Two in a rush
Jul. 1st, 2010 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mistletoeSo, having got through Passenger in the Oven I thought I better get through The Bone That Blew sharpish and it turned out to be quite educational if looked at in a cold rational way.
This episode is not bad if you ignore the case and look at the underlying theme which is nature vs. nurture together with the old standby of fathers and families. The fathers are real and surrogate. So we have Max, Booth, Richard King and Cal Warren all trying to do what they think is best for children.
From Brennan's point of view each father is successful to varying degrees and she has tunnel vision, particularly when it comes to her own father whom she treats with contempt from the outset. There is a cold, logical detachment before she even sees him in the episode when she learns Cam has hired him as a teacher. Brennan is in no doubt:
BRENNAN: How could you have hired him?
CAM: Your father was the best candidate.
BRENNAN: Well, are you sure? Dad is an excellent liar.
CAM: He's also an excellent science teacher. I called the school where he taught...
BRENNAN: (interrupting) Well, fifteen years ago!
CAM: And after fifteen years, they still remember him. They named their lab after your dad! I thought you'd be pleased.
BRENNAN: Well, you were incorrect! Is there a probation period?
CAM: Yes.
BRENNAN: Well, what would please me is if you terminate him at the end of that time.
To Cam, and the casual viewer, this seems irrationally prejudiced in the extreme, but Brennan has her logic and is at least consistent in that the Lab is sacrosanct no matter who you are:
BRENNAN: This is a crime lab! My father is a bank robber and an accused murderer. ....
BRENNAN: It's a crime lab! You're a convicted felon. Your presence taints the evidence. ...
BRENNAN: You aren't adequately credentialed to design an experiment, Dad. ....
BRENNAN: It's a conflict of interest. We catch criminals, my dad is a criminal.
At least Sweets confronts that reasoning and presents a psychological reading of the situation:
SWEETS: Well, at the time you abandoned your daughter, 15 years ago, you were a well-regarded science teacher. Now...here you are, basically in the same situation. And subconsciously, she doesn't want to risk feeling that sense of abandonment and bereavement again.
Father and daughter both deny this and Brennan takes the rest of the episode to come to terms with her feelings about fathers. It takes observing Booth and the Kings to get her to that point.
Initially she is very impressed with the way the Kings approach their children's upbringing. They have the best education and pursuits that money can buy as well as a former Special Ops guy to be their body guard. Thus when she learns the children speak Mandarin Chinese:
ROYCE: My father says the Chinese will run the planet in ten years. He figures it'll be useful.
BRENNAN: That's very smart.
she cannot hide her admiration. What she doesn't see is that by driving her over the other side of town to see the back of a rainbow her father was similarly enriching her upbringing.
When Booth is given a brochure for Woodbury School he is torn about what it would mean for Parker. Brennan 'helps':
BOOTH: Twenty-eight grand a year. I didn't pay that much for four years of college!
BRENNAN: If you think it's so ridiculous, why did you save the application?
BOOTH: I didn't save it. I just didn't have a chance to throw it out yet.
BRENNAN: You don't have to be embarrassed, It's perfectly normal to want the best for Parker.
BOOTH: Public school was good enough for me, it's good enough for my kid.
BENNAN: Of course it is. Probably.
BOOTH: What's that supposed to mean?
BRENNAN: Parker is a bright, engaged little boy. I'm sure he'll do fine in a large classroom. I did.
BOOTH: Except...
BRENNAN: Except what?
BOOTH: Your dad was a science teacher. You're a scientist.
BRENNAN: Yes, my education was enriched at home.
BOOTH: That's what I gotta do! Enrich Parker at home.
BRENNAN: In what academics are you qualified to offer enrichment?
BOOTH: Well...
Apparently nothing.
What's interesting here is that Brennan has no perception of Booth being incapable of enriching his son's education because her father enriched hers. Mr King offers enrichment through paying for a private school and private lessons for his children. But look at the product. The nurture produced Dr Brennan even if "assuming quality education and adequate supervision, parents are actually rather irrelevant beyond a certain age." It also produced a murderer in Alexa. So maybe nature has a stronger input. This is what Booth believes:
BRENNAN: Look at this, they start Latin in third grade. That's fantastic!
BOOTH: No, You know what's more important than academic enrichment? A loving environment. You ask anyone.
BRENNAN: Parker is a wonderful child,Booth. You shouldn't feel inadequate.
BOOTH: Yeah, well I'm perfectly capable of raising my own kid.
BRENNAN: You're being defensive.
BOOTH: I am not.
BRENNAN: It's because you only have one child, when you procreate in multiples, there's less pressure.
BOOTH: Thank you. I feel much better.
Again, Brennan is looking at the topic academically and vaguely insults Booth's intellect. When the children are not just Child A, Child B and Child C, but Royce, Alexa and Parker then personality has to be fed into the computation. So academically, her father should not be in the Lab because he is a criminal and therefore "Whose sperm hit whose egg shouldn't determine who works here." This is hyper rational but if you add Max's reasonable and effective way of doing the job he was hired to do and Cam and Booth treating Max as Brennan's father worthy of a favour or simply a human being Brennan is the one who appears irrational and heartless.
So what lesson does Brennan learn here and how does she become a better person for it? Initially she maintains her absolute rejection of her father being at the Lab:
BRENNAN: Dad, you're fired.
WENDELL: What?
MAX: (ignoring BRENNAN: ) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
WENDELL: NOAA tracks surface conditions.
HODGINS: We can calculate where the bones started out if we can plot approximate mass and reverse the path of that nor'easterly.
WENDELL: The heavier remains will still be near the original dump site.
MAX: (to BRENNAN: ) You see, I'm helping!
HODGINS: Oh, most definitely is helping.
BRENNAN: I'm sorry, Dad, but you're fired. You took part in a forensic experiment. You said you wouldn't, but you did, so now you're fired.
It is Sweets who states the case most effectively. Not being her partner or employer or brother allows him to put the outsider's view to her in such a way that she is convinced, even if she won't admit it.
MAX: I've, um... I've decided I'm gonna leave the Jeffersonian.
SWEETS: Why?
BRENNAN: Uh, because I fired him.
SWEETS: You can do that?
MAX: (chuckling wryly) Ohhh yeah. Believe me, she can do it.
BRENNAN: Well, it's all about proximity to forensic evidence.
MAX: Uh, don't take any offense, but that's a lot of crap. It's about a proximity to me. Right?
[BRENNAN glares at SWEETS]
SWEETS: (Off BRENNAN's look) Well, in my opinion, it isn't your father's presence that's causing you anxiety, it's the memory of his absence.
BRENNAN: I can understand quantum mechanics, but I can't understand you.
MAX: Well, I'll make it easy. I'm leaving the Jeffersonian.
BRENNAN: Well, you are?
MAX: But I'm staying with you.
BRENNAN: Wha-oh, in my house?
MAX: No. No, no. Wait, why, is that an offer?
BRENNAN: No. Would you... Would you want me to offer?
MAX: No, no! but thanks for the offer.
BRENNAN: No, it wasn't an offer, it was just a question.
SWEETS: He isn't saying he's literally staying with you. He's promising never to abandon you again.
BRENNAN: I'm sorry, but if it wasn't for that evidence thing, I'd- I'd let you keep your job.
SWEETS: That's simply not true.
MAX: Hey, it's all right. We're good!
[BRENNAN looks at SWEETS again.]
SWEETS: (frustrated) Nothing I say has any impact!
BRENNAN: I should get back to work.
And so the admission is made, tacitly at least, that Sweets has cracked the case. In the end, Brennan sees that giving children the best does not produce well adjusted offspring. Booth's prejudice about entitlement suddenly comes to mind.
At the end there is the usual compromise where Booth manoeuvres her to see what the lesson must be.
BOOTH: Don't fire Max. Let him keep his job. You know, he's a teacher, he's not a janitor.
BRENNAN: I can't overlook the sanctity of the forensic lab, Booth…
BOOTH: Yeah, maybe you can overlook it for me.
BRENNAN: For you?
BOOTH: Yeah. Personal favour.
BRENNAN: What, like a partner thing?
BOOTH: Partner thing.
BRENNAN: (chuckling) I know you, Booth. You're trying to do me a favour by telling me it's a favour for you.
BOOTH: No. Mm-mm, no, I... I can't afford that school. I can't enrich Parker, not with the science thing, but... you can, Max can.
Parker excitedly blows up the cola.
BRENNAN: Look at my dad!
BOOTH: Look at my little boy there with your dad.
BRENNAN: Okay. Yes. All right.
BOOTH: Thanks, Bones.
Although I saw little in the episode from a crime procedural point of view, the sub text turned out to be quite rewarding and Brennan made another step forward in the growing rapprochement in the relationship with her father in that she finally confronted her emotions with regard to him and discovered that he would not abandon her again. Similarly, she is beginning to see more of Booth's capabilities as a father and how he is not too proud to seek the help of those around him who have different skills from his own.
Bones is generally successful in presenting the fallout associated with dysfunctional families and this episode turns out to be a powerful example of that. It is integrated between the case and the main characters by presenting what seems to be the perfect family with every advantage a parent would want for their children. It is revealed as a morass of amoral behaviours where murder as a way of avoiding being excluded from school. Alexa didn't want that because her friends were there, not because cheating is wrong. Brennan, in spite of her perceived deprived childhood became a brilliant scientist, the top in her field. Booth in spite of an abusive father and an addictive gene became a top sniper and law enforcement officer. Anthropologically, nature seems to survive nurture in the cases we have been shown here.
Speaking of murder I have had to resort to the mousetraps. Two dead last night. There was blood. I won't dwell. I hope that's the back of them as disposing of little dead mouse bodies is gross.
The Bone That Blew
This episode is not bad if you ignore the case and look at the underlying theme which is nature vs. nurture together with the old standby of fathers and families. The fathers are real and surrogate. So we have Max, Booth, Richard King and Cal Warren all trying to do what they think is best for children.
From Brennan's point of view each father is successful to varying degrees and she has tunnel vision, particularly when it comes to her own father whom she treats with contempt from the outset. There is a cold, logical detachment before she even sees him in the episode when she learns Cam has hired him as a teacher. Brennan is in no doubt:
BRENNAN: How could you have hired him?
CAM: Your father was the best candidate.
BRENNAN: Well, are you sure? Dad is an excellent liar.
CAM: He's also an excellent science teacher. I called the school where he taught...
BRENNAN: (interrupting) Well, fifteen years ago!
CAM: And after fifteen years, they still remember him. They named their lab after your dad! I thought you'd be pleased.
BRENNAN: Well, you were incorrect! Is there a probation period?
CAM: Yes.
BRENNAN: Well, what would please me is if you terminate him at the end of that time.
To Cam, and the casual viewer, this seems irrationally prejudiced in the extreme, but Brennan has her logic and is at least consistent in that the Lab is sacrosanct no matter who you are:
BRENNAN: This is a crime lab! My father is a bank robber and an accused murderer. ....
BRENNAN: It's a crime lab! You're a convicted felon. Your presence taints the evidence. ...
BRENNAN: You aren't adequately credentialed to design an experiment, Dad. ....
BRENNAN: It's a conflict of interest. We catch criminals, my dad is a criminal.
At least Sweets confronts that reasoning and presents a psychological reading of the situation:
SWEETS: Well, at the time you abandoned your daughter, 15 years ago, you were a well-regarded science teacher. Now...here you are, basically in the same situation. And subconsciously, she doesn't want to risk feeling that sense of abandonment and bereavement again.
Father and daughter both deny this and Brennan takes the rest of the episode to come to terms with her feelings about fathers. It takes observing Booth and the Kings to get her to that point.
Initially she is very impressed with the way the Kings approach their children's upbringing. They have the best education and pursuits that money can buy as well as a former Special Ops guy to be their body guard. Thus when she learns the children speak Mandarin Chinese:
ROYCE: My father says the Chinese will run the planet in ten years. He figures it'll be useful.
BRENNAN: That's very smart.
she cannot hide her admiration. What she doesn't see is that by driving her over the other side of town to see the back of a rainbow her father was similarly enriching her upbringing.
When Booth is given a brochure for Woodbury School he is torn about what it would mean for Parker. Brennan 'helps':
BOOTH: Twenty-eight grand a year. I didn't pay that much for four years of college!
BRENNAN: If you think it's so ridiculous, why did you save the application?
BOOTH: I didn't save it. I just didn't have a chance to throw it out yet.
BRENNAN: You don't have to be embarrassed, It's perfectly normal to want the best for Parker.
BOOTH: Public school was good enough for me, it's good enough for my kid.
BENNAN: Of course it is. Probably.
BOOTH: What's that supposed to mean?
BRENNAN: Parker is a bright, engaged little boy. I'm sure he'll do fine in a large classroom. I did.
BOOTH: Except...
BRENNAN: Except what?
BOOTH: Your dad was a science teacher. You're a scientist.
BRENNAN: Yes, my education was enriched at home.
BOOTH: That's what I gotta do! Enrich Parker at home.
BRENNAN: In what academics are you qualified to offer enrichment?
BOOTH: Well...
Apparently nothing.
What's interesting here is that Brennan has no perception of Booth being incapable of enriching his son's education because her father enriched hers. Mr King offers enrichment through paying for a private school and private lessons for his children. But look at the product. The nurture produced Dr Brennan even if "assuming quality education and adequate supervision, parents are actually rather irrelevant beyond a certain age." It also produced a murderer in Alexa. So maybe nature has a stronger input. This is what Booth believes:
BRENNAN: Look at this, they start Latin in third grade. That's fantastic!
BOOTH: No, You know what's more important than academic enrichment? A loving environment. You ask anyone.
BRENNAN: Parker is a wonderful child,Booth. You shouldn't feel inadequate.
BOOTH: Yeah, well I'm perfectly capable of raising my own kid.
BRENNAN: You're being defensive.
BOOTH: I am not.
BRENNAN: It's because you only have one child, when you procreate in multiples, there's less pressure.
BOOTH: Thank you. I feel much better.
Again, Brennan is looking at the topic academically and vaguely insults Booth's intellect. When the children are not just Child A, Child B and Child C, but Royce, Alexa and Parker then personality has to be fed into the computation. So academically, her father should not be in the Lab because he is a criminal and therefore "Whose sperm hit whose egg shouldn't determine who works here." This is hyper rational but if you add Max's reasonable and effective way of doing the job he was hired to do and Cam and Booth treating Max as Brennan's father worthy of a favour or simply a human being Brennan is the one who appears irrational and heartless.
So what lesson does Brennan learn here and how does she become a better person for it? Initially she maintains her absolute rejection of her father being at the Lab:
BRENNAN: Dad, you're fired.
WENDELL: What?
MAX: (ignoring BRENNAN: ) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
WENDELL: NOAA tracks surface conditions.
HODGINS: We can calculate where the bones started out if we can plot approximate mass and reverse the path of that nor'easterly.
WENDELL: The heavier remains will still be near the original dump site.
MAX: (to BRENNAN: ) You see, I'm helping!
HODGINS: Oh, most definitely is helping.
BRENNAN: I'm sorry, Dad, but you're fired. You took part in a forensic experiment. You said you wouldn't, but you did, so now you're fired.
It is Sweets who states the case most effectively. Not being her partner or employer or brother allows him to put the outsider's view to her in such a way that she is convinced, even if she won't admit it.
MAX: I've, um... I've decided I'm gonna leave the Jeffersonian.
SWEETS: Why?
BRENNAN: Uh, because I fired him.
SWEETS: You can do that?
MAX: (chuckling wryly) Ohhh yeah. Believe me, she can do it.
BRENNAN: Well, it's all about proximity to forensic evidence.
MAX: Uh, don't take any offense, but that's a lot of crap. It's about a proximity to me. Right?
[BRENNAN glares at SWEETS]
SWEETS: (Off BRENNAN's look) Well, in my opinion, it isn't your father's presence that's causing you anxiety, it's the memory of his absence.
BRENNAN: I can understand quantum mechanics, but I can't understand you.
MAX: Well, I'll make it easy. I'm leaving the Jeffersonian.
BRENNAN: Well, you are?
MAX: But I'm staying with you.
BRENNAN: Wha-oh, in my house?
MAX: No. No, no. Wait, why, is that an offer?
BRENNAN: No. Would you... Would you want me to offer?
MAX: No, no! but thanks for the offer.
BRENNAN: No, it wasn't an offer, it was just a question.
SWEETS: He isn't saying he's literally staying with you. He's promising never to abandon you again.
BRENNAN: I'm sorry, but if it wasn't for that evidence thing, I'd- I'd let you keep your job.
SWEETS: That's simply not true.
MAX: Hey, it's all right. We're good!
[BRENNAN looks at SWEETS again.]
SWEETS: (frustrated) Nothing I say has any impact!
BRENNAN: I should get back to work.
And so the admission is made, tacitly at least, that Sweets has cracked the case. In the end, Brennan sees that giving children the best does not produce well adjusted offspring. Booth's prejudice about entitlement suddenly comes to mind.
At the end there is the usual compromise where Booth manoeuvres her to see what the lesson must be.
BOOTH: Don't fire Max. Let him keep his job. You know, he's a teacher, he's not a janitor.
BRENNAN: I can't overlook the sanctity of the forensic lab, Booth…
BOOTH: Yeah, maybe you can overlook it for me.
BRENNAN: For you?
BOOTH: Yeah. Personal favour.
BRENNAN: What, like a partner thing?
BOOTH: Partner thing.
BRENNAN: (chuckling) I know you, Booth. You're trying to do me a favour by telling me it's a favour for you.
BOOTH: No. Mm-mm, no, I... I can't afford that school. I can't enrich Parker, not with the science thing, but... you can, Max can.
Parker excitedly blows up the cola.
BRENNAN: Look at my dad!
BOOTH: Look at my little boy there with your dad.
BRENNAN: Okay. Yes. All right.
BOOTH: Thanks, Bones.
Although I saw little in the episode from a crime procedural point of view, the sub text turned out to be quite rewarding and Brennan made another step forward in the growing rapprochement in the relationship with her father in that she finally confronted her emotions with regard to him and discovered that he would not abandon her again. Similarly, she is beginning to see more of Booth's capabilities as a father and how he is not too proud to seek the help of those around him who have different skills from his own.
Bones is generally successful in presenting the fallout associated with dysfunctional families and this episode turns out to be a powerful example of that. It is integrated between the case and the main characters by presenting what seems to be the perfect family with every advantage a parent would want for their children. It is revealed as a morass of amoral behaviours where murder as a way of avoiding being excluded from school. Alexa didn't want that because her friends were there, not because cheating is wrong. Brennan, in spite of her perceived deprived childhood became a brilliant scientist, the top in her field. Booth in spite of an abusive father and an addictive gene became a top sniper and law enforcement officer. Anthropologically, nature seems to survive nurture in the cases we have been shown here.
Speaking of murder I have had to resort to the mousetraps. Two dead last night. There was blood. I won't dwell. I hope that's the back of them as disposing of little dead mouse bodies is gross.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 09:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-12 08:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-12 01:24 pm (UTC)I would prefer the Brennan-Max thing to be kept permanently on the back burner. Once she got him off the murder rap that should have been the natural conclusion. Otherwise, it distracts from the perceived relationship building she should be trying which is with Booth. She can never have the relationship she wanted as a girl with her father now and unless we get a load of this is your Aunt Martha type scenes nothing can be gained. I wathced The Goop on the Girl this morning and got all irritated with Margaret again. Pointless character.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-12 03:45 pm (UTC)And I've been distracted ONCE AGAIN by your gif! It's mesmerising! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-12 03:55 pm (UTC)Yes I hate the too clever for our own good moments in any show. Like the one where they were promoting Avatar. What a waste of time that was.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-12 04:20 pm (UTC)