Watching this show, it dawned on me that I had been reading Temperance wrong. I blamed the writers for not letting us know how she felt, but not communicating feeling is not a writers' vacillation (though sometimes it is) or a character trait. It is a condition. Brennan is like Monk without the OCD. She is an idiot savant. She's blank, not because she's suppressing, but because she is feeling nothing to express. She feels, but conveying that feeling is not part of her make.
The question is whether she was always like this or whether her parents' disappearance made her like this. Although, I don't know if this can happen to you at the age of 15. It probably takes hold earlier on.
She seems to be open to going on a date with the guy in the morgue, a dinner date at least. She wakes up having lost a day and covered in blood. She does not repress her panic. She doesn't feel the same type that a "normal" person would. She is upset enough that she can't talk on the phone to the woman arranging to take her to the airport, but she looks at the situation logically from the start.
Of course, this episode reminds me of what happened to Mulder in Demons and Scully coming there to help him out.
Booth gets there and is protective. She lets him turn her cheek to check out her bruise. He can't keep her from talking to the authorities and incriminating herself, but she doesn't talk because she thinks she has nothing to hide. She talks because her automatic response is to answer questions that are posed to her -- well, except when she doesn't.
She introduces Booth as "kind of my partner." Why the police woman makes a big deal of that and says that if he came all the way from Washington he's not just "kind of" a partner is ridiculous. He can be a friend without being a boyfriend. And if he is a boyfriend, why would the police woman make so much of it. It's not like they're in high school and she found them k-i-s-s-i-n-g, sitting in a tree. I don't understand that sophmoric attitude, except to let the audience note that they're supposed to take note of Booth's concern, which we could have figured out anyway.
Although she lies to the staff at home about why she's staying over at first, later she reveals there's been a murder and that she's a suspect without meaning to, but without reacting as if she let something slip, without a reaction to their surprised reaction.
She asks Booth why he even talks to her (or something along those lines) and he says it's because when people think they've gotten away with murder, she makes sure they don't. Well, except on a special case, he has never seemed to have this drive to uncover a long concealed truth. In fact, a lot of the time, he seems unconcerned and just takes a case on as a favor or because he's been told to. It's not like he's compelled to make people pay, except when he received that child's finger in the mail. So, I don't see him admiring Brennan because she exposes people who think they've gotten away with it. He's not Mr. Cold Case buster.
She says that voo doo is a religion to some just like Catholicism is to him. He doesn't appreciate the comparison. I don't think they've named his religion before this. Brennan makes more of his religion and conservatism than he does. He doesn't seem to be as hung up religiously as Scully was. The voo doo thing would have freaked Scully out, causing her to close up and unsettling her in ways she wouldn't want to admit. Booth isn't unsettled so much as he is mocking. Brennan is unfazed either way, expecting the rituals and rules of voo doo as much as she does any religion, for cultural reasons, if not believing it herself. Even though Brennan has said that Booth doesn't like being an out of wedlock father and only likes traditional relationships, I don't really see him living that life.
They still don't let us see Brennan and we don't even know if he is still seeing the lawyer, whereas we know that Brennan is open to dating.
In the end, Booth seems to believe that Brennan lost a day because she was under a voodoo spell making her have amnesia. Don't know why he came 'round to believing in it. She denies it and seems to think she was drugged, thinking of logical reasons why the drugs did not show up in her tox screen. She said voo doo is attributing magical powers to objects and objects have no power. But then Booth gives her an earring he found at the crime scene that had belonged to her mother (reminiscent of Scully's cross) and was ripped out of her ear. She said she hated to lose it because it belonged to her mom. He didn't tell her where he found it. At the time, he didn't want to place her at the scene of the murder, so he kept the presence of her earring a secret. But now when he gives it to her at the end he makes it seem like his having it is more mystical than it really is.
Does she still think that objects mean nothing he asks as he smirks and leaves? No, they mean something. What? She lost an earring and Booth found it. She is smart enough to guess where he found it (as she had flashbacks of being at the murder scene, even through her amnesia) and why he kept it secret. So, even though she should be grateful that it is returned to her, she shouldn't consider it fate. In fact, she should have thought to look for the earring there herself, once she remembered where she had been that lost night. So, I'm not sure why regaining the earring means to her or why, but it isn't a bad ending to the show. She holds the earring in the way that Scully held up her cross when she opened up Emily's coffin and found it empty.
All in all, this was one of the better shows, though.
They started a thing with Hodgins flirting with Angela. It was nice the way they had Zach pick up on the fact that Jack tried to make himself look taller in front of Angela and Brennan. Too bad that they didn't show Angela (or Zack for that matter) being concerned about Hodgins' diving. They didn't know he was in danger, but if they planned to start something with Angela and Hodgins in the future, they could have started it there, by letting Angela know Hodgins was threatened with death and seeing her reaction. If she had hugged him in relief (or he had shown concern for her when her boyfriend died), now when he starts flirting with her like he's seeing her for the first time in this episode, it would seem like a natural progression and not something out of the blue.
Before, he's just seen her as a colleague whose as interested in dating conquests as he is, but no one he finds particularly attractive. Also, Hodgins hasn't been concerned with Brenann romantically either, just Zach has. Zach would try to make himself taller in her presence, not Hodgins. They just thought that up in this episode. One show doesn't seem to know where the ones coming up right around the corner are going. Let's see if the 2nd season is planned somewhat better than this one has been.
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