now I ain't sayin she's the Gravedigger, but she ain't messin with no broke- uh.
Just so you know, I've been saving that subject line forever.
"These are my people. I should be able to do something."
So in that conference call interview that Hart Hanson and Emily gave yesterday (Wednesday?) re: the season finale, HH talks first about having had the final scenes of Bones written for a long time, and then saying that they've known on some level since SEASON 2 where they wanted the show to go. At the time, I dismissed this as convenient backstopping for this season (not that I mind!), but when you watch a scene like the above capped one - Cam, hamstrung by JUST WANTING TO BE ABLE TO FIX EVERYTHING - you have to wonder if maybe they did. When Brennan insists that everything is not fine because Booth, you almost died and what if I can't get to you fast enough next time? - what exactly is she talking about, really? Saving him from the Gravedigger? His brain tumor (which she, by the way, saved him from by not standing him ignoring it)? THE TIME HE TOOK A BULLET FOR HER AND FAKE DIED AND THEN NO ONE TALKED ABOUT IT EVER AGAIN? The time it took the collective resources of herself + her fugitive father to rescue him from gangsters? That time her refrigerator nearly killed him with a bomb meant for her? Not for the first time, I'm left wondering what exactly Season 3 was supposed to have looked like had the writer's strike not intervened.
(You could write a novel comparing this episode to S3's "Verdict in the Story" - Brennan's almost reckless devotion to this strange, new, weird emotional connection to her father versus now, when she seems largely almost powerless in the face of it, with regard to Booth. The way she snaps at Taffett's object while testifying - DO NOT QUESTION MY QUALIFICATIONS PLEASE, then tries and largely fails to paint a story about knowing what it's like to be traumatized? Keep in mind that her tactic in her dad's trial kinda only worked because of Booth, not her.)
Sweets said that if Booth and Brennan kissed, then the dam would break on their relationship - not "best kiss of my life zomg stars and rainbows trumpets choirs of angels and explosions of joy" dam-breaking, but rather the dam of everything. That's what's been happening for the past four episodes - largely in Brennan's own head, but it's been there. THE DAM IS ALMOST COMPLETELY GONE. They are the center, and the center must hold, except one half of the center is out-and-out terrified of the responsibility of being at the center in the first place. (They are the parts in the sum of the whole - where the whole isn't their relationship, but the whole is all of these people. Okay, DO WE GET IT? CAN I STOP TALKING IN METAPHORICAL EPISODE TITLES NOW?) I see now why Angela and Hodgins met at the same time as Booth and Brennan. I see now why it is that Cam is the one who originally introduced Booth to Brennan. Booth believes in fate because the first time he saw Brennan, he instinctually knew that he was her guy - her other Platonic half; Brennan doesn't believe in faith because so did she, and she willingly ran away from that knowledge. She's still running. STILL. Still.
SO.
THIS EPISODE:
- People who actually thought the Gravedigger might not be found guilty: please never speak to me again, COME ON. That said, I think this episode was successful in selling the idea that yeah, she was probs going to be guilty, but at what personal and emotional cost TO OUR HEROES?
- Rhonda Pearlman, you are still not a great actress at... at all.
- Two week in a row, Angela and Hodgins are treated to makeshift wedding confetti. First it was the excess of three-hole punch, and now I think that was just NEWSPAPER that Cam and Booth was ripping up the whole time at the table.
- I could not tell if Caroline was just messing with Booth's head by calling Brennan "his girlfriend" as some pre-trial testimony prep tactic sort of way, or if she maybe legit heard watercooler rumors of Booth dating "a doctor" (i.e., Catherine) and then just assumed this meant Brennan. I'm pretty sure if's the former, but THIS IS CAROLINE, a character who ASKS FOR MAKE OUTS AS BLACKMAIL-TYPE CHRISTMAS GIFTS, so really, you can go either/or on this.
- I am probably the only person on Earth who looks at the prospect that Brennan maybe wants to quit murder-solving as something that is awesome, but I do. It means she's at Step 9 of 10. The 100th episode was Step 5: Confrontation of the Implications of Physical & Emotional Attraction. Step 6 is Attempted Replications of Said Attractions In an Independent Subject, to prove that this is simply a byproduct of complementary interests, etc. (aka Hacker & Catherine) (and it's not) (aka 5x18). Step 7 is the Re-stratification of Both Existing and New Social Contracts (aka 5x19 - our partnership is still important to me, Booth). Step 8 doesn't really have a name, except that it encompasses the whole of 5x20, in which I genuinely believe there is a deleted scene out there in which Booth casually asks how Hacker is and Brennan informs him that she wouldn't know because they haven't spoken in several weeks, then Brennan casually returns the query re: Catherine and Booth uncomfortably points out that the doctor is, uh, no longer returning his phone calls - AND THEN THEY BOTH JUST KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. SO maybe Step 8 is actually: Realization That Possibly This Relationship is No Longer a Surrogate One, But an Actual One?
Which means that Brennan now finds herself at the doorstep of Step 9: Secretly Fucking Scary But If I Remove Our Professional Obligations From the Equation, Do I Still Feel Compelled to Want to Be With Booth? I think this might normally be the step when Brennan processes stuff by booking it out of town. I probably didn't need a shot-for-shot mirror of the taxi scene at the end to drive this point home, but that was certainly nice (and it was the same cab! the same jacket! the same - everything!). Should be interesting next week to see just how far through this procedure she gets before someone (she?) just snaps.
- SERIOUSLY CAN WE TALK A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THAT CAM & SWEETS SCENE UP THERE? IT WAS KIND OF AMAZING. And kind of sad, because remember that time Cam was dating Booth, then Booth's other not-girlfriend got kidnapped by the Gravedigger? I do. I think Cam does, too. (And I don't think she's completely gotten over Zack yet, either? Oh please, like any of them have, really. Ohhhhhhh my gosh, I think I might totally have a Cam fic in me. YES. On this.)
- ANGELA AND HODGINS DIDN'T TELL ANYONE THEY WERE MARRIED. Like............... what. I now have absolutely no idea whether anyone even knows about what went down with Booth and Brennan, because on some level you want to think these people who ship them as bad as we do COULDN'T MISS THAT, but then no one else noticed Angela and Hodgins were SUPER EXTRA FRIENDLY ALL THE TIME? Really? And then there's also no indication - or acknowledgement ever! - that Sweets and Daisy are engaged. Seriously, in the show of my head, the final scene of next week is everyone realizing all the secrets they've been keeping in a great big ball of HOLY MOTHER OF GOD PEOPLE CAN WE ALL PROMISE NEVER TO DO THIS AGAIN?! exclamation. Because yes, Brennan, I too have a sense that everything is changing, but... not in a bad way.
Is. It. Next. Week. Yet. Guys.