In Which Sweets is A Baby Duck

Season 4, Episode 20

Mayhem on a Cross

BRENNAN:  The evidence is inconclusive regarding your guilt, (She stands and slams her hands down on the table.)  but I’ll damn well make sure it’s conclusive!

SWEETS:  Whoa, what?

BOOTH:  Attagirl.  Give it to him.

BRENNAN:  I will perjure myself if I have to, because you… make… me… sick, punk!

SWEETS:  Dr. Brennan…

BRENNAN:  I’ll put your ass on death row and laugh at your execution.  I will testify that your knife was used to make these gouges.  (She walks around the table and shows him a picture, then turns him in his wheelchair to talk to him very near his face.) I will also prove that whatever implements we find—any props, knives, cleavers, all of your stage ware—I will show that it was used to mutilate his remains. (She turns him back toward the table.)  Which they probably were.

Irrelevant to everything except awesomeness. Because this scene is the epitome of awesome. I honestly never get tired of watching it.

WYATT:  It’s a small one.  It’s just that Brennan and Booth aren’t in any way opposites.

SWEETS:  Wow, small?  (Laughs.)  What is that—British understatement?

WYATT:  Well, yes.  He’s a man, she’s a woman.  He’s instinctual, she’s empirical.

SWEETS:  Opposites.

WYATT:  Superficial ephemera, Dr. Sweets.

Uh, HUR DUR, SWEETS. That “underlying similarity” thing I've been talking about since the beginning is basically this. Superficial opposites, but when it comes to what's important, they're essentially the same.

SWEETS:  Would you agree that they have both, uh, sublimated their attraction to each other out of fear of endangering their working relationship because their working relationship is paramount to both of them?

WYATT:  Alas, I’m afraid I wouldn’t agree with that, no.

SWEETS:  Wow, which part?

WYATT:  Well, everything you just said.  Yes, one of them is acutely aware of that attraction.  Struggles with it daily, as a matter of fact.

Well, this is a tricky situation. But we'll save it for the end of the episode.

BOOTH:  Well, uh, Gordon-Gordon is, uh, making dinner for us at my place, family-style.  And, um, you’re invited.

SWEETS:  Thank you, but I’ve actually got a lot of work here…

BRENNAN:  (Booth turns to go but turns back when Brennan starts talking.)  My foster parents locked me in the trunk of a car for two days when I broke a dish. I was a very clumsy child.  They warned me it would happen, but the water was so hot and the…  (Tearing up) soap was so slippery.  I still don’t think it was fair, even though they gave me fair warning.  (Voice breaking.)  The water was so hot…

SWEETS:  No, it wasn’t fair at all.  It wasn’t your fault.

BOOTH:  (Takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and holds it out to her.  Whispers.)  Bones, what are you doin’?

BRENNAN:  You said that scars on the back was a metaphor.  Isn’t that why we’re here?  To metaphorically compare scars?

BOOTH:  (Whispering.)  I came to bring Sweets back to my place for dinner, that’s all.  (She takes the handkerchief.)

SWEETS:  Scars on the back?

BRENNAN:  I saw them, Sweets.

SWEETS:  So.. (sighs)  what?  You decided to just share something from your past?  (Brennan nods.)  That is so unlike you.

BRENNAN:  I still hate psychology.  (Turns to Booth.)  Okay.  Your turn.  Go.

BOOTH:  (Shrugs.)I came here to bring Sweets back to my place for dinner, that’s all.  (Brennan gives him a look.)  Okay, if it wasn’t for my grandfather, I probably would’ve killed myself when I was a kid.  That’s all I’m going to say on the subject matter.  Understand?  Are you okay, Bones?

BRENNAN:  Yeah, I’m fine.  Here.  (She folds up his handkerchief and puts it in the front pocket of his suit over his heart, pressing her hand to it.  He covers her hand with his for a moment before she withdraws her hand.)

BRENNAN:  (To Sweets.)  Why are you nodding?

SWEETS:  Nothing.  Just… Wyatt made an observation about you two, and I think I just saw what he saw.

BOOTH:  You coming?

BRENNAN:  Booth means that we’d like it if you joined us.

SWEETS:  Thank you.

D'AW, HE'S THEIR BABY DUCK.

Really, though, it's interesting how the role of Sweets in relation to B&B has changed over the course of the show. Like how they have a kind of surrogate relationship, he is, in a way... well, not their surrogate child or anything, but like, their surrogate kid nephew. If that makes any sense.

And again, as I've said before, it's interesting how that, although Booth is supposedly the emotionally-aware one and Bones is the emotionally-unaware one, when it comes to their own personal things, a lot of the time, Bones is the one who'll open up, with a little prompting, whereas with Booth, he resists and resists and resists, and it takes a TON of prompting to get him to open up about certain things, a plea from Bones being the tipping point a lot of the time.

Ooooh, Hart Hanson, I see what you did there.

And then, one little look and one little gesture come together and basically scream that Booth is the one who struggles with his attraction on a daily basis. At least, that's my opinion on it. When she puts the handkerchief in his pockets and he reaches up to where her hand was and then just looks at her... there's really just nothing else to say. The gesture and look say it all. Perhaps that's why he's so closed off about his own personal stuff. He's so aware of his attraction to Bones, and one can assume that he also might be starting to become aware of his feelings for her as well.


(of course, this is a highly debatable opinion. A bit of google-ing has landed me with a shitload of different opinions, and since the notion that it's Booth he's talking about isn't as widely shared as I had thought, I'm copying and pasting a comment I made earlier (with some editing and adding) that goes a lot deeper into why I think it's Booth and not Brennan:
Up until this point (and even for a bit afterward), it is extremely gray and vague as to if either of them are aware at all of their feelings for each other, and if so, to what extent. There are two things that still make me think that it's Booth who is the one: 1) Brennan doesn't even know what the hell love is yet. A perfect example is their discussions in Cinderella in the Cardboard. She doesn't believe in love yet. She wants to, but she doesn't yet. She doesn't understand it. She has her feelings on a subconscious level, yes, but she cannot recognize them for what they are yet, and therefore can't be actively aware of them on a daily level. She doesn't think "Oh, I am uncontrollably attracted to Booth" or "I'm in love with Booth" and see it as a cold fact because she doesn't even understand what love is, and anything she doesn't understand certainly can't be a fact, in her mind. More likely, any feelings that have come up have either been dismissed in her mind as simple biological and neurological reactions, or have been tucked away deep down inside her, left undealt with.

And I think that, were it to be Brennan, the whole act of Booth revealing his feelings for her would have happened sooner than it had. With her being "aware of" and "struggling with" her attraction to Booth, she would have responded to all his little "moves" he made after his coma on a larger level than she did, Booth would feel more and more sure that she wouldn't reject him, and he would have made the final move sooner.


And 2) If you go by inductive reasoning (which tends to be the most accepted form of reasoning), it has to be Booth. The series has played it off as if it's Booth. It's from the look on his face when he is looking at her after Brennan slides her hand of his chest, and then the direct cut to Sweets looking at Booth after that. And even a few episodes before that, they begin to point to Booth (e.g. The Princess in the Pear, when Booth is on his pain medication and telling Perrota to not let anything happen to Bones, that nothing can happen to "that silky, black hair" and her "soft skin".)


A couple examples of later scenes come to mind. 1) A Night at the Bones Museum. The last scene. Once they're interrupted by the squint squad after their ~moment~. Bones reaches out to fix his tux, AFTER which Booth pushes back her hair. Surely, someone who is so aware of their attraction and struggles with it because they know they cannot act on it would definitely not be the one to initiate physical contact after a ~moment~ like what they had. He only reaches out to her hair AFTER she fixes his tux, because then he knows it's safe, that nobody can make it like he's touching her because he's attracted to her, since she already started the contact. 2) The Goop in the Girl. When she's undressing him. How thoroughly emotionless she is through it. Yes, you can say "Oh, but she's Bones, she hardly ever shows emotion! She's aware of the attraction but she's just pushed it down really far, that's why she's not reacting to an almost-naked Booth on her lab table!" Sorry, it doesn't work that way. When there's no narrator to a story, we have to rely entirely on the character's actions to tell us just how things are. Were she to be the one Gordon Gordon had been talking about, they would have played it off, even slightly, even with just a little look on her face at the end, like stripping down Booth and trying to stay clinical at the same time was difficult for her. The people at Bones (the show) don't have the characters say things and then pretend it never happened, at least, not by these seasons. They know we will go back and point it out every time they contradict something they said earlier.

While I believe the coma definitely acted as a catalyst for Booth to realize his feelings, and while he may not have fully accepted that he was in love with Bones until after the coma, I still think he was the one Gordon Gordon was talking about. He may not have fully realized his feelings for Bones yet, but I think he was definitely aware of the attraction, and struggled with it daily, as Gordon Gordon said.