The End in the Beginning - Rant.
This post is a big huge wanky rant - if you loved this episode unequivocally, good for you; you won’t find any validation here. On the other hand, if you detested this episode with passion, there is not too much of that either. I just wanted to write something about this show and its characters that made such a lasting impression on me all those years ago, when it first aired.
First, dealing with the AU: Every show is allowed an AU episode that makes the best and fullest use of the actors’ talent. This is when we see the “breaking from character” of these actors in a different setting and I enjoy these little interludes from “reality”. Buffy and Ugly Betty had their musical episodes, JAG had “If Only” the Harm in AUverse episode, Friends did a couple of AU episodes where everyone lived the life that they had all thought was their dream future; heck, The X-Files had a gorgeous AU episode, where Mulder goes and gets himself conked on the head and dreams about the Ghost Ship and all of us shippers drooled over the kiss on the ship. So, dream sequences, fantasy and that liminal line between sleep and awake are areas that every television show makes use of to get their ratings boost or to show off their comprehensive, collaborative repertoire. They’re fun to watch, they might be cheesy, the characters on the episode might not be the characters we’ve grown to love, but they always give us, the audience, another perspective.
Emotions/actions are exaggerated (eg. the very obvious love between AU! Booth and Brennan, Booth punching Jared, the announcement of “Bren’s” pregnancy). We get to evaluate the characters in a different setting (Cam as a police detective, comparing Zack against Mr. Nigel-Murray, Max as a sleazy local politico). Yes, the AU episodes always provide fodder for thought in our dealing with the characters in the “real world” of our show.
The “good” fodder for thought as I saw it on Thursday’s ep:
Most times when my favourite shows run amok and happily jump the shark (coughPrisonBreakseason3cough), I take refuge in fandom - AU fics with happy endings - where love will conquer all. So, I really liked seeing this glaringly shiny love that “Mr. B” and “Bren” had for each other. In the midst of such mayhem and suspicious minds of the whodunit, where everybody thought everybody else did it, it was heartening to see that Booth loves Brennan in the deepest recesses of his mind (and heart, even if he does not remember her. More on that later) and Brennan returns said emotions unequivocally. I appreciated their honesty with each other regarding the case. This could so easily have been a travesty of a plot point where “Bren” hid the cocktail napkin with the floor plan, or her burnt coat from “Mr. B”, either or both of them could have cheated on the other. But, they did not; instead they joked about being Bonnie and Clyde and Murder Inc. I liked it. A lot.
Brendan Fehr(sp?) the actor who played Jared had some meaty moments in this episode. Perhaps HH was compelled to redeem the character yet again? The same “triangle” with him, his brother and “Bren” that we saw in the “real! Bones” in Conman in the Meth Lab and The Hero in the Hold played out here. He is initially portrayed as someone who wants his brother’s “girl” but eventually ends up strengthening the other pair’s relationship in both instances (whether it is by saving his brother or protecting his “sister-in-law”).
Cam must have made one helluva cop. She has a wonderful “take charge” air about her wherever she goes. Tamara Taylor conveyed that oh-so-powerfully.
The incorporation of the interns was skilfully done - that exaggeration thing yet again - Zack being the character whom we thought was stupid and “did it” (leave the fingerprints on the gun by mistake), but who had done that on purpose, Wendell (Booth’s favourite intern on real!Bones) being the perfect bouncer/doorman, loopy Daisy as the nutty groupie who calls Fisher her boyfriend but later jumps around with the tambourine for Sweets (and Gormogon). This leads to the ironic musings and representations of the characters. The obvious one was the exchange between Nigel-Murray and Zack, the one about going to prison for a murder he did not commit.
Sweets having a band named Gormogon and admitting that people thought he was Gormogon brought back some sad memories of the last season for me. Granted, thanks to Gordon-Gordon and Mayhem on the Cross we got to hear about his horrific past (in my opinion, it was more about getting Brennan and Booth to open up about their pasts than anything else. I don’t much care for Sweets as a character) but to be honest, I’d have been more than happy when in The Pain in the Heart, after Cam tells B&B that “he’s your guy” and Booth arrested Sweets in the diner, it was proven that he was the psychotic Gormogon. Looking back he would have had a more perfect opportunity to meet the older Gormogon, since he must have been in contact with Child Services and to become the apprentice. Also, I am still of the opinion that the man who jumped out at the lobbyist on The Knight on the Grid looks more like Sweets than the guy we saw as Gormogon in the finale, or Zack. I don’t like Sweets’ meddlesome attitude and while I won’t wish the horrific identity of the Gormogon apprentice on anyone, since it has become a valid historical point in canon, I’d rather he were the apprentice (or, he could have kept his sanity and remained a recurring character, in the absence of Gormogon). Yeah, I’m still kind of bitter about that.
But we’re on the topic of the “nice” ironies. The most obvious and the one that brought out the (silly) conspiracy theorist in me was “Max and the Gravedigger” (that sounds like a cheap bodice ripper, doesn’t it, like Venetia and the Count or some such?). Since Jared was not around in the second season when The Gravedigger (TG) was first introduced to us, his involvement in The Hero in the Hold is the most plausible reason for his being connected to TG. However, the implication that Max was TG by “Mr. B” at the end was interesting. In season 2, Aliens in a Spaceship was ep 9, a mere few weeks (in Bonesverse) prior to Max’s reappearance on Judas on a Pole (ep 11). While I can’t think of a reasonable explanation why he would kidnap his own daughter and want her to die, well I guess he is TG after all; besides we never got a reasonable explanation for the “real gravedigger’s” actions either. So, what’s one felon in place of another, right? It is also interesting that we last saw Max on The Bone that Blew (S4, ep 11) just a few weeks before The Hero in the Hold (S4 ep 14). Max could very well have been in the D.C area to kidnap Booth (after all, that stupid, ambiguous exchange in The Bone that Blew about Booth and Brennan, Max could have taken his responsibilities as a “re-newed” father extremely seriously). How’s that for AU?
I also liked the ambiguity of the was it Brennan's story being unfolded, or was it Booth's dream that we saw. It somehow seemed to echo the Gordon-Gordon/Sweets exchange about the partners on Mayhem.
Now on to the not so palatable moments:
Season 4 has not been everybody’s cup of tea. It certainly has not been mine. However, it has attracted more viewers and created new fans of this show. I fell in love with this quirky series from the moment I saw Angela rushing through the airport terminal in the very first episode. And when Booth said “spit in my hand we’re Scully and Mulder”? You couldn’t have pried me off with a crowbar. I’d bonded with this for life. So, despite the patchy character presentation, the laughable cases, identifying Americans by momentarily glancing at skulls, having below the belt shots (pun unintentionally intended) about gender identity and their kind of hazy, kind of offensive religious sentiments in the course of this season, I am invested in this for the long haul. I want to see if this all ends in a train wreck, or if it can be salvaged. Hope springs eternal, since I have the comfy cushion of fandom to fall back on in case it does not work out the way I want it to. With all this in mind, how do I evaluate this episode?
It was fun, but it was a really horrible season finale. They say be careful what you wish for, and this is one of those instances where I think we’d have been better off with the season finale being aired next season (as Fox originally announced). Where was the plot development? We are, in essence still stuck with Booth in the hospital, as last week’s episode, and in retrospect, I would have preferred to have worried about his impending surgery, than this ridiculous soap-opera style amnesia. This kind of glitzy, going all out type of thing would have been better as a season opener - a bit like summing up all the characters who have been around and let’s see what the season holds for these various people. At the very least this ludicrous amnesia thing could have been resolved as a minor infraction within the episode (if it was a 2 hour premiere) rather than a major plot point that drags through the summer in the case of a finale. The other thing is that this summing up of things felt a bit too much like a coda, or a conclusion and I think that HH recognised this and immediately decided to stick the amnesia nonsense as a last minute band-aid to soothe the little plot boo-boos away. This did not at all appeal to me because I approach a season finale with certain expectations. I don’t mind a cliff-hanger, but what I want to see is some progress in the plot, in the show, something that makes me gasp with shock leading up to the months of waiting to catch the next season. This was a stagnating bit of a thing that did nothing to make me want to know what happens next season. Can you imagine all the thousands of lost moments of the past seasons? The "who are you?" somehow seemed to drain every little bit of hard work that four seasons created. The minute I read the spoilers for this episode, the minute I started watching the episode (even if I hadn’t read the spoilers), I knew it was a kind of dream sequence, and that it was all in Booth's/Brennan's heads. Come on - the man was wheeled in for some very serious surgery the last time we saw the show because he was hallucinating. She is a bestselling writer. How dumb do they think we are? Very, apparently. Did I like the alternate universe? Yes! I really enjoyed it, but as a finale, I wanted my real!Bones characters, however schizophrenic they were this last season, to make their appearance and set the stage for the next season. I wanted a case that they could delve into, something that signified it had been a year since one of their own had been an apprentice to a killer. I know some people wanted to have Russ/Amy/her kids/Parker etc. in this AUverse but I understand casting issues and can forgive these omissions - mostly because the dream sequence did not make much of an impact on pretty much anything else. But. At this point I don’t hold much hope for season 5. I don’t want to see a whole season devoted to making Booth “remember” and alternate Booth and Brennan falling in love. That would make this “Bones of our Lives” not the quirky show that used to combine elements of a procedural and a comedy to create some of the kickassest of characters in television history.