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[mistletoe]

So here we go with my take on Seeley Joseph Booth.

A BOOTH FOR ALL SEASONS

The past is prologue

SEASON 1



One of the first things that Booth says to Brennan is usually taken as a guide to how we should perceive Brennan in the partnership as the closed off, private individual with a deprived upbringing and concomitant issues. However, I can apply it to Booth with as much ease:

You know getting information out of live people is a lot different than getting information out of a pile of bones.  You have to offer up something of yourself first.
What exactly did you do in the military?
Booth: You see. You see what you did right there Bones? You asked a personal question without offering anything personal in return and since I’m not a skeleton, you get zilch. Sorry.

By the end of that first episode we know most of the key issues that have led Brennan to where she is and virtually nothing about Booth beyond his past as an Army sniper. This eking out of information continues into the second season with very little added beyond this initial knowledge. In many ways, Booth maintains that silence about his personal life until his admission that his dad drank in Season 3. Until that point, Brennan pretty much has to drag information kicking and screaming out of Booth and it appears he is occasionally economical with the truth.

So what do we know in Season 1? How much beyond zilch do we actually find out about Booth?

In that first episode Brennan discovers one or two things and we notice a few others. Firstly, we see that Booth is devious. He has to get to see Dr Brennan in spite of the fact she refuses to take his calls and has instructed Zack never to put him through. So he uses his authority to have her detained at the airport and, significantly, presents himself as her rescuer from a situation she would find difficult to get out of on her own. He cannot deny he engineered the circumstances and very quickly is willing to give in so that he can get what he needs: her on the case. The only thing he refuses to do is stop calling her Bones.

This willingness to deny his own ego for the greater good is a key character trait of Booth. Brennan makes a great deal out of the alpha male persona that she discerns in Booth, but many of his actions are very much not alpha maleness personified. He defers to Brennan on several occasions; he keeps onside with his boss by keeping his counsel as he accepts responsibility for Brennan's actions towards the Senator and he won't accept her attempt at an apology:
Don’t be nice to me after I got you in trouble.
Booth:  Your heart was in the right place.
Bones: No. I’m not a heart person you’re a heart person.  I’m a brain person. You vouched for me.
Booth:   Ahh, Forget it.

 

Rarely does Booth seek glory and when he does he is thwarted, on this occasion not because of something he did, but because of something he takes responsiblity for. Much later, he has visions of greatness and his face on a coin. Again he was thwarted by taking responsibility for someone else's actions. Here he wants to make advancement in the FBI.
A case this big.  The director is going to create a special investigation unit and if I line all my ducks up in a row, I can maybe, I can head it up.
 
That seems to be it as far as personal betterment goes: do the best he can in his job. The fact that he fails is Brennan's fault. The fact that they solve the case anyway is down to his tenacity and willingness to trust his instincts about her if not her methods.

At the end of the episode she has taken his words to heart and offers up something of herself. Of course, he already knows but he doesn't tell her that. Instead, he gives her something of himself in return:
Bones:  I knew exactly how the Eller’s felt about Cleo. My parents disappeared when I was fifteen and nobody knows what happened to them.
Booth:  Me being a sniper…I… I took a lot of lives.  What I would like to do before I’m done… is try to catch at least that many murderers.
Bones: (laughs) Please you don’t think there is some kind of …cosmic balance sheet?
Booth looks down and doesn't answer. Clearly he does. She stops smiling
Bones:  I’d like to help you with that. Having established a man of action (who actually only tackles the stalker and allows Brennan to take out four men and shoot one of them) we are soon given a reason for why he isn't hitting on Brennan (apart from the retcon we see 98 episodes later) by having a girlfriend introduced in the second episode we see. This allows us to see further character traits which are more or less constant in Booth.

Firstly, he has a very low tolerance towards what he sees as Brennan being nosy about his personal life. Basically, he doesn't want to talk about his sex life and is almost embarrassed aboiut it. Later he doesn't mind bragging about his conquests in his youth but he will not discuss current attachments. No doubt, he sees his high school encounters as mere rites of passage, but as an adult he wants to keep it out of the work place. This is made explicit in A Boy in a Tree with his deflection of Zack's request for advice, but it is no less clear here.
Booth: Okay, what is so funny?
Bones:  I just never figured you being in a relationship (laughs).
Booth:  Why do you think something’s wrong with me?
Bones:  Not wrong. You just have alpha male attributes usually associated with a solitary existence.
Booth: What me?  You’re solitary.
Bones: No, no I’m private. It’s different and we weren’t talking about me.
Booth:  Well I was.
Bones:  Well I wasn’t. Look, I’m happy for you. Relationships have anthropological meaning. No society can survive if sexual bonds aren’t formed bet…
Throughout the episode, it is as if Booth is ashamed of his relationship with Tessa and is frequently in denial about it to both Bones and Angela. At the end when he is sitting with her at dinner, it is clear his thoughts are elsewhere in the way that the scene is shot with cut aways to Brennan identifying the bones of a WW1 soldier.

The other aspect of Booth emphasised here is his unwillingness to take a life unless he has to. He will not shoot the bomber until he is sure that he is about to set off the bomb. There is no glory or jubilation in it either. Again, he turns down the chance for personal glory. Brennan knows that by saving hundreds of lives he should be honoured with a Rose Garden ceremony. Booth's response?
There’s no pleasure in taking someone’s life.  Nothing to celebrate.
These are the words of a man who has taken many lives and remembers each one.
Further aspects to be mentioned are his faith and his anger. This was a frustrating case and a scene in the car encompasses the traits:


Booth:  I’m (laughs) not angry.
Bones:  Yeah, you’re furious.  You’re going to kill somebody.
Booth:  I’m not angry.  Believe me; you do not want to see me angry.  That’s the last thing you want to see.
Bones: Okay.
Booth:  This is me accepting reality.
Bones:  Okay, my mistake.
Booth:  My superiors they make the decisions Bones.  All right.  They don’t think them through that’s really not my problem.
Bones:  If I were you, I’d be mad.  Homeland Security is preventing you from doing a proper investigation of a murder case.
Booth:  I’m a grownup. I’ll deal. You know that thing where you ask for the strength to change the things that you can and the wisdom to know the difference?
Bones:  Not really.
Booth:  Well it’s a good thing.
Bones:  Who do you ask?
Booth:  For what?
Bones:  For the strength and the wisdom?
Booth:  God.
Bones:  And that works?
Booth:  Can we talk about something else?

This idea that Booth has a simmering temper under the surface is something that continues throughout the series and Brennan does not want to see it if the way he releases it in The Woman in the Garden and Aliens in a Spaceship are anything to go by. Clearly, Booth knows the consequences if he lets his fury go and that suggests to me that his past has brought him to that situation. At this stage we can only assume it comes from the Army sniper in him, but it takes a certain kind of man to be a sniper and take a life personally rather than in the haphazard firefights of war. That man is not yet known to us, but there is something that made him join the army and basically escape where he came from.

The reference to God is also the first of many that are a fundamental part of Booth which will be explored over the years.

Next time I'll look at Booth's attitude to privilege, children and justice.


There is darkness outside and it's not even 5 o'clock. Athletic Bilbao beat Getafe 3 - 0 last night including two phenomenal goals to restore my faith in football.

Comments

[afan21.livejournal.com]

I agree with you totally. Loved this and can't wait for your next take.

[mistletoe54.livejournal.com]

It's bubbling away at the moment. Thanks for dropping by.