Bones 3x02

[timepiececlock]

My internet decided to start working today so I was able to acquire a bunch of episodes, either dl or streaming, and finished season 2. Jack & Angela at the end of 2x21 were absolutely precious. Also, I love the prosecutor who's on as a recurring character. She rocks.

The last shot of them at the end of this episode is adorable---graphically, it makes me think of the end of Pride & Prejudice.

Booth: You know I love this place, I love it. I love this country. You know I tell you something: if I was working law enforcement back in the day when they threw all that tea, alright, in the harbor—I’m good, I’m good. I would have rounded everybody up and we’d still be English.

This quote was a revelation to me, because it showed me at last what other character Booth reminds me of in fiction: Commader Sam Vimes of Terry Pratchett's Discworld. A little younger, but just as jaded. Loves his country, loves his city, loves being a cop, loves his quirky team of people. A guy who works, as Stephen Colbert might say, "from the gut." Truth, justice, reasonably priced love, and a hard boiled egg. Booth is certainly hard-boiled, even if he's only 35.

I don't know why I always want to compare fictional characters to other fictional characters, but there you go. In terms of roles the easiest comparison for Booth is Special Agent Fox Mulder, of course, being the emotion-driven, justice-seeking, bleeding-heart and anger-burdened FBI agent, who is paired with the logical, sexy, sometimes cold-seeming, sometimes red-hared scientist lady, who share joking repartee and secret puppy-dog eyes of longing and desire. IT IS A PROVEN COMBINATION! AS PROVED BY....BY BONES HAVING REACHED FOUR SEASONS ALREADY. I predict this same combo (emotive g-man + red haired scientist lady) will be recreated in yet another show within two years after the end of this show. Clearly, fox needs to only hire ginger-haired women and tall, brown-haired, generically handsome men. And black guys with cool gravelly voices. (What happened to Dr. Holland or whatever, anyway? I liked him. I want a PHD so he'll talk to me.)

All that being said, while the Mulder comparisons are easy, they are mostly superficial stuff. Job, appearance, attitude. In terms of all the gushy inner character motivations, Booth and Mulder are pretty different, and so a better comparison is needed. Which made me think, at last, of...VIMES! Vimes, whom I also love. Vimes who loves his city, loves his people, loves his son, loves being a copper. Vimes who desperately needs Stephen Fry to be his therapist, but gets by without him anyway. Booth, like Vimes, will arrest anyone if he thinks that person deserves arresting, and he's not afraid to arrest his boss as easily as the guy on the street corner. They also both have the killer instinct and just enough darkness inside them to help them understand why its important for the darkness to stay inside. I love them!


P.S. Bones has killed my NaNoWriMo. Killed it deader than a serial killer being chucked off a balcony dead. All those gorgeous peeps who were hoping to read bits of it as I posted them may direct their blame at irrel who promised me this show was so cool and full of UST and shit. Damn her! Now I'm marathonning it when I should be writing.

Comments

[mswyrr]

There was a short-lived series called Touching Evil on USA that had the intuitive man/logical woman combo, though she wasn't a scientist. It is DEFINITELY a proven ticket.

Possibly because it works against the traditional association of gender roles and is therefore neat as pie and sexy?

[mswyrr]

It also seems like a somewhat neat expression of privilege. That is, that a woman has to be ten times more professional, rule abiding, logical, etc. than a man to make it in a male dominated profession like FBI agent, whereas a guy can be a little kooky and still get by, albeit by the skin of his teeth.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Have you watched Fringe yet?

I just watched the first two episodes tonight. It's basically like The X Files (a total copy-cat, down to the mysteriously threatening tall black guy as their boss in the FBI), but instead of having a pair of agents they have a Bones-style set up, with one FBI agent and two genius consultants, one who stays in the lab and the other who goes out on cases/events/situations. In that, the consultant character is a 190-IQ genius young man, and the agent is a woman. Their characters aren't very well-defined yet---despite 3 hours of tv so far, we know nothing about the main female agent character, and only a little about her genius non-FBI partner. It was okay to do that on Lost because the set-up is one of strangers slowly forced to learn about each other. In a show like Fringe, with a more traditional structure, I'd like some initial character development, please.

It's kind of a catch to have the woman as the logical force or as the muscle. Ex:

1. In the X Files, the breakdown was clearly emotion vs. logic, since both characters were agents (i.e. force & muscle) and both characters were highly intelligent.

2. In Bones, the breakdown is also emotion vs. logic, but there's a definite force division as well, since Booth represents power and strength whereas Brennan represents intelligence to counter that strength.

3. In Fringe, the woman is the strength/muscle character as she has the gun and the badge, and the man is the intelligence character (he doesn't have cool martial arts like Brennan does). However, it's not clear yet whether the woman is supposed to be more intuitive or not, or whether the man is logic-based.

I hope that wasn't too confusing, but I just wanted to break it down for my own head.

[mswyrr]

I kind of get what you're saying, but I really need to queue up Fringe for it to totally make sense; I haven't had the chance to see it yet.

The first season of the drama Life has a partnership between a very by-the-book, tough female cop named Reese and Charlie, an guy who's sort of had to... adopt the anime-method of dealing with trauma. You know, enjoying simple pleasures like fruit and turning his face up to the sunshine and trying to let it wash him clean? I think the resemblance comes from him being a practicing Buddhists. Anyway, he very much follow his intuition and his partner is very much the grounding force of their working relationship and, though it starts a little slow, it just gets better and better. Season 1!Reese is one of my all time favorite female characters.

[mswyrr]

I'm trying to think of a good example of an intuitive female FBI crime solver, and I think Samantha Waters from Profiler qualified, didn't she? I recall they really played up the ethereal, intuitive thing with her.

[mswyrr]

I think I might have pimped Life to you before. If so, sorry. I'm kind of brane ded lately.

[irrel.livejournal.com]

Throw me under the bus why don't you. Promised me this show was so cool and full of UST and shit, and I was right, WASN'T I?! I'm awesome!

I'm at a loss, I haven't read enough Discworld to understand the first analogy and I never watched the X files... but I'll assume you're right =P Booth is love, nuff said.

You're right babe, of course!

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Do yourself a favor and go buy season 1 of XF on DVD.

The Discworld stuff is talking about the city watch books, starting with Guards! Guards!. The latest Watch book, Night Watch, broke my heart.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

BONES WHY. WHY DID YOU KILL THE NANO. I WANTED IT.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

If I write more, I'll still post it.


Actually, though, I've been doodling lately instead. (I put some katara test sketches on dev art.) And I really think it's time I wrote more for Lucid.

[rainjewel.livejournal.com]

I am so excited you love Bones. Bones rocks my world and season three is the best thing in the world. I was so sad it was the one that got hit during the writer's strike. It was WONDERFUL.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I wonder how the Zach thing would have been different if there had been no writer's strike?