Free Saturday

[mistletoe]

Happy birthday to thebratqueen

 I miss your fic. I reread Protocol often and really am sad that you moved on to other interests. Happy happy birthday!!

I am writing bigger today because I am having a Saturday off. Just as well really because it is getting on to midday and the frost is just lifting. Interestingly, I just typed living instead of lifting. That must say something about how my brain transmits thoughts to my fingers. Don't know what though. I think I must mishear my inner voice.


Back to normal: big writing is too tiring! So, yesterday was very nice. I got my hair cut and then mam and dad came up. Mam and I went to the shops and the market where we bought loads of things for Christmas eating pleasure. We went to the Anchor for lunch where I had a very lovely chicken kiev style dish except it was stuffed with Stilton and black pudding rather than garlic butter.

So, one more day after this and I will have completed a whole month of posting every day in November. That's a NaBloPoMo done. It hasn't been too arduous actually, what with Denise Welch and opera trip and weekend away and everything. I wonder if there's a banner somewhere?

Now, last Bones thoughts for a while.Even this week's title failed to meet the criterion of The ______ in the ________. In this the first shall be last, as the episode number on the end was 02, so this was technically a season 3 episode.

And it showed. Many developments were completely ignored: no hint of Angela's bisexuality that was so prominent in the last two episodes; no frisson between Booth and Bones; Max was back; Sweets was interfering without cause; writing was slipshod.

In keeping with the first/last observation that last point was what really let this episode down. Just little things that irritate.

First, Brennan's reaction to Max working at the Jeffersonian. It was irrational to object to his presence because of his criminal past and how it would compromise the integrity of the forensic evidence. How? What did she expect him to do: destroy evidence so the murderer would get away? Does she see him as some covert criminal out to help every criminal evade justice? It made no sense. Nor did her firing him for helping Hodgins and whatshisname with the wind tunnel experiment. Had he done anything wrong? What happened to his redemption and forgiveness by Brennan after The Verdict in the Story? It's not that long since she was going to get him to look after the dog she wanted to adopt. Of course, that was a proper season 4 episode: The Finger in the Nest.

Furthermore why was he in that part of the Jeffersonian? I couldn't figure out what his job was. If he was an education officer then he should have been in the education part of the building, not wandering round a restricted area that needs an electronic pass to get in and is surrounded by security guards.

Second, the delivery of the murder solution was poor. To begin with, identity of the victim was too easy. DNA from burnt bones was put into the database. Immediately after - ie less than a day, Cam gets a telephone call to say the identity has been sent to her as an email. We see her open it and we see a picture of the ex-special ops victim. In the time it takes Booth to say The toughest of the tough, she has assimilated his entire back story and then delivers it without ever looking back at the email. How?

Then there is finding his address from the MySpace page. I'm all for modern technology, but in less than a minute Angela has isolated, based on a guess, the part of the photograph where a house number would be, extracted that part of the picture, enhanced it, and found the number of the house opposite which is totally clear. Then, Cam picks on the lamp post. Angela knows that there are only two places in Washington DC that have that style of lamp post. She knows their Zip codes and hey presto! there is only one house in those two districts with that number. Ridiculous. When we see the exterior shot of the apartment it bears no resemblance to the photo and I never noticed a street lamp. There were too many steps up to the door to allow for easy viewing of the house opposite.

Inside the apartment there were two anomalies: money and pass. Why did he have the foreign currency and why was it never mentioned again? Was he trying to bring down Richard King's company as a way to show the man that money was destroying his family? If he was then that was pretty cool, but we only had the doctor's word for it and that was too untrustworthy a source. Messy.  As for the pass: in a minor lack of continuity, Brennan found it in a coat pocket, but later Cam said Booth found it in a drawer.

What was the purpose of Booth getting into the school the way he did? If Angela figured out (again) where the school was how did they not know it was a school? Why was Booth - a stranger- not challenged by the security guards outside? Just saying he was an FBI agent into the intercom got him through the door of a high security school. Look at the trouble they had getting into the exclusive school in season 1. Then, the only person there to greet him happened to be the headmaster who thought he was there as a prospective parent. How had he got the pass already then? Shoddy.

After that. we had Booth's various interrogations. His gut was not working at all here. He too readily deferred to Sweets. After speaking to Elsbeth he says to Sweets You were right. About what? That bit passed me by. I had no recollection of Booth inter-acting with Sweets before that point. I will have to look again and I have watched it 3 times.

The solution of the crime itself was also weak. The wind tunnel experiment was OK, but to figure out the crime scene they had to know the exact time and duration of the wind gust; the exact time it would take for the skull to hit the tree; Hodgins knew, from a blank map with a tree marked by a red x, the exact area the bones would have started from. And, how likely would it be that there was nothing between the two points? Mrs King burned a body in open ground? Puh-lease. Furthermore, the height of the murderer was worked out by x-rays of the skull and spine. Bearing in mind the skull was no longer attached, the x-ray looked like the spine was still attached. The intuitive leap of a choke chain was just one of several guesses, which they are always at pains to avoid; Brennan wouldn't even confirm something was pink last week.

The culprit could have been filled out more. The extraneous red herrings really took up too much time while the callous little girl who killed a man because he was going to tell on her to her parents was almost an afterthought. Gina Torres got more screen time as a star I suppose, with the insider trading story otherwise she would never have been a suspect. This really was a writer playing with the audience week, from the point where we were supposed to think the school was a CIA cover to the unnecessary tension between Max and Brennan that had already been resolved in Season 3. Definitely a case of the guests overpowering the cast and plot.

As for the family theme, there was nothing new to add. This aspect has really been done to death and, bearing in mind Booth's revelations about his own family only two episodes ago, to do the Max/Bones merry-go-round again was just hackneyed. We get it already. This really exemplified the dangers of shooting and showing things out of order - no continuity

Basically both Booth and Brennan have overcome their childhood traumas and become successful via different means: the army and the FBI, both of which provide discipline for Booth that he lacked as a child; both of which can be seen as a family. Booth's little rebellions are compensations that he needs to feel an individual, but safe. Brennan was clever, so took the college and science route, both disciplines encouraging the removal of emotion, a fact that allows Brennan to feel safe. She still feels uncomfortable in emotionally charged situations and usually resorts to logic as her comfort zone.

Finally, what has happened to Hodgins and Angela? This was an episode sans trauma. No mention was made of Angela and Roxy. Hodgins was back in geek mode and operating at full throttle with experiments and accelerant identification and humour. No upsets at all.

I quite liked the scene between Booth and Bones at the end where he got her to see passed her elitist attitude to children's education that Max had tried to show her earlier: that science can be fun and rainbows can be looked at just because they are beautiful rather than an example of light refraction. She should start chasing rainbows again. Maybe she'll notice the pot of gold at the end.

I didn't appreciate the exchange between Max and Booth which was nothing more than a sop to the shippers who want Brennan to sleep with Booth. At least Booth wants more than that judging by his reaction after Max had left. That was telling I thought in the body language DB exhibited.


1667 Jonathan Swift was born. I'm not sure if it was today or tomorrow so I shall save the jolly little story about him until tomorrow. One birthday mention per day is enough I think and this is bratqueen's day. So there Dean Swift!