writinRepo/boness4e26.txt

The final episode of Bones Season 4 comes right off the emergency of Booth (David Boreanaz) being hospitalized and operated on for an early onset brain tumor that was causing hallucinations. He reacts badly to the anesthesia, causing him to enter a four-day coma that leads to him hallucinating an entire additional murder mystery that lasts the entire episode. Each character is set into a sort of alternate universe where Booth and Brennan/Bones (Emily Deschanel) own a nightclub, ironically called "The Lab," which becomes a crime scene after a body was found. Each character is reimagined for this episode and it's really well done. Worth mentioning is that almost all characters and their aspects are sort of dulled to be less strongly at odds with each other, but it suits the story well. It's hard to show how good it is without the context of the rest of the show, but I'm going to list off the original characters and show what they transformed into.

Seeley Booth: Empathetic but cocky FBI agent and ex sniper. Works with Brennan to solve murders and constantly tries to explain cultural norms and feelings to her. He works at finding motive and a guilty party, Brennan often tagging along. He has a dislike for scientists, which he calls "Squints." He is in denial about his feelings for Brennan for multiple reasons. He becomes the co-owner of the nightclub The Lab with Brennan, who is his wife and he calls Bren (rather than Tempy, which is the normal pet name for her that Jared and Max use). Same personality, but without the experience of being currently military or FBI, or with the arguing with Bones about the subjective, because of their relationship.

Temperance "Bones" Brennan: Objective, logical, empirical, often robotic forensic anthropologist and fiction author working at The Jeffersonian Institute's Forensic Division, which has a partnership with the FBI for solving cases that leave little evidence but a body, oftentimes only bones, which is her specialty and why Booth gave her the nickname, which she initially hates, but becomes less annoyed about in later seasons. She works at finding cause of death and any relevant extraneous information about the case that could be found within them. Constantly, her lack of awareness to emotion and general robotic atmosphere causes Booth to tell her off or try to explain things as simple as why we tell children about Santa Claus or why people get married - two things she finds to be objectively unexplainable and a little silly. She is blissfully unaware of the connection she shares with Booth due to her distancing from her emotions, which she finds inconclusive and ephemeral. She becomes the co-owner of the nightclub The Lab with Booth. She's his loving wife, but as a co-owner of the club she's a cold, logical, yet not entirely unemotional leader of the business. At one point she inquires to Cam when she will be allowed to reopen her business, which Cam accuses her of being too cold, after all somebody died and she's worried about her weekly profits. It was an interesting interaction. She has mannerisms and actually freakin emotes and smiles so she's a very different character in stark contrast of her actual self. Perhaps this is more because of her situation; she's not a scientist with the need to be constantly objective and has a husband who she loves dearly, so perhaps if those two things were true of the true Bones she would also be relaxed enough to be less robotic; we see her in the rest of the show joke around sometimes but she does so in a way that implies she knows she's trying to be funny but isn't very sure about how funny she's being or that she's not good at it. This version of Bones is not as unaware of emotion. Oh and worth mentioning is that at the end of the episodes she reveals to her husband that she's pregnant, so they can't share a nightly glass of wine anymore, but the two of them revel in the prospect of having a child together, which ties into the final arc of the season quite well. It shows that the inner thoughts of Booth are very happy to have a child with Brennan, though their relationship isn't there quite yet in the main continuity.

Camille "Cam" Saroyan: The boss of the Jeffersonian Institute's Forensic Division. She worked with law enforcement as a coroner, so she has a lot of experience finding cause of death on fresh bodies. She previously had a relationship with Booth and has known him and his brother for a long time. She came out of nowhere in season 2 because the writers decided the team needed a boss higher than Bones. Their previous "boss" was the director of the Jeffersonian, who canonically took a sabbatical and then a permanent leave of absence, likely because the actor quit, and the writers conjured Cam for this reason. It's one of the many things they just kinda forgot about for production reasons and never properly addressed in-continuity. I agree that they needed an actual head of the Forensic Division but her integration was forced initially. Eventually she finds her niche and fits into the plot pretty well. A lot of the time she butts heads with Bones; she's a coroner and always has first say in inspecting the corpse to try to determine cause of death, while Brennan wants to clean the bones so she can do her job. At one point in s4, Cam puts her foot down on cleaning the bones so she can rehydrate a corpse that was dehydrated in salt, which leads them to find the cause of death when they otherwise wouldn't have, which humbles Bones and was a pretty good moment. As the boss, she ends up being the badguy in many situations as is necessary. She becomes a detective in this world, actually taking Booth's office set from the real world, and ironically has to deal with all the employees and Squinterns being frustrating like she usually does, just in the context of them being investigated for murder.

Jared Booth: Seeley's younger brother. All his life, Seeley took the fall for him and kept him out of trouble. Eventually, he climbed up the ladder in the military and became very successful, while Seeley protected him and didn't become as successful, becoming an FBI agent with a desk job plus some detective work. In S4 when the writers decided to make him exist (lullers...) Seeley didn't protect him, and then Jared saved his life and it cost him his job. For as spontaneous as his introduction to the show was, they had some good development between the two, but he's definitely frustrating in main continuity because of the way he treats one of the most important characters. In the new continuity, he's still Booth's brother, but he's a detective working with Cam as his partner. His involvement in the plot of this story prove his devotion to his brother, because he saved his wife, Brennan's, life. ||He killed a man in their club who was sent there by a mob boss to assassinate her.||

Angela Pearly-Gates Montenegro (yeah that's actually her canonical name :TrollNeutral:) probably the worst character because almost all the worst writing decisions and worst plot points revolve around her. The writers really don't know how to make her work. She's a bit of a promiscuous girl, an artist, who started working at the Jeffersonian when Bones, a good friend of hers, realized her skills could be useful to the team. Her being an artist doesn't make much sense, because her skillset is sort of just magic that can fix any tech problem they have, I think they should have either given her either a coworker/assistant who does the techy stuff, or she could have gone to college with Brennan and been trained in some top-of-the-line experimental tech, because she does impossible stuff all the time that would lead the viewer to assume she has more training than the show actually gave her canonically. Either way, she at her strongest acts as a raisonneur for Brennan, explaining to her what she needs to learn, though many times she's an unreliable narrator for the situations Brennan goes through. At her weakest, she's a plot device used to create drama between herself and her coworkers, especially Hodgins and Cam. My favorite arc of hers is when she decided to stop having sex and she just became uncontrollably flirty due to the pent up energy and I enjoyed her interacting with the other characters as she suffered. Anyway, she becomes The Lab's Hostess, and is essentially the same character, luckily none of her previous annoying flaws ruin the plot because this single episode is in a fictitious continuity.

Max Keenan: Brennan's father, who abandoned her as a teenager, which effectively caused her robotic nature and devotion to empirical facts. He was a chemistry teacher in K-12 schools and is actually a convicted felon, for killing a man who was hunting down Bones (I believe in s2). Bones' legal name is Brennan because her parents were Bonnie and Clyde types; professional con artists who changed their names and had fake identities very often. She has a very resentful attitude towards him most the time and often fails to remain objective when he's around. In this continuity I don't think he's her father, but rather a local politician who wants to convince Booth to give him a bribe to supposedly protect their nightclub from "the Gravedigger," a mob boss who is supposedly fabricated by him. When talking about this to Bones, he says, "He's a man of principle, and I mean as a terrible insult." which is probably the most politician thing I've ever heard. ||I don't actually remember if he was actually the Gravedigger and responsible for sending the assassin all along. I think that's what the writers intended but the ending focused on Jared a bit more...||

Jack Hodgins: the Forensic Division's entomologist, botanist, and mineralogist; he specializes in plants, dirt, and bugs and has incredible capability in figuring out where trace amounts of any of the three came from. Very standoffish, big ego, conspiracy theorist, coming from his background as a kid in a rich family. His view of class structure makes him resent that fact, and he works at the Jeffersonian as part of the double life he lives. He has a fortune to his name, but hates using these resources. Often, he and Zack/the Squinterns (Zack Addy and the Squinterns sounds like a BANGING band name ngl) are behind exciting and potentially dangerous experiments in loose relation to the case they're working on, much to the chagrin of Cam. He had a fling with Angela in s2-3 that disrespected his character a LOT. To the point that it took what I theorize to be another writer going back and trying to make him a sympathetic character by taking his past conspiracy theorist side and replacing that with anger and sarcasm as a coping mechanism for Zack's largely exiting the series and Angela's (and partly Cam's) dirty treatment of him. It takes a previous therapist character to fix this, idk when we see a character need to talk about two extreme things that happened whose impact on him were highly forgotten, it may be an indicator that those things (namely Angela as a whole and what the freakin writers did to Zack) are kinda trash. Anyway he's the narrator of this one-off story, but is also within it as a true crime writer who shows up to the club and sort of helps investigate. I really like him in this.

Zack Addy: Brennan's protege, just as objective and a tad more socially unaware. Probably massively autistic. Eventually became a good friend of Hodgins and lives with him (or at least on his property) for a time. Him and Hodgins often proclaim they're "King of the Lab" when they make a break in a case by being extremely smart. Their friendly competition was extremely endearing and so was his relationship with the rest of the gang. The writers ruined him. They made him the apprentice to an evil conspirator who was essentially a Cannibal Sith. It's the last thing you'd think they'd do with him after s1 and it's terrible. Essentially he claims he was convinced through objective reasoning by this man to kill and eat someone, but the writers attempt to retcon this in s4 when he reappears for a brief episode, but he refuses to tell the truth, that he didn't kill or eat anybody, so he remains in the psychiatric hospital after being returned from breaking himself out to help the gang. Future writers retconning terrible outcomes for loved and established characters could be another indicator that your writing sucks and shouldn't disrespect the characters. In this continuity, he's an employee of The Lab, nowhere near as smart. Nigel-Murray actually refers to him as "an idiot who would go to jail for someone else's crime" and I like that dig at the previous writer's mishaps. I always love to see him on screen, but he wasn't really the Zack I came to love in s1-2, who I'm afraid I won't be able to see in the show ever again.

Dr. Lance Sweets: FBI psychologist whose job is to ensure Booth and Brennan's working relationship is stable. He sees them both as parental figures to a certain degree, and his character is pretty well developed by some actually good reveals later in s4. I hesistate to call the reveals good in this show because have a bit of a bias against them; every time they make a reveal it seems very conjured up and contrived, what with Cam appearing and having history with Booth, and then Jared appearing when he should have in previous times especially considering his life was in danger and he should have been there for him previously, Angela's father and real middle name being just retarded, ESPECIALLY what they did to Zack... but I digress. His revealing to have abusive parents and scars to show it, to be adopted by two very good people and then thrust into the world where that trauma still exists, with him looking up to Brennan and Booth as parental figures that could help him get the real sense of belonging he craves was a really good choice for his character. Brennan and Booth initially don't take him very seriously due to his youth, lack of masculinity and life experience, and his attempts to tell them what to do, especially considering Bones considers psychology to be a non-objective pseudoscience. The two of them eventually warm up to him by sharing previous trauma, and Bones tears up in that scene and I love it. Booth becomes incredibly agitated when confronted by the thought of his abusive father, so his trauma sharing was quite brief, but the effort meant a lot coming from him. Anyway, in this episode he's the bartender, ironically stating at one point that that makes him "practically a psychologist," which is funny. He plays an important role in speaking to Hodgins, the crime writer who appears to be a bit down in the dumps over his current writing project. Booth also mentions at one point that he's fond of him, which is possibly another insight into Booth's psyche and feels really good to hear due to Booth's refusal to give Sweets the time of day and respect he deserves and to a certain degree, craves. It's a great payoff considering the last time we saw real Sweets was when he was having a small breakdown worrying about Booth's condition. It's a touch of great subtlety and charm in a show riddled with issues with those two things.

Caroline Julian: sarcastic, distinguished, and harsh lawyer with a southern drawl. One of the greatest recurring characters. In this continuity, she's still a lawyer, who is hired by Booth and Brennan to protect their interests and employees during the investigation. She urges the employees not to speak much during the investigation, and we get to see them exasperate both her and Cam.

Grayson "Birimbau " Barasa: Angela's ex-husband who she met on vacation in Haiti (i think?). As you guessed, he's related to Angela, so his arc wasn't very good at all. Essentially Angela got drunk and eloped and totally forgot him because she's a terrible person, but the marriage was legally recognized and she needed a divorce to marry Hodgins, but he doesn't want the divorce because he loves her, he's a very good man who waited for her and even built a house for her, but is eventually convinced to sign the papers. Actually he refused to sign the papers because bells rang when they kissed, which he thought was an omen of true love, but then he sees Angela and Hodgins kiss and a bunch of bikes go by ringing bells, so he takes that as an omen and gives up, but then Cam sleeps with him when he missed his flight (and then does AGAIN), which she feels guilty for and reveals to Angela and Hodgins, which ruins their relationship because apparently they were lying to each other when they said that her ex-husband showing up and sleeping with their boss didn't bother them. Yeah that was retarded and I hated it but whatever. In this episode he's the brother of C-Sync/Clark and a local gang leader and self-described killer. He has an unseen altercation with Booth, demanding that his brother be able to perform in The Lab, and later, the two of them are handcuffed next to each other to begin to be interrogated, but Cam and Jared just watch them talk instead of interrogating them and they get all the information they need. The two of them agree to allow C-Sync to perform, attempting to handshake, but are both blocked by their cuffs, so they fist bump with their other hands instead, which is quaint and made me smile. Though I do think that scene would have made more sense. I was expecting Booth to say "I can't just do what you want because you beat me up," and that would have been more consistent with his character, even in this continuity, but I may have misinterpreted what happened in the fight because it might have been implied or revealed that Booth instigated it. Idk I have to watch it back. It's kinda weird that they took two unrelated black characters and made them brothers, one a rapper the other a gang leader, but I guess that could be an indication of a subconscious racism that Booth has, since this is his dream. Could also be just production being lazy by deciding "who are the actors we can call back who are willing to work with us and are also black" and just using them for very stereotypical roles? In the continuity itself it's ok, but in context of it being a dream and these characters having nothing to do with each other or being even remotely as... whatever they ended up being, was weird. Actually, a lot of the things that Booth's brain conjure up are less congruent to hallucinations or fever/coma dreams someone may have than they are to a studio trying to do wacky, unexpected, and downright supernatural things, in two out of three cases just to have a famous person represent themselves in canon.

The Squinterns: small group of Squint Interns that cycle in and out as a replacement for Zack. They're actually quite good for the most part, but not all of them are in this episode and some of them got fired or quit. In this continuity, they're all employees at The Lab, and all assume that Booth and Brennan murdered the victim, but are so loyal that they obstruct justice by refusing to cooperate, lying, and even destroying or attempting to destroy evidence that could implicate the two of them. Booth and Brennan would normally be very frustrated at that, but they take it less harshly, probably because their jobs are not to solve crimes in this case, which is a nice touch. They even say, ironically, at one point they feel sorry for Cam and Jared and are grateful they're nightclub owners and not crime-solvers.

Dr. Clark Edison: the first Squintern to be introduced because Zack went to Iraq for an episode or two. Attempts to be as professional as possible and focus on work, and considers the Forensic Division's workplace to be unprofessional and uncomfortably full of drama, which he prefers to stay out of and will straight walk away when it comes up (funny his name is Clark, because he nopes out of stuff that Nat would all the friggin time lullers). This is especially funny when Angela goes through her honry arc and flirts with him, causing him to angrily introduce her to his girlfriend to get her to stop, but the two of them get along quite nicely which frustrates him a bit. The wiki keeps spoiling me and aaapparently they retcon his standoffish attitude by making it due to some past trauma and I'm SO not excited for this show to become not good again... Anyway, in this continuity, he becomes C-Sync, a rapper who wants badly to perform at The Lab, but due to his boasting about his brother's gang ties, runs into some pushback from Booth and Brennan. He calls booth racist in this interaction, but perhaps the implication is that more that he has some sort of out-group bias than hatred towards black people. It's kind of weird because racism has only came up in one other instance, s1e2 I believe. (Brennan is in a club with Angela, and she talks about how, anthropologically, hip hop music shares similarity to tribal music and observes that some tribal attitudes are reflected in the lyrics, which offends the black people around her, unbeknownst to her. A good example of Bones being a little too objective and un-empathetic. Then they find a mummified body, interrupting the discussion.)

Mr. Vincent Nigel-Murray: pale British intern who has an annoying habit and stress-coping mechanism of randomly stating strangely detailed fun facts that are often irrelevant to the case, which frustrates Cam and confuses Brennan. He's one of the Squinterns that enjoys and aids Hodgins' boyish experiments, often just inflicting damage to props by blowing them up, beating them, or dropping them off the railing of the second level of the lab. He becomes the DJ for The Lab, wearing a red V-neck and a black fedora. It's a pretty funny character change. He's a fan of C-Sync and greets him by fist bumping him in the most white way possible, which prompts him to say "you're lucky you're a british albino" to which he replies, "cheers." He also finds the murder weapon, a gun, and wants to dispose of it because of how British he is, which is also pretty funny. The dialogue emphasizes it a bit too much though, for it being one of the only times one of his big decisions is driven by his Britishness.

Daisy Wick: annoying young intern, a bit squeamish, doesn't listen to instructions properly, very awkward. Assumes she's much more like Brennan than she actually is while seeing her as a role model and inspiration. Surprisingly I really liked her and was a bit frustrated that some of the writing decisions made her retarded on purpose, leading her to getting fired because the team hated working with her. Her and Sweets hit it off really well when she mentioned she minored in psychology, which they bond over really well and develop a relationship, which they briefly keep secret until he breaks the news of her getting fired. They have some really great comradery for being a bit bullied, condescended to, and not taken seriously by the rest of the team. She becomes this somewhat slutty bimbo who has a relationship with Fisher, calling him her boyfriend when they were just making out because she couldn't control her hormones, which understandably frustrates Fisher. (sounds reeeeally familiar to someone I know who didn't know the difference between a friend with benefits and a boyfriend... don't call it a relationship until you're sure, mkay? that advice is for free.) A bit disrespectful to her character. She badly plays the tambourine for Sweets' band's audition and falls in love with him on the spot when she hears him sing his sappy lyrics, and they make out and are implied to do other things as an aftermath, which is pretty funny.

Colin Fisher: depressed, emo, sometimes goth, yet quite adept at his position as one of Bones' many temporary assistants. I love him. Like Nigel-Murray, he constantly makes unrelated, albeit shorter unrelated comments, relating mostly to the inevitability of death. They're always used for comedy, which has no objective harm to the show, but definitely shouldn't be any indicator for how you should treat someone who has constant suicidal or depressive ideation. Don't be his coworkers, take statements like this seriously instead of awkwardly trying to brush it off as quirky. In this continuity, he becomes an accomplished Chef for The Lab, and is far less ridden with personal issues.

Arastoo Vaziri: kindhearted, soft-spoken devout muslim, presumably Persian/Iranian judging from his name and where it originates according to google. He speaks with an accent and takes breaks in the lab to pray, as is customary in his religion. The other characters experience a bit of growth of perspective due to this. Bones finds "all religions to be irrational," which is equivalent to her character and harbors no prejudice, but Hodgins brings up bombs and terrorism on at least one occasion and agrees to Cam's assertion that he "distrusts muslims" which may be in alignment with his conspiratorial and dismissive character, but probably wouldn't be something most writers would have the balls to write about today. Vaziri doesn't take offense to this and simply tries to bond with or prove himself to be a good man to Hodgins. He does a similar thing with Angela. What a sweet person, I love him. The drama he's involved with is funny and he's never annoying, a great addition to the Squinterns. In this continuity, he becomes an American tycoon trying to buy out The Lab, jumping on the lowered price that a fresh murder would create for a public business. I was literally pogging and so shocked at the character change from a humble, kind, muslim man who speaks with an accent, to a self-serving, confident, and very American businessman. It showed real range in Pej Vahdat's acting ability and I want to see him at the front of more media now.

Wendell Bray: probably the weakest Squintern. His introductory episode saw him utterly confused with Brennan's mannerisms, him mistaking her questions to be romantic/sexual advances. This was sort of central to his character and wasn't given much clarity or enhancement in s4. In this alternate reality, he's a security guy, presumably the head of security. He's the most devoted and loyal employee, awkwardly refusing to say a word in interrogation, simply glaring, and even threatening to kill C-Sync's gangster brother when he believes he's beating Booth up.

Overall, this was the best season finale of the show and possibly the best season so far. Apparently this isn't the only alternate reality Bones episode and I'm quite excited for that. I kinda friggin adore seeing the same characters repurposed for a slightly different story in a new continuity. Seeing characters interact in situations that are impossible for their characters to be in is very fun, which is kinda why I also wanna see an alternate reality Rango that takes place in space, but that is neither here nor there, is it.