5x12: The Best Episode of Bones that Ever Boned

[obrien_blue]

If this episode were a salad dressing, it would taste like candy, and be fat-free, no, not just fat-free, you would actually lose weight from eating it, because it would be magical. Magical fucking salad dressing that makes you love salad, and eat it, it would make you want to do good things for yourself, because that’s how awesome this is.

I want

Comments

[lizbet0]

Your recaps are FABULOUS! And you know what? When I watched the first bit with Booth doing the Michael J dancing? My first thought was "O'Brien's going to spontaneously explode from these first 2 minutes!" {grin}

This was a wonderful, WONDERFUL episode! Everyone was just great - even Hacker! I thought his comments were abso-frick-lutely HILARIOUS, and I loved how he knew he was doomed with Brennan if Booth kept being...well, Booth! I think he also had some legally-based shenanigans in mind when he asked Booth "Are you being held against your will?" Because he asked the exact same question twice, and that usually means the first answer wasn't the one the questioner wanted! {grin}

I will say that there were 2 things I understood differently than you & Show: 1) I think Brennan didn't lie about the bones not being JFK - Or at least, she'd defend herself by saying she didn't lie. When she & Cam were talking outside the diner about the scarlet fever possibly causing the bone whatever-it-was, she says that effect is rare: 1 in 100, I think. So, she can legitimately say that it was "statistically unlikely" ergo, no lie. (But she still totally wanted to make that call for Booth's sake!)

The second point (which may get me in trouble with folks) is that I don't quite get Booth being so upset at the idea of a JFK cover-up. (Please don't hit me yet! I'll explain!) I certainly understand from the dramatic effect side of things, but if I were to take Booth as a real person and not just a character, I think he'd understand that "the U.S. government" is not one monolithic bunch of people making decisions across the decades (even though it may feel like that to us as citizens.)

Instead, each administration is its own instance of government, with its own goals & methods (& associated instances of idiocy.) Therefore, the people who gave Booth orders in his sniper days were not the same ones who would have covered up something in JFK's days (had such a coverup been true.) I mean, surely as a military man, Booth had direct experience with officers of varying degrees of honor and trustworthiness. He wouldn't have thought the whole Army was at fault because some Colonel somewhere in the chain of command was a certifiable idiot, much less some Colonel from 40 years ago! So, why would the validity of his sniper work be dependent upon what someone did or didn't do in 1963?

All that being said, I could understand him being royally pissed if the FBI itself covered something up back then, or heaven forbid, were involved in the assassination itself. Even that, though, would be a fault of the organization and not Booth himself. The crooked Assistant Director, for instance, pissed him off but didn't make him question his personal integrity.

But I know I 'm overthinking it, so I'll just enjoy the awesomeness of Show and realize the former 3 paragraphs were just nit-picky meta! {grin}

Thank you again for your wonderful recaps!

[obrien_blue]

My first thought was "O'Brien's going to spontaneously explode from these first 2 minutes!"

You are not the first person to express this, and God help me, it makes me giggle. Seriously. And Mom of O'Brien, who is also a watcher of the show, admitted that she replayed the first 2 minutes. And the shooting of the door. And the shooting of the rifle. And the Badassery of Booth. Which was the entire episode.

I will say that there were 2 things I understood differently than you & Show: 1) I think Brennan didn't lie about the bones not being JFK - Or at least, she'd defend herself by saying she didn't lie. When she & Cam were talking outside the diner about the scarlet fever possibly causing the bone whatever-it-was, she says that effect is rare: 1 in 100, I think. So, she can legitimately say that it was "statistically unlikely" ergo, no lie. (But she still totally wanted to make that call for Booth's sake!)

I think you could be right. In my head, she put together that whole experiment just so she could give Booth some piece of mind. She knew something was up with the bone. I think she knew it would float, and pudding is something Booth gets, and the experiment was drawn in such a way that it was sort of simplistic, and would also produce a visual result. Scientific jibber-jabber, Booth could believe Brennan was making up for his benefit. But visual proof? He would believe. But your way is just as plausible, and like all things in life, it's probably a little bit of both.

RE: Booth's dogmatic belief in the government. I don't think you're crazy. I get what you're saying, because Booth is actually a pretty logical guy about most things, especially human behavior. But I think (a) he's got to hold steady in his belief that he was doing the right thing and (b) I think moments like this is when he is most like Brennan.

Let me tell you why: he's holding on to a belief, even when there is evidence to the contrary. When it's Brennan, it's usually "soft" evidence, i.e., belief in people, religion, faith, psychology, etc. For Booth, he will disbelieve "hard" evidence in favor of something emotional. While both of these reactions seem opposite (as Sweets initially thought), what they appear to be to me are identical reactions to opposite impetuses (which I think is what Gordon-Gordon might say).

Then again, I could be talking out of my ass.