In Which Their Common Goal Is Established

Season 1, Episode 7

The Man on Death Row

Booth: You can’t have a gun.
Bones: Why not?
Booth: Because you were charged with a felony.
Bones: Write down that you were wrong to charge me.
Booth: Oh, there’s no space for that.
Bones: Why did we go through all this if you were never going to give me a gun?
Booth: You have a constitutional right to apply for a weapon.  I would never deny your constitutional right.
Bones: Well uh, I need a gun.
Booth: Rules are rules.
Bones: Tell them that I shot a murderer who was going to light me on fire.
Booth: Which is why you weren’t convicted but you did shoot an unarmed man. I… I can’t ignore that. I swore an oath to protect society from people who shoot people.

Oh yes, Booth, rules are rules. That's why she can't have a gun.

Except really, we can assume that he could pull a few strings, or at least try to pull a few strings, if he really wanted to. But he doesn't want to, because he wants to keep things as they are. If she has a gun, she's just one step closer to not needing him anymore, and that's the last thing he wants. He even says later in the scene, “You're the professor, I'm the FBI agent.” He wants to keep things as they are.

She just wants to shoot people.

But alas, you'll have to wait another day, Bones.

This also marks the first time someone mistakes them for a couple (if I'm remembering correctly), when Amy says she's picking up a “sex vibe” from them. Bones blows it off one hundred percent, this time.

Epps: (to Bones) And I owe you too.  I read your book and when I heard you were working with Booth here I knew you were just what I needed.
(Epps grabs Bones’s hand and she stands and yanks him forward across the table slamming his face on it.)Bones: (to Booth) Are you going to arrest me for assault?Booth: From what I saw, purely self defense.Bones: Maybe I shouldn’t carry a gun after all.Booth: Hell, you can have mine.

This scene, plus the end...

Bones: There was doubt.  We had an obligation to respect that doubt. We all share in the death of every human being.
Booth: Very poetic.
Bones: No, very literal. We all share DNA.  When I look at a bone it’s not some artifact that I can separate from myself. It’s a part of a person who got here the same way I did. It should never be easy to take someone’s life.  I don’t care who it is.

...both act as another way to remind us of Booth and Bones' basic similarity, the thing that keeps everything held up within all their differences. When it turns out Epps has played them and they're both defeated and devastated, this common enemy helps them to put aside the little issues they have going on, Bones wanting a gun, Booth not wanting her to have one, because that similar enemy is more important than those little things. She admits that maybe she shouldn't have a gun, and he lets the fact that she just assaulted Epps slide, even though it is completely against the rules.

And in the end, the fact that they both agreed to work the case shows further reaffirms their similar desire for the truth.

These first episodes, I've noticed, although they have their fair share of bickering, establish their main, base similarity much more than they outline their differences, which works wonderfully well in the end because 1) their main differences are so obvious that to go over them again and again in the beginning would be overkill, and 2) it sets in our minds this idea that while they are polar opposites in almost every way, they have this one major thing that links them together, so later on once they do start to get into their differences more, we already have that basis in our minds.