In Which They're Scully and Mulder

Season 5, Episode 11

The X in the File

BRENNAN: The hairs on my arm are not reacting in any way. But thanks, Angela. (closes laptop) It’s not a spaceship.
BOOTH: Well, if it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…
BRENNAN: But then it would be a duck, not a spaceship, so your point escapes me.
BOOTH: It’s just a metaphor.

Irrelevant to anything notable, other than acting as another example as to how literal Bones is.

It's just incredibly funny.

Especially to me, since the first time I ever heard the duck thing was in relation to herpes.

Yeah.

BOOTH: Maybe aliens are anthropologists? Maybe they just wanna study our religion and sex and love and our funny languages and line dancing?
BRENNAN: That’s an interesting possibility I hadn’t considered.
BOOTH: Well, living creatures, they like to reach out, Bones.
BRENNAN: Living creatures like to reach out and eat each other.

I love typical Bones mechanisms. They're so fun to point out.

Like this one. When she's already in at least a semi-emotional state, if Booth says one of his Proverbs of Boothiness, as I like to call them, she'll absorb it, and acknowledge that it affects her. But if she's not in an emotional state, and if he doesn't really push it, well, forget about it, she just counters it an anthropologically and/or scientifically correct answer. Which makes sense, because at this point Bones is still very much so NOT an outwardly emotional person, and while a lot of her guards are been lowered (or have been made to lower more easily), some of them are still up and standing strong.

I think she still takes what he says in, though, even in these cases where she seems to just dismiss him. You can tell through those random times when she mentions to someone something she's noticed about Booth, whenever she goes “Booth always does this” or, more importantly, “Booth always says this”. Bones is an A+ observer. She's an anthropologist, for crying out loud. So she takes it all in, whether it seems like she does or not.

Of course, how much of it she actually believes at the time is a different thing.

But still, she at least takes it in.