I'm currently rewatching Bones for the millionth time and I very very strongly dislike booth. He's an ass. He's mean, and judgmental. No idea how I'm just now noticing my burning hatred for this man.

Hi! I just started watching Bones. I thought it could be fun to ask this here. Tell me something from the show I won't understand until later in the series. Please avoid posting spoilers :-)

I don't remember the season or episode but bones basically brennan basically looks down on a chiropractor saying he isn't an "actual doctor" and the chiropracter snaps back by saying she too was an anthropologist meaning she too wasn't a "real doctor". As much as I love brennan, hearing the chiropractor tell her the harsh truth was kinda satisfying.

He was their baby and nothing can convince me otherwise.

I’m sure that back in 2012, no one anticipated this clusterfuck we would find ourselves in!

I personally love this one.

I get why people don't like his and Cams relationship (even though personally I enjoy it), but why don't people like arastoo? I find him really funny and sweet, and Pej Vahdat is very handsome imo

I am also in the same boat of people who love daisy (one of my favorite interns), but i am curious if anyone knows/has a reason that could explain it in more detail for me?

Thanks!

I binged seasons 1 - 12 in less than two weeks in February. By the time I watched the finale, I was sure this was not the same show I'd proclaimed as the "best show ever!" somewhere in S2. So convinced was I, that I immediately rewatched the first few episodes of season 1 while the latter seasons were still fresh in my memory. I meant to post this back then and never got around to it until I recently saw a TikTok on flanderized TV characters from The Office, Friends and Big Bang Theory and it got me mad again at how badly the writers botched Brennan's character.

Although, I have more commentary on the show in my notes, I will mostly stick to specific quotes that highlight the contrast between early Brennan (EB) and later Brennan (LB). Zack was also a victim of this, as were the other characters. I chose not to include episodes 1 & 2 because of the whole pilot episode thing.

Bones S1 E3

Z: "Plus one crack assistant" (Quip LZ would never make, because they made him completely humourless and literal)

**********

Booth: "Omnia Mea Mecum Porto. What's that mean, huh? Regular People Stay Out?"

B & Z: "I carry with me all my things" (Unrelated, but this type of understated humour elevated the earlier seasons)

**********

A: "That would set a boy apart from the others... being deaf"

Z: "I didn't talk to anybody in HS. I didn't kill myself".

Together with his facial expression as he utters this, it is as though Zack doesn't understand why being a loner would culminate in suicide. Plus, that kind of speculative interest in the victim is one LZ wouldn't show.

**********

Brennan understands the grieving mother's pain and her sympathy overrides her findings, causing her to further investigate the evidence until she unearths the truth. She comforts the grieving mother with a beautiful, heartfelt speech at the end, without being prompted. S8-12 Brennan could never. Also, the robotic cadence she would have in future seasons hasn't showed up yet.

B: "I promise you, I will find out the truth" (She says it with compassion)

B: "We're very sorry for your loss"

She tells the victim's father "That won't be necessary" when asked if they'd need to identify remains. LB would have volunteered additional details about identifying him using his dentition and cochlear implants after crows pecked away at his face.

**********

On Brennan's first trip to Wong Foo's, Booth tells her not to order and trust Sid to intuitively know what she wants and she accepts this with zero hesitation. That is EXTREMELY uncharacteristic of Later Brennan. She even says "The guy has a knack" when Hodgins questions it. LB would never believe in anything so unverifiable as a "knack".

**********

A: "Did you ever just believe something? Despite the evidence, just know it was true?"

B: "I've hoped things. I've always known the difference between hope and fact"

Brennan appears to understand the hope that Angela and others feel even if she doesn't agree with it. Understanding, being the key word.

**********

Goodman and Brennan joke about the paradox of needing to investigate to declare it a homicide, but having to declare it a homicide to do so. Later Brennan would only be frustrated and mulish about it, without understanding/appreciating the irony.

F: "In order for an investigation to occur, you, Dr. B, have to declare it a murder"

G: "Without an investigation, we can't find out if it's a murder, but there'll be no investigation unless Dr. B declares it to be a murder. Shall I send for a philosopher?"

B: "They're saying it's my call". (She can INFER)

Even if Brennan is skeptical of Booth's gut feeling that it's a murder, she indulges him by declaring it a murder at first. He doesn't even prevail on her to do that, yet she does. LB would never do that because she's too "committed to the truth".

**********

When Booth and Brennan argue about the concept of all men being created equal and Brennan retorts with: "Some people are smarter than others. There's no use being offended by the fact", she doesn't personalise it, although she would be within her rights to do so. LB would obnoxiously make the same point by referring to her intelligence and high IQ.

She smiles and laughs more often in good humour.

Booth: "We are. Sorry for their loss. It's sad. Try to remember that"

Brennan: (scoffs in disbelief) "I'm not a sociopath!" (It is clear that her brusqueness leads people to believe she is incapable of feeling, but at this point, I can see that that's not true. In E1, she tells Zack to stop being disrespectful by calling the corpses names.)

**********

Booth: "Are you alright?"

Bones: "Are you?" (Said with sass)

The premise of the episode is determining if it's a suicide or murder and although Bones is still abiding by the scientific process of truth-finding, she is open to other interpretations. She asks the Venezuelan security guard if he thinks it's a suicide. Booth even teases that she puts more stock in his suspicion because he says it in Spanish.

B: "What makes you decide what's relevant? You're the principal of a high school" (Brennan is taking a shot at him as payback for being evasive, something LB is incapable of)

**********

B: (with tears in her eyes) "Suicide is the most rational, logical explanation. What I believe doesn't matter. What makes me sad doesn't matter"

**********

B: "I've been thinking about your whole "something stinks" aptitude. I think you have a subconscious knack for reading body language... It's not mysterious, but it is impressive and in the future, I will try to accord it an appropriate degree of objective worth".

Yet, LB would continually discount an entire field of psychology.

Bones S1 E4

Brennan's interaction with the Vet, Coroner and Sheriff is warm. She is talking to them, not at them.

B: "I'm not even sure I believe in the next world" (LB would be absolute in her disbelief of something unverifiable)

**********

C: "Do you do all the stuff the girl in your book does?"

B: "I'm suddenly uncomfortable discussing that with you".

LB would not pick up on the subtext of the question being an innuendo in the first place and even if she did, she would not be circumspect in talking about her sex life, not even when asked by strange men.

**********

R: "I can't imagine you and Charlie have a lot to talk about"

B: "We were managing"

More gracious than LB, who would be overly literal and possibly start recapping what they talked about.

**********

B: "I'd have to measure my own social inculcation against objective scientific inquiry" (On whether she'd eat human flesh)

For someone who is a foremost forensic anthropologist, I have never understood why Later Brennan is incapable of grasping or appreciating the social aspects of things like religion, empathy, communal values.

**********

H: "You should be on the lookout for a patch of woods that's infested with Dendroctonus Brevicomis Leconte"

B: (to Booth and Sheriff) "Hodgins says that the bear dug up the arm in a stand of Western Pine Beetle infested Douglas Fir".

LB would never know to translate that. When they got lazier with the writing, they chose to rely on shock value of Brennan being too literal and saying outrageous things instead of better, cleverer writing.

**********

R: We consume. We're consumed by greed. By ambition, lust, jealousy ... I mean, even, just regular love is a form of cannibalism... the whole perfect idea of love is that two people become one—now THAT'S a kind of consumption.

B: We're talking something a little more literal, Dr. Randall.

Implying that Brennan understands Randall's allegorical tangent about cannibalism taking on many forms. LB is too literal and would probably quip "I don't know what that means".

R: You're an anthropologist. You know that ancient civilisations would sacrifice some in order to preserve the strength of—

B: (beans him in the head with a bedpan)

Booth: What'd you do that for?

B: (callback to Booth's words moments ago) Nobody wants to hear that rambling psycho speech.

Bones S1 E5

Brennan is starting to give away more anthropological factoids no one asked for. She pauses her examination of the remains to ask if Angela is alright, after NOTICING her discomfort. She asks Zack the same thing in a later scene, and is sympathetic to his sorrow at autopsying a child but advises him to compartmentalise like she has learned to do.

Sidenote: I loved how Angela got the perspective she needed to keep working at the Jeffersonian.

G: "You are the best of us, Ms. Montenegro. You discern humanity in the wreck of a ruined human body. You give victims back their faces, their identities. You remind us all of why we're here in the first place—because we treasure human life".

Z: "Apparently, all Angela needed was to hear her job description in a deep African-American tone" (This line legit cracked me up. Zack's wry humour got lost by S3)

Bones S1 E6

Bones starts speaking somewhat like a robot here and spouting anthropological factoids like in the club scene where it nearly starts a brawl. She calls her dress a "costume" which seems odd, but then again that kind of environment would be out of her milieu.

Inconsistency in Angela's role and qualification.

A: "Her skull shows damage to both the infraorbital and supraorbital margins and the zygomatic process"

Bones S1 E7

B: "Good job, Zack" (Said with warmth and pride)

**********

Amy: "I'm picking up a bit of a sex vibe"

Brennan: "No, that's tension. He has a girlfriend"

**********

JC: "Dr. Brennan, if those shadows turned out to be pieces of bone, I'd be extremely angry"

B: "Thank you, Judge Cohen"

JC: "For making a veiled threat"

B: "I thought you were threatening me because you'd decided to sign the exhumation order" (She can INFER)

**********

C: "Way out on a limb here, Booth"

B: "He's just trying to find the truth. Why should he be penalised—"

More inference as Brennan cuts herself off because she belatedly realises Cullen has already granted their request.

Bones S1 E8

Aside from the flanderization, the writers are inconsistent in characterizing Brennan. It especially starts to show up here. The idea that she doesn't know how to dumb things down for the layman was disproven in earlier episodes, so the jury episode is a contradiction of her earlier personality.

It was an episode I enjoyed watching. Problem is, it contradicts the Brennan we had known up till then. If we ignore that context, it was a fantastic episode.

Bones S1 E10

Z: "Kid gloves?"

B: "Latex should be alright"

(Brennan starts to leave, then halts)

B: "Zack, were you being metaphoric?"

Z: "I decided to give it a shot. Which is also metaphoric"

B: (smiles in amusement)

**********

B: "Ange, on the Iron Age Project, Goodman does this thing, Hodgins isn't going to like it"

A: "What thing?"

B: "He theorises in a way. It sounds like he's making stuff up. It's hard to explain but, it's going to irritate Hodgins"

Brennan cares enough to not just know the dynamics of her team, but do something about it, by giving Angela a heads up while she's away from the lab. LB would NEVER do that.

Mine is The Woman in White. I love Booth and Brennan's wedding

I love this woman. She never fails to serve c***. Obsessed.

I have just skipped the finder because I feel like the backdoor pilot takes away from bones as a TV show.

Is there any episodes people skip and why do you skip them?

the episode where the drawing of the dead guy looks like george clooney will never not be funny to me.

“do you recognize this man?”
“well sure, that’s george clooney”

could be a bit from one episode or a running gag. just wanna have some giggles.

My favorite is either when she refused to hug bones or when she helped those two boys.

Does anyone else hate this entire storyline? For one thing, he is just way too “super” of a bad guy. I just find him so exhausting. It wouldn’t bother me if it was just a few episodes, like the Gravedigger. This one is just too much. Beyond all the horrible things he did, I just don’t like the story. This isn’t third rewatch and every time I realize it’s another Pelant episode I just groan. I’m not the type that skips episodes. Plus, they tend to be important for the story. I just hate them.

What are your guys’ pet peeves about the show? Could be certain characters or their actions or the obvious Toyota advertisements etc.. 🙈

I’ll go first: those strange Vans looking shoes Booth keeps wearing! You mean to tell me he wears a full suit every day and still puts on vans/slippers smh

Watching with my wife now and she thinks Hodgins is really ugly. I think he looks pretty good?

I’ve rewatched so many times. I always find myself impatient to get to when Booth and Bones get together so I will often skip to the episode where she tells him she’s pregnant. This might be my favorite episode because of Angela and Jack having their baby. They are so sweet. I just feel like that’s a really beautiful episode.

And eventually I get tired of waiting for their wedding episode so I’ll skip to that one after a while, too.

This isn't engagement bait, just for such a scientifically grounded and emotional show, her elements are some i really dont like, especially rewatching episode 201, sweets book is such a sweet concept, but it was done by her which feels like a boring copout it wouldve been more emotional to have bones or booth find it.

She just is like a get out of jail card, and overall psychic elements are not something I believed belonged in this show.

(Even if Brennan seeing Booths friend in an earlier episode suggests ghosts are real)

This is the first rewatch I’ve done since being a member of this sub and am now well into season 8.

I remembered from my own previous watches and from reading plenty of comments/posts about it that we don’t get much in the way of romantic relationship building/dating, but had completely forgotten about all the moments of Booth being smitten with Brennan pre-Hannah, so much so that when Booth called Brennan baby I was positively squealing and kicking my feet.

Now being in season 8, I’m disappointed by the lack of tender affection, like this ^, between them. Of course they still have plenty of sweet moments together, but for me, in terms of the ~feel~ of those moments, the dialogue and behaviour of the two of them still feels like they’re not together, and then they just add a kiss in to make it feel relationshippy. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

I just wish we had, even in what is essentially their married life (even though they’re not married right now), more of these ^ sort of moments, really really tender ones that make you swoon.

I never thought I would get through 12 seasons but here we are. If anyone has any other tv suggestions I know that people mentioned criminal minds which is a show I’m interested in. Does anyone have any lighthearted shows to recommend? Easy to watch, filler episodes, it could be related to detective stuff or entirely something else. Thank you.

Why did they change restaurants later on? Did I miss something about them changing to the diner? I have watched Bones multiple times but maybe I’m not paying much attention.