In Which SHE BELIEVES IN LOVE

Season 5, Episode 13

The Dentist in the Ditch

ANGELA: You know, it really would have been better if Booth never ran her record.

BRENNAN: He said it was my influence, that it was the rational thing to do.

ANGELA: No, sweetie; he's rationalizing, which makes what he did irrational because he's rationalizing that Jared cannot make rational decisions for himself. You do the same thing all the time. Maybe that's what he learned from you.

Annnnd, you hit the nail on the head, Angela. She rationalizes things all the time, when things have a rational reason to them but they're not the real reason. And Booth did pick it up from her. Well, maybe not so much pick it up, because nearly everyone does it, but seeing her do it all the time made it more acceptable to him.

BRENNAN: Hmm. When your gut speaks to you, do you think it could be an increase in stomach acid, due to anxiety?

BOOTH: Huh?

BRENNAN: I-I...feel some anxiety.

BOOTH: Okay, about what?

BRENNAN: About your sudden abandonment of a belief system. Really, it's-it's making my stomach upset.

BOOTH: Okay, you know what? You are really just, um...crack a window there, Bones, all right. Just get some air.

BRENNAN: You told me that my father's criminal past didn't matter, that the love between us was real and that was all that mattered. Because I believed you, my father and I have a relationship today.

BOOTH: Okay. I'm glad I could help out.

BRENNAN: But, I'm anxious because I can't see any meaningful difference between my father and your brother's girlfriend. Can you explain that to me? It's a question of logic, so I'm just going to be quiet now while you work your way through it.

Interesting, the way they chose to do this. And it makes sense. Because if Bones had come straight out and said “You're being irrational, you can't say one thing for me and then not have it apply to your own life”, he would have just shut down completely and not taken it into consideration, because, oh, it's SuperRational!Bones going off about rationality again, like she always does, and he would have just passed it over. But this way, in having it be a thing that actually affects her and freaks her out because it affects her own life, it makes him realize for himself that he's being completely illogical. And he's much less able to ignore his own reasoning than he is with Bones'.

BRENNAN: When Booth and I first met, I didn't believe that such a thing as love existed. I maintained that it was simply brain chemistry. But, perhaps Booth is correct; perhaps love comes first, and then creates the reaction. I have no tangible proof, but...I'm willing to accept Booth's premise.

BOOTH: To love.

JARED: To love.

PADME: To love.

BRENNAN: To love.

THERE SHE IS.

Ok. This is super crazy ridiculously HUGE.

She believes in love.

And the look on Booth's face reinforces the gravity of it. His face is so serious when she's giving her speech, because he realizes how big this is. Bones, Scientist Bones, Rational Bones... believes in love as more than a brain reaction, now truly believes it has more worth than a simple brain reaction.

This changes shit, ya'll.

Now that she believes in love, maybe she can finally recognize that she is in love.

And he sees this possibility too. which is yet another stepping stone to what he does three episodes from now.