Hardly watertight
Feb. 6th, 2009 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mistletoeWell after all the online squeeing we were finally hit with Hero in the Hold.
I have watched it once and will probably have to watch it again to work out what the meaning of it all was. Basically, Booth was kidnapped by the Gravedigger, he met a ghost from his past who saved him and set him back on his path and Brennan rescued him at the end in a helicopter laid on by Jared who got arrested. The Gravedigger was caught thanks to her own stupidity.
I didn't like it. I wanted to like it, the signs were all there but it seemed that Booth and Brennan on their own are less than the sum of their two parts. Without each other to bounce off they reverted to army guy and science girl with no sense of one trying to contact the other in order to effect Booth's rescue like Aliens in a Spaceship. There were similarities in that both Brennan and Booth got themselves out of the major difficulty and the other was only needed to finish off the rescue. However, this lacked the tension of the first episode because there was too much going on at once.
Two women wrote the episode and they seemed to be telling two different stories. One was Booth's voyage of self-discovery by coming to terms with his past. The other was the conclusion of the Gravedigger's story from Season 3. The two didn't seem to be able to co-exist because they were serving different purposes.
I did enjoy Booth's story. Once again, he was forced to realise who he was and what he had become had been brought about by his feeling of guilt over the death of a fellow soldier. This was very similar to his acceptance last week that although he used violence like his father, he didn't use it in the same way because he was a good man. I liked the fact that he chose to call his son Parker after Teddy the corporal who had died on a Ranger operation; a death for which Booth felt responsible. By the end of the episode, Teddy had convinced him that his death was his own fault, not Booth's. Now this is all well and good, but these insights have really come from Booth himself thanks to a hallucination he had due to concussion and a ghost he conjured up from as he said being "drugged, electrocuted and stuffed into a Beatles toy." You could say that he is deluding himself to make himself feel better about himself. Or you could just take it at face value that Lucky Luc cares and there really was a ghost in the hold.
Booth's ingenuity worked when he used his Ranger skills, and the ghost's help. I find it interesting that the ghost interacted with him physically, getting the bar from the sub, helping Booth to use it to open the door; he held the flashlight while Booth checked out the wall; he made the mermaid explosive device; he threw the Cocky belt buckle: he helped Booth get out by being able to see when Booth couldn't. Or did he? Was it all just Booth on his own with adrenaline? After all, he got out of the submarine in the first place by unscrewing two hefty nuts with brute strength.
Whatever the case, Booth got out. and there was the helicopter in the nick of time.
Which brings us to the Gravedigger part of the plot. This didn't work. The main problem was too many holes and leaps of faith that went against what was obviously meant to be the scientific part of the show. It wasn't helped by there being too many characters involved: a judge, an attorney, the FBI agent, the squints, Vega, Sweets and Jared. Brennan had to try to marshal all of these and their varying motivations in order to save Booth. A number of them were resistant: Hodgins wanted to keep the evidence he had stolen for 10 hours so he could find the Gravedigger, and then look for Booth; Agent Perotta was following Brennan and Hodgins to stop them investigating Vega's death; Jared just wanted to make a few phonecalls until Brennan confronted him. I think she was nearly tempted to pursue the case rather than look for Booth until she told Jared that he didn't deserve to have Booth as a brother. That got him going at last and he put his own job at risk, as Booth would have done, in order to get Vega's body to the lab.
Like a rabbit out of a hat, he produced the black ops file on the Attorney who Brennan recognised as the Gravedigger seconds after she had deduced they would have broken ribs. Fortunately for her the attorney turned up with a warrant which she proffered with her right hand that she couldn't fully extend with her broken ribs. If only she had used her left they would have been none the wiser. What her motivations were in becoming the Gravedigger were never discussed. Was it just greed?
It seems that her motivation here was just to get rid of witnesses. She had no intention of revealing where Booth was as was proven by her attempt to blow Brennan and Hodgins up at the drop. That also destroyed the evidence. She had already killed Vega for the same reason and the publicity woman who had died in a car crash in Boston.
In the end though, Booth was saved and went as he had promised Teddy to tell Claire, his girlfriend, that Teddy had loved her. This ending was spoiled by the ghost incident. Having told Brennan that he had been helped by the ghost of a former soldier who had been the victim of 'the fortunes of war' she then tells him there is no such thing as ghosts. He smiles knowingly and approaches Claire at Teddy's grave. Teddy then appears in full Ranger uniform, speaks to Brennan who replies and then stands beside her. Booth looks over and gives Parker a salute which Brennan acknowledges because she can no longer see Teddy. She never knows he was the ghost. Why bother with that? Is it to show us that Booth really did see Parker's ghost? It doesn't matter. We accept it or we don't and it's pointless to show him to Brennan because she doesn't know who he is or that he is dead. Bah!
My final problem with the Gravedigger plot is how in the end it didn't matter that the Gravedigger was caught. It helped Booth tangentially in that they were able to find out where he was from the boots they found, but the attorney never spoke again. How she was able to get the drop on Booth, drag him out of the window, into a car, across town, on a boat, into the hold of a naval ship, into the submarine and tighten the nuts from the inside, we'll never know. And kill Vega at the same time. At least Brennan clocked her, but I don't know if the capture was enough closure for Hodgins.
My final problem with Booth's plot, apart from the fact it seemed to serve little purpose in the main thrust of the series, is that he never got the chance to interact with the people he worked with. He was much better at getting the squints to work out where Brennan was, really anxious, really tense. Brennan never seemed that invested. The FBI were very slow to notice he was missing and did nothing when they did find out. Indeed they were more interested in catching the Gravedigger than finding out what happened to Booth. Nobody there seemed to care.
Finally Sweets. That man is like a leech. Even after he was told to get lost because he was FBI there he was without protest from the others in the park helping. There he was in the lab not helping with the Gravedigger interrogation. There he was telling us what would work because he had read the profile. He was nothing but a hindrance and I hope he learned a lesson: real people cannot be characterised by a profile; sometimes you have to act and hit them.
There was a small covering of snow here this morning and I have been cold all day. The South and West had much more than us. It's an old fashioned February all right.
My head teacher came to see me today so I could fill in the sickness review forms. She'll be back March 2nd. My leg has been chafing all day. UGH!
I have watched it once and will probably have to watch it again to work out what the meaning of it all was. Basically, Booth was kidnapped by the Gravedigger, he met a ghost from his past who saved him and set him back on his path and Brennan rescued him at the end in a helicopter laid on by Jared who got arrested. The Gravedigger was caught thanks to her own stupidity.
I didn't like it. I wanted to like it, the signs were all there but it seemed that Booth and Brennan on their own are less than the sum of their two parts. Without each other to bounce off they reverted to army guy and science girl with no sense of one trying to contact the other in order to effect Booth's rescue like Aliens in a Spaceship. There were similarities in that both Brennan and Booth got themselves out of the major difficulty and the other was only needed to finish off the rescue. However, this lacked the tension of the first episode because there was too much going on at once.
Two women wrote the episode and they seemed to be telling two different stories. One was Booth's voyage of self-discovery by coming to terms with his past. The other was the conclusion of the Gravedigger's story from Season 3. The two didn't seem to be able to co-exist because they were serving different purposes.
I did enjoy Booth's story. Once again, he was forced to realise who he was and what he had become had been brought about by his feeling of guilt over the death of a fellow soldier. This was very similar to his acceptance last week that although he used violence like his father, he didn't use it in the same way because he was a good man. I liked the fact that he chose to call his son Parker after Teddy the corporal who had died on a Ranger operation; a death for which Booth felt responsible. By the end of the episode, Teddy had convinced him that his death was his own fault, not Booth's. Now this is all well and good, but these insights have really come from Booth himself thanks to a hallucination he had due to concussion and a ghost he conjured up from as he said being "drugged, electrocuted and stuffed into a Beatles toy." You could say that he is deluding himself to make himself feel better about himself. Or you could just take it at face value that Lucky Luc cares and there really was a ghost in the hold.
Booth's ingenuity worked when he used his Ranger skills, and the ghost's help. I find it interesting that the ghost interacted with him physically, getting the bar from the sub, helping Booth to use it to open the door; he held the flashlight while Booth checked out the wall; he made the mermaid explosive device; he threw the Cocky belt buckle: he helped Booth get out by being able to see when Booth couldn't. Or did he? Was it all just Booth on his own with adrenaline? After all, he got out of the submarine in the first place by unscrewing two hefty nuts with brute strength.
Whatever the case, Booth got out. and there was the helicopter in the nick of time.
Which brings us to the Gravedigger part of the plot. This didn't work. The main problem was too many holes and leaps of faith that went against what was obviously meant to be the scientific part of the show. It wasn't helped by there being too many characters involved: a judge, an attorney, the FBI agent, the squints, Vega, Sweets and Jared. Brennan had to try to marshal all of these and their varying motivations in order to save Booth. A number of them were resistant: Hodgins wanted to keep the evidence he had stolen for 10 hours so he could find the Gravedigger, and then look for Booth; Agent Perotta was following Brennan and Hodgins to stop them investigating Vega's death; Jared just wanted to make a few phonecalls until Brennan confronted him. I think she was nearly tempted to pursue the case rather than look for Booth until she told Jared that he didn't deserve to have Booth as a brother. That got him going at last and he put his own job at risk, as Booth would have done, in order to get Vega's body to the lab.
Like a rabbit out of a hat, he produced the black ops file on the Attorney who Brennan recognised as the Gravedigger seconds after she had deduced they would have broken ribs. Fortunately for her the attorney turned up with a warrant which she proffered with her right hand that she couldn't fully extend with her broken ribs. If only she had used her left they would have been none the wiser. What her motivations were in becoming the Gravedigger were never discussed. Was it just greed?
It seems that her motivation here was just to get rid of witnesses. She had no intention of revealing where Booth was as was proven by her attempt to blow Brennan and Hodgins up at the drop. That also destroyed the evidence. She had already killed Vega for the same reason and the publicity woman who had died in a car crash in Boston.
In the end though, Booth was saved and went as he had promised Teddy to tell Claire, his girlfriend, that Teddy had loved her. This ending was spoiled by the ghost incident. Having told Brennan that he had been helped by the ghost of a former soldier who had been the victim of 'the fortunes of war' she then tells him there is no such thing as ghosts. He smiles knowingly and approaches Claire at Teddy's grave. Teddy then appears in full Ranger uniform, speaks to Brennan who replies and then stands beside her. Booth looks over and gives Parker a salute which Brennan acknowledges because she can no longer see Teddy. She never knows he was the ghost. Why bother with that? Is it to show us that Booth really did see Parker's ghost? It doesn't matter. We accept it or we don't and it's pointless to show him to Brennan because she doesn't know who he is or that he is dead. Bah!
My final problem with the Gravedigger plot is how in the end it didn't matter that the Gravedigger was caught. It helped Booth tangentially in that they were able to find out where he was from the boots they found, but the attorney never spoke again. How she was able to get the drop on Booth, drag him out of the window, into a car, across town, on a boat, into the hold of a naval ship, into the submarine and tighten the nuts from the inside, we'll never know. And kill Vega at the same time. At least Brennan clocked her, but I don't know if the capture was enough closure for Hodgins.
My final problem with Booth's plot, apart from the fact it seemed to serve little purpose in the main thrust of the series, is that he never got the chance to interact with the people he worked with. He was much better at getting the squints to work out where Brennan was, really anxious, really tense. Brennan never seemed that invested. The FBI were very slow to notice he was missing and did nothing when they did find out. Indeed they were more interested in catching the Gravedigger than finding out what happened to Booth. Nobody there seemed to care.
Finally Sweets. That man is like a leech. Even after he was told to get lost because he was FBI there he was without protest from the others in the park helping. There he was in the lab not helping with the Gravedigger interrogation. There he was telling us what would work because he had read the profile. He was nothing but a hindrance and I hope he learned a lesson: real people cannot be characterised by a profile; sometimes you have to act and hit them.
There was a small covering of snow here this morning and I have been cold all day. The South and West had much more than us. It's an old fashioned February all right.
My head teacher came to see me today so I could fill in the sickness review forms. She'll be back March 2nd. My leg has been chafing all day. UGH!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 10:12 pm (UTC)Felt I just had to comment that I found it easier to believe that Brennan saw a ghost then I did that Booth managed to undo those nuts and bolts by unlocking the nuts from the inside! Not only due to the fact that Booth unlocked them with his keychain (!?!), but that someone had managed to do them up like that in the first place! MInd you, she had apparently managed to knock Booth out and drag him through the window so she must have had some kind of mad ninja skills! ;-)
With regard to the weather? I've lived in the South West (Bristol) for 12 years now and I still can't believe we actually have snow outside!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 11:35 pm (UTC)Also, if she killed Vega first she would have had broken ribs for heaven's sake. Not that the timing was clear for that bit. Perhaps use of a countdown clock in the corner of the screen would have added an air of tension.
As for snow, when will it end? When I lived in Cardiff there was a thin scattering which barely turned the pavement white and people came out of their houses to see it, at 10 o'clock at night.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-08 01:27 pm (UTC)When I lived in Cardiff there was a thin scattering which barely turned the pavement white and people came out of their houses to see it, at 10 o'clock at night. I've done that in Bristol a few times, too! Normally it falls like mad a for a few hours and then disappears in a matter of minutes! I think that is what has got many people surprised in our neck of the woods this go round, it actually settled.
Just so you know, I am planning to friend as it's nice to read about Bones, DB, the weather and football all in one place. Hope you don't mind...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-08 04:28 pm (UTC)