesn't make them stop.

[Julia]

This particular aspect of socially inappropriate isn't even unique to Brennan in Bones-world. All of the main characters on Bones over-share about their own sex lives at work. (Some do it less often, but they still do it.) A vast majority of the main characters are mildly obsessed with their colleagues' sex lives at one time or another. And some of them happily question complete strangers about their partners' sexual proclivities just out of curiosity. Occasionally a minor or temporary character will be horrified by the pervasive inappropriateness of it all... but that doesn't make them stop.

 

The episodes where Dr. Edison freaks out about the lack of boundaries at the Jeffersonian fill me with joy.

[Raja]

I don't normally watch Bones -- do I need to watch this ep for tonight's Sleepy Hollow to make sense?

It only serves to let us know Agent Mills and Ichabod Crane already knew of the Jeffersonian when asking for assistance. Even knowing that General Howe's remains came from the Bones murder case was irrelevant to the Sleepy Hollow story.

[The Wild Sow]

Somebody dusted off an old copy of "Flatliners?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Edited October 31, 2015 by The Wild Sow

[bmoore4026]

She wasn't always like this. Hart Hansen and Steven Nathan went to Bruno Bettelheim's playbook around season seven and retconned that Brennan's absent mother withholding approval from her turned her autistic as a teenager. At the beginning, she was just blunt and socially awkward.

 

Even though that's not how autism works.  And this is supposed to be a scientific type show?

[officetemp]

. . .

On a smaller note, it means that in the world of Bones, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was never written.

. . .

I think this is what bothers me the most about having Bones crossover with Sleepy Hollow because Bones is ostensibly about events that could probably/possibly happen in the "real world" while Sleepy Hollow is clearly understood to be fantasy.  So, yeah, with this crossover, that now means that Washington Irving probably never existed in the Bones universe.  Or, if he did, his life took a different path than it did in our history.

[sinkwriter]

*grumble grumble grumble*

Just finished watching the Bones portion of the crossover "event."

 

*sigh*

 

I liked the parts with Hodgins. (As if that would ever be in doubt, me being a TJ Thyne fan. Heh.) He was funny. I liked the look he gave Crane when Crane pushed his hand away from the ancient book of spells, as if Hodgins would contaminate it (even though he was wearing gloves and Crane wasn't). And I liked how (later) Crane complimented Hodgins on his job "well played, sir" and Hodgins thanked him and called him brother. Cute.

 

I also liked how Aubrey was cracking jokes about how odd Crane's name was and how could his parents have given him such a name as Ichabod that probably got him bullied or something and Booth defended the name, saying it wasn't all that weird, there's nothing wrong with unconventional names, and then Aubrey realizes he just inadvertently insulted a guy named SEELEY. Heh. That was funny.

 

I also liked how fascinated Crane was by the Jeffersonian's technology, and his occasional references to how it would have made the real Jefferson proud. That, and his handwriting matching someone who supposedly wrote a letter back in the 1700's. Watching Crane try to reason his way out of that with Brennan was amusing.

 

However...

 

1) I still think these two worlds should never have crossed. They don't work together. Booth and Brennan and their FBI world -- no matter how silly they can be sometimes -- is still grounded in reality of the world in which we know it. There are no supernatural forces, there are no monsters (only human villains). And for Booth to conveniently know Abbie's former sheriff boss just isn't believable. Corbin was a sheriff in Sleepy Hollow, not an FBI agent or even in law enforcement in an area near enough to cross paths with Booth. It just doesn't fit. None of it does. And to have this unspoken magic and fantasy coming into the real world of the Bones storyline just doesn't work. You can't have them meet someone like Ichabod Crane and then pretend like he's not really from the 1700's and we're all just modern people here, wink wink, just having a bit of fun for a week, but maybe we'll all work together again if the ratings are good enough, even though it makes no sense and interrupts both story worlds. And I think it makes the real world characters (Booth and Brennan) look clueless and stupid for not noticing the weirdness and the side-eye looks shared between Abbie and Crane. The Booth I know and appreciate would find their behaviors suspicious and he would want to dig in even further to find out what they were up to.

 

Anyway, it just really didn't work for me.

 

2) I think Booth and Brennan and Ichabod had moments of good, grounded acting, but they also had moments of eye-rollingly over-the-top acting caused by forced writing. Trying to force humor is one of the things that has bothered me about the more recent seasons. They had humor in the early seasons of Bones too, but most of it made sense within the structure of the stories being told. Now I just feel like the Bones writers or showrunners force humor in the kind of way where you feel like they're standing there waiting for you to laugh, and they're staring at you like, haha, get it, get it, we're being funny here, GET IT? And that kind of humor just doesn't work for me. And in those kinds of moments, that's when Emily starts to act over-the-top and I just eyeroll at Brennan. And there are moments like that for Booth too. And in this episode they made Crane do it too. He's not usually so over-the-top with his humorous bits and facial expressions, which makes me wonder if Tom was directed to be more broad with his mannerisms. Which annoys me. Because he's naturally very funny on Sleepy Hollow - he doesn't need to push it over the top like they made him do several times in this episode, like they were trying to show in a too-big way that he's out of place in their world.  *sigh*

 

Anyway, I'll be curious to watch the Sleepy Hollow side of the crossover and see if the direction eases up or if they force some of the hyper-humor in that episode as well.

 

Frankly, I'm not looking forward to Booth and Brennan being in the Sleepy Hollow part of the crossover. It already seemed like they were stretching it to have Abbie and Ichabod show up in Bones world. To have Booth and Brennan be called to Sleepy Hollow for any reason whatsoever just feels like it's pushing those boundaries even more. AND once they step into the weirdness and fantasy stuff that makes up Sleepy Hollow, once again I think it just doesn't work because these two worlds shouldn't pair up. One is grounded in reality (or is supposed to be) while the other is steeped in fantasy and myth and supernatural forces. Witches, monsters, spells, you name it.

 

So... you just can't have two people like Booth and Brennan show up in a world like that and then pretend like it's not real. Or have them be clueless to the fantasy/supernatural stuff, or "just miss" the moments of scary monsters, or find some "perfectly scientific" reason for whatever happens there. I just don't believe it as I'm watching it, I don't think it fits or works well, it's too forced and I'm a little annoyed with FOX for forcing the two shows to try something like this.

 

With a show like Buffy and its spin-off Angel, it makes sense for the two shows to have a crossover. The characters know each other, and they have the same worlds (supernatural, scary stuff to deal with). Even combining shows like NCIS and NCIS: L.A. or NCIS: New Orleans makes more sense because they're grounded in the same type of premise and might even have reason to work with one another under the right case circumstances.

 

But shows like Bones and Sleepy Hollow just do not mix. And it annoys me to have them forced to do it anyway and then pretend like it won't affect either program's canon. Like it doesn't matter.

 

Of course it doesn't matter to the FOX executives. They're not the ones who have to pretend their stories aren't compromised. The execs are just happy if the ratings for either show (or both) get a boost.

 

Unfortunately, they don't seem to care about whether or not it makes sense to the VIEWERS. And it did not make sense to me.

 

Anyway, that's how I felt about that.  *GRIN*

Edited October 31, 2015 by sinkwriter

[WendyCR72]

Eh, say the Bones characters had tainted candy or booze and the whole thing was a mass hallucination. Voila!

[sinkwriter]

I'll take that idea, WendyCR72! If it means none of this actually happened for the Bones or Sleepy Hollow universes, sounds good to me. (LOL.)

[WendyCR72]

I'll take that idea, WendyCR72! If it means none of this actually happened for the Bones or Sleepy Hollow universes, sounds good to me. (LOL.)

 

Oh, it can work for any show, any fandom. That's the beauty of it!  :-)

[shapeshifter]

Ultra Atheist Bones teams with the Sleepy Hollow gang.  Bit like water and cyanide.

 

I'm not as religious as I once was, but this show's constant bashing over the head of "NO GOD!  NO AFTERLIFE!!!  SCIENCE!  SCIENCE!  SCIENCE!  ALL IS SCIENCE!" is goddamn tiresome.  I'd feel the same way if a certain religious denomination bashed everyone over the head with those beliefs. 

 

Why have this crossover?  The two shows are completely incompatible.  One show's based on scientific orthodoxy and the other's into pseudo-historic supernatural conspiracy theories.  This isn't like a Law and Order show crossing over with Chicago PD.  The mixing of characters from shows so starkly different was a bad idea.

 

There.  I'm done with my rant.

I was thinking similar thoughts but fell asleep in the middle and so can't really judge the episode--unless falling asleep is a valid critique. Anyway, as others mentioned upthread, this isn't the first time they've thrown spiritism or occult or religion into the show. And Booth has always served to defend the validity of religious beliefs and give Bones a reason to respect them--anthropologically speaking, of course.

I only watched the first couple of episodes of Sleepy Hollow but found myself defending it to my daughter who wasn't sure she wanted to watch this episode because SH creeps her out. My defense was the hotness of the SH leading man and the leading woman's charisma too. I quit SH when they introduced Ichabod's quest for his 200-year-old wife.

I don't normally watch Bones -- do I need to watch this ep for tonight's Sleepy Hollow to make sense?

I thought the following SH episode would continue the same crime/mystery and we would "have to" watch it, but no, and my daughter turned it off. Now I'm wondering if Ichabod is still on his 18th- or whatever century-wife quest. If this cross-over was intended to woo new viewers to SH, I missed it.

[possibilities]

The wife was disposed of in previous season's finale, so it's safe to come back, shapeshifter.

[bmoore4026]

I was thinking similar thoughts but fell asleep in the middle and so can't really judge the episode--unless falling asleep is a valid critique.

 

In these parts, it's a very valid critique.

[Julia]

I liked the parts with Hodgins. (As if that would ever be in doubt, me being a TJ Thyne fan. Heh.) He was funny. I liked the look he gave Crane when Crane pushed his hand away from the ancient book of spells, as if Hodgins would contaminate it (even though he was wearing gloves and Crane wasn't). And I liked how (later) Crane complimented Hodgins on his job "well played, sir" and Hodgins thanked him and called him brother. Cute.

...

However...

1) I still think these two worlds should never have crossed. They don't work together. Booth and Brennan and their FBI world -- no matter how silly they can be sometimes -- is still grounded in reality of the world in which we know it. There are no supernatural forces, there are no monsters (only human villains). And for Booth to conveniently know Abbie's former sheriff boss just isn't believable. Corbin was a sheriff in Sleepy Hollow, not an FBI agent or even in law enforcement in an area near enough to cross paths with Booth. It just doesn't fit. None of it does. And to have this unspoken magic and fantasy coming into the real world of the Bones storyline just doesn't work. You can't have them meet someone like Ichabod Crane and then pretend like he's not really from the 1700's and we're all just modern people here, wink wink, just having a bit of fun for a week, but maybe we'll all work together again if the ratings are good enough, even though it makes no sense and interrupts both story worlds. And I think it makes the real world characters (Booth and Brennan) look clueless and stupid for not noticing the weirdness and the side-eye looks shared between Abbie and Crane. The Booth I know and appreciate would find their behaviors suspicious and he would want to dig in even further to find out what they were up to.

...

So... you just can't have two people like Booth and Brennan show up in a world like that and then pretend like it's not real. Or have them be clueless to the fantasy/supernatural stuff, or "just miss" the moments of scary monsters, or find some "perfectly scientific" reason for whatever happens there. I just don't believe it as I'm watching it, I don't think it fits or works well, it's too forced and I'm a little annoyed with FOX for forcing the two shows to try something like this.

With a show like Buffy and its spin-off Angel, it makes sense for the two shows to have a crossover. The characters know each other, and they have the same worlds (supernatural, scary stuff to deal with). Even combining shows like NCIS and NCIS: L.A. or NCIS: New Orleans makes more sense because they're grounded in the same type of premise and might even have reason to work with one another under the right case circumstances.

But shows like Bones and Sleepy Hollow just do not mix. And it annoys me to have them forced to do it anyway and then pretend like it won't affect either program's canon.

I would truly love for Bones to regain its genre virginity, but that ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, been the subject of several grainy documentaries and was made into the scene of a blockbuster movie with some canadian chick wailing about her heart. Three words: Avalon Harmonia, psychic. Who just at the end of last season discovered that Christine's invisible friend was actually the ghost of the late Dr. Sweets.

And Brennan meeting Booth's dead friend in the cemetary in season four. And crusading athiest vegan Brennan offering factory-farmed beef jerky to Booth to get him to marry her in church (although they were allowed to skip pre-Cana). And when the church, which apparently had standards, burned down, hyper-religious Booth agreeing to be married in a field by some guy in a suit instead of reschedulng so Brennan would get to wear the dress she retroactively was obsessed with since childhood.

Not that it hasn't survived giant retcons before. But I suspect there are probably not a lot of people currently watching who were around for season one, and this actually is the show they signed on for. I might feel a little bad for Emily Deschanel, who showed signs of being an interesting actress early on, but she was such a good soldier about the retcon that I can fight it down. I feel like TJ Thyne and Tamara Taylor are the only two regulars coming out of this with a second act. Although there does seem to be a market for superannuated Whedon actors...

Edited October 31, 2015 by Julia

[Raja]

I'll take that idea, WendyCR72! If it means none of this actually happened for the Bones or Sleepy Hollow universes, sounds good to me. (LOL.)

That is how it can work in the Bones universe in Sleepy Hollow's only a few Hessians and Masons, so far, know of the grand super natural skirmishes and of the role of the witnesses so no retconning is needed. And with Bones near the end of its run with hopes for more years going forward in Sleepy Hollow FOX made a decision.

[Panopticon]

Even though that's not how autism works.  And this is supposed to be a scientific type show?

 

And in addition, why reduce everything that makes your title character who she is-- her likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears, choices-- to an ongoing knee-jerk reaction to one incident in her life? This sounds almost as bad as the hideous trope female character who is vicious/destructive/murderous/promiscuous... but only because she was raped as a teenager. Not like she had any agency after that, after all, so please excuse all the crap she pulled.

 

I also liked how Aubrey was cracking jokes about how odd Crane's name was and how could his parents have given him such a name as Ichabod that probably got him bullied or something and Booth defended the name, saying it wasn't all that weird, there's nothing wrong with unconventional names, and then Aubrey realizes he just inadvertently insulted a guy named SEELEY. Heh. That was funny.

 

That was good. Sometimes when a show is staggering along on its last legs and still lurching from gimmick to gimmick, it manages to pull out the occasional organic moment. And that was one.

 

I would truly love for Bones to regain its genre virginity, but that ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, been the subject of several grainy documentaries and was made into the scene of a blockbuster movie with some canadian chick wailing about her heart. Three words: Avalon Harmonia, psychic. Who just at the end of last season discovered that Christine's invisible friend was actually the ghost of the late Dr. Sweets.

And Brennan meeting Booth's dead friend in the cemetary in season four.

 

Oh, ick! Ghost!Sweets hanging out with Christine?!? I knew I didn't like that kid.

 

The dead friend in the cemetery bit I thought was done well. The episode left plenty of room to interpret the potentially supernatural aspect in either direction. Booth initially and explicitly attributes his visions to hallucinations caused by the kidnapping drugs, and throughout the episode he does all of the physical work himself even if his dead friend "had the idea" or "helped him push." Sure, the man Brennan saw was played by the same actor... but a lot of young men in uniform resemble each other and she had the idea of Booth's friend in mind to project onto the man she met. 

 

It could be handwaved. This week's episode can't. (Except by the lovely tainted candy trip theory.)

 

That is how it can work in the Bones universe in Sleepy Hollow's only a few Hessians and Masons, so far, know of the grand super natural skirmishes and of the role of the witnesses so no retconning is needed. And with Bones near the end of its run with hopes for more years going forward in Sleepy Hollow FOX made a decision.

I started watching Sleepy Hollow when it debuted and never missed an episode, and the main reason I watched season 11 of Bones while binge watching the older seasons as a new viewer was because I knew the crossover was coming and I would "have to" watch this episode. My allegiance should be to Sleepy Hollow getting its chance to find its feet again after its awful second season, but  it's not. Instead, it bugs a bit that FOX undercut its old soldier so badly.

[Julia]

Oh wow. I knew that there were rewrites but I didn't know exactly what they were. Yeah, I'm going to need to stop binge watching previous seasons before I get there. I assume the episode will be easy to spot because it will be called The Ridiculous in the Retcon.

And in addition, why reduce everything that makes your title character who she is-- her likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears, choices-- to an ongoing knee-jerk reaction to one incident in her life? This sounds almost as bad as the hideous trope female character who is vicious/destructive/murderous/promiscuous... but only because she was raped as a teenager. Not like she had any agency after that, after all, so please excuse all the crap she pulled.

 

Well, yes, that. And also, what they wanted to save her from was being a badass, highly-independent, pants-wearing rigidly rational athiest vegan with bad social skills (which is to say everything I liked about her).

 

Clearly if they were going to show her getting together with a man longterm* they were going to have to fix all that. So now she's mildly argumentative and blithely clueless about the world and wears sweet little dresses and her relationship with her husband looks to me like Booth paternally mentoring the special needs child he married with as little physical contact as possible and lots of dispassionate discussion about off-screen sex.

 

And it was specifically her mom who broke her, not her father, who unlike her mother was not really dead but chose to let her grow up in foster care thinking he was. And we know this because she and her mother's restless spirit discussed it while she was in a coma that one time.

 

*they made it a running joke that the only men she could get were psychotic or users or both, and they all left quickly.

Edited October 31, 2015 by Julia