In Which We Meet Hannah

Season 6, Episode 2

The Couple in the Cave 

  
EDITED 10/3/10

NON B&B OBSERVATIONS:

-CLARK! Oh, Clark. I like Clark. He's funny. And keeps them honest about how much they allow their personal lives into the work, because really, how much they talk about their personal shit on the job would SO never happen in real life.

-Speaking of Clark, he is forever my hero for his whole “tear each other's clothes off” speech, and his reaction afterward.

-YAY, Sweets looks like Sweets again!

-I love Bones' hair like this SO. MUCH.

So, of course the first thing we see in the episode is Bones asking about Hannah. Of course. And how she's all “oh, you're in love, that's what you wanted”.

It's pretty much a constant that I think we can expect from her for awhile. It's not quite a defense mechanism in the Freudian definition (at least, I don't think so), but it's of that sort: in order to make it seem as though she is totally, completely fine with Booth being in love with someone else, she overcompensates and mentions Hannah and love every chance she gets, completely bluntly and matte-of-factly.

The look on her face when she says “Seems like we were never really away from each other, doesn't it?”... she is so positively gleeful, it kills me.

And how she rationalizes how she's happy to be back as how she realized solving murders was the best use of her skills. She couldn't simply like solving murders, she couldn't simply feel fulfilled from helping to put bad guys away, from helping BOOTH put bad guys away. Noooooo, of course not, because that would be irrational, wouldn't it Bones?

And then, OH SNAP, here comes Hannah. Bones just standing there all smiley-like after they introduce each other, and then Booth and Hannah keep kissing... am I the only one who, just for a second, sensed a bit of that grinding-your-teeth feeling from Bones? Yes, in every single interview anyone from the show has done where they talk about Hannah, they insist that this isn't going to be a jealous thing (at least, in the sense of Brennan won't be jealous of Hannah in a cat-fight sense), but still, a person can only limit a first reaction so much. Yes, they can tuck away their feelings about something (as Bones does oh-so-much), but only after that initial reaction happens, even if it only lasts a second. We've seen it several times before with her. We saw it in the last episode, the way her face fell after Booth told her how serious things were with Hannah. Of course, a few scenes later, she's was gabbing it up with Angela about how he's in love with Hannah. That's what Bones does, that's how she deals with things as of now. And this is the same situation: seeing them kiss, for a second or two, she gives off ever-so-slightly that gritting-your-teeth sense, and then, never again (at least not in this episode). She dismisses it, sends it off, masks it, however you want to call it.

So, you know how Bones is like “We were never a couple” to Cam?

And you remember their whole “surrogate relationship” discussion in 4.02?

And you know how that's basically what Angela says to her, that they were a couple who just didn't have sex?

Mmmmmhm.

Enough said.

“He always wanted to find someone to share his love”

Oh, Bones, you're breaking my heart again and again.

And again, it's back to the whole “she didn't believe she could give him the love he needed because she thinks her heart is cold and closed even though it's really not” situation.

And speaking of going back to situations, the whole “first reaction” thing comes up again when Brennan realizes that she's the only one whose life ended up just how she expected, which also goes back to the “Oh, Bones, you're breaking my heart!” situation again.

Ok. I'm going to do something now that I'm probably going to do a lot this season. The whole “initial reaction” thing isn't just a Bones thing. It's a Person thing. Everyone does it. Including me. So, I give you a segment I like to call Initial Fangirl Reaction.

INITIAL FANGIRL REACTION: WTF. I know it can all be justified as him rationalizing his feelings and shit, but Booth being all “I'm crazy about Hannah, the past doesn't matter” makes me mad. I do not like it. It is upsetting. How can he say his past with Bones doesn't matter. Adigjiogjewifqwjed.

And, this is the point where we say: FANGIRL, CALM YOUR ASS DOWN.

Ok. So, yes, it is upsetting. But I think there's a big thing going on here.

With Booth, in any sort of conflicting-emotions type thing, we've always seen that he acknowledges that fact, even if just a little bit, or that at least he's feeling the conflict of his emotions. This, we see nothing. But, surely, he can't have just completely fallen out of love with Bones? No, that can't be!

You're right. It's not.

Booth has been through a lot of shit emotionally with Bones, especially in this last season. He realized he was in love with her. He kept it to himself for months. He admitted he had feelings for her; she turned him down. And then she left. Yes, he left too, but looking at this from Booth's perspective, one could see how it could feel to him like she was the one who left, that he wasn't enough to make her stay. He's found a woman who technically is everything he wants. It's a bit of a bold statement, but I think he's pulling a Brennan here: he has convinced himself that he doesn't love Bones anymore. He has stuffed his feelings so far down that he can't access them hardly at all.

Which, honestly, makes sense considering how (at least, I think) Brennan is now going to have to be the one who initiates any sort of romance with them ever again. He's been through too much, his feelings are too much for him to deal with, so he's hidden them away. Brennan will have to be the one to get them out again.

There's a perfect example: the look on his face as he watches her talk about herself to Hannah, when she's listing off her accomplishments with no humility at all, as she always does: it's the same kind of look he always used to get when she did this, amused, watching it unfold, but something's missing. It's more subdued. There's no sort of “Oh, Bones” aspect there, no “Oh, Bones” sparkle in his eyes.

In the same conversation, when Hannah says all she's done, we're hit with the fact that she actually ISN'T totally his typical type. She's driven by facts. She's smart. She's super impressive, like Bones. Which is probably why he fell so in love with her. Which makes things more complicated.

Ruh roh, raggy.

“He saved your life.”

WELL.

That's certainly something B&B know quite a bit about.

Someone is implying the parallels between Bones and Hannah. And it's Bones doing the implying. WHAT, NOW. But see, the reversal of the more “emotionally-aware” one is already happening, on very minute levels.

Although I don't like that phrase “emotionally-aware”, because Brennan has actually regressed emotionally. She'll never be better at emotional things than Booth. But, when it comes to the facts and implications of their relationship... Booth is in “hide-everything-away” mode, and Bones is little by little noting more and more things about their relationship.”More aware of implications of their relationship” is more accurate. But it doesn't sound as good.

Sweets being all “I can't believe they were together” and Booth being all “Their backgrounds mean they can't be in love?” shows that he hasn't completely, entirely, one hundred percent shoved all thoughts of being in love with Bones out his mind. He still knows what's up. He still knows that he had feelings for her, and that they were real (of course, those feelings still exist, but that's why he DOESN'T know, or at least won't let himself know, right now).

“So it's impossible for two people to overcome their differences?” “We couldn't.”

Oh, Bones, you're killing me here. Again with the “now she's the one who's more aware of their relationship” thing. Like I said in my Tired!Post, I think it's possible that her reflection on their relationship when she was away from Booth has made her much more aware of their relationship, their feelings for each other, etc., but it's just that she has dismissed them as chemical and hormonal happenings of the past that don't actually mean anything as opposed to a lost love, a missed chance, etc., which makes me wonder whether this reversal back to seeing love as just chemicals happened after or before she heard about Hannah. I don't think she ever expected him to come back home in a relationship; the news was probably a slap in the face to her. A slap in the face so hard that it spun her around back to thinking that love was just chemicals, so she wouldn't have to deal with the fact that her newfound realizations about their relationship were now essentially useless to the present.

Oh, she imagined them together. Whoa (horse).

For once, a concern of mine is actually addressed: from last episode, the fact that she hadn't dreamed about him in a romantic way. Although this doesn't technically count as dreaming, my main concern was that the lack of dreaming about him romantically while she had dreamed about working with him implied that she hadn't really thought much about their personal relationship.

And also, I smell a fanfiction with this whole “imaging them together” situation. Not just with that, but I think it would also be interesting to look at Booth and Hannah's getting together, to see from Booth's perspective just how and when and why he hid away his love for Bones and decided to try things with Hannah.

how she admitted everything, thinking about it... either she's rationalizing so much she's pretending it's so ok that she's going that far, or she's subtly trying to evoke some discussion without really evoking it.

Oh, hey, Hannah mentioning Bones right after sex... THAT means NOTHING at all. /end sarcasm

But on another note: This shows how Hannah is uber-intuitive, like Booth. This is a difference, not only from his typical type, but also from Bones, which might end up helping or hurting their (Hannah and Booth's) relationship in the end.

But anyway, on the other thing I talked about in my Tired!Post: Bones has SO regressed.

Copy and pasting from said Tired!Post:

Um, you remember in this episode when she's all like "oh hey, love is just chemicals."

And remember last season when she was all like "I'm willing to accept Booth's premise that love is more than just chemicals"?

MAJOR REGRESSION ALERT, YA'LL.

Well, either that, or she's finally accepted that she was once (she still is, of course, but doesn't think that anymore) in love with Booth, BUT the only way she can allow herself accept that at this point is to believe that love is just chemicals (hence the whole “I've experienced those feelings before” statement she makes). She can't have her cake and eat it to, she sees as of right now. Which is difficult to categorize, because on one hand, she's finally admitted she's experienced “love”, but on the other, she's back to claiming “love” is just a chemical brain reaction.

In their scene at the bar at the end, when Booth is talking about how love is being willing to give your life to, for, someone... Bones would do that for him. She would give her life for him. She can say whatever she wants, but were it to come down to that situation, she would.

If only she knew that, and not just us.

And when she's all “But if you fall out of love with someone and fall in love with someone else”... oh, Bones, you are not fooling anyone. But then, when the conversation continues... it's almost like they're in their old roles again, in a completely different way. She continues with saying “then all those things would seem irresponsible”... she's suppressing her feelings, her new revelations about their relationship. She IS talking about their relationship, however inadvertently, because of the parallel she makes right before of falling out of love with someone and falling into love with someone else, but then she makes like it's nothing. And he goes “No, it's still love.” He doesn't believe he loves her anymore. He does, deep down, but he doesn't know it. He's pulled a Brennan, he's tricked himself into believing something. But even so, he's admitting it through this talk. He's basically saying that their situation is still love, even though he's supposedly fallen out of love with Brennan. But unlike every other time this sort of double-meaning thing is done, there is no sense of his being aware of it being a double-meaning thing, because he truly doesn't think he's in love with her anymore.

They're still talking from the perspectives that they talked from before (him being for love, her, against, to put it in blunt terms), but the level of awareness of it's relation to their relationship is the opposite (before, he was and she wasn't, now, she is and he isn't, again, to put it in blunt terms).

[EDIT, 10/3/10:

“If we don't look out for ourselves, nothing else matters”

For some reason, I didn't notice this quote much the first time around, but skimming through the scene for a certain quote today, I can't believed I passed it up, because, um, hello, not-so-hidden meaning. It goes back to main reason “love” was such a difficult concept for her to see herself in early on, and one of the reasons she was still afraid of it later on: she's afraid of getting hurt. She's terrified of feeling things, of being emotional and vulnerable, only to be abandoned again and hurt again. Now, they're back, and Booth has found someone else. Time to tuck everything away again, goes Bones' brain, and back to her self-preservation. She has to look out for herself, because looking out for others requires love, and she's scared of “love” still.

Of course, what she doesn't realize is that she's already in it; she claims looking out for oneself is what is most important, and yet she would give up her life for Booth. She has said that she would do anything for him, and I believe that still stands strong, no matter what she says. And Booth does too, which is why he calls her out on her bullshit, flat-out says he knows she doesn't mean that. That's something that hasn't and won't change: he knows her. He still knows her. And he knows when to call her out on her bullshit]

I also may or may not have teared up with that last shot of Brennan alone at the bar.

May or may not have.

(yeah, I totally did.)

Surprisingly enough, I wasn't filled with rage and the urge to throw everything within my grasp at the wall after watching this episode, like I thought I would. I feel that thus far, the Hannah situation has been executed believably. It's interesting how they different parts of Hannah like different things and people: his typical type in her appearance, like Booth in her intuition, like Bones in her intelligence and passion in her field. Any one of those things could end up being a good or bad thing for their relationship; they've cleverly made it difficult for us to try and determine whether this relationship will be successful, or at least, for how long it will be successful, what their problems will be, etc.

One thing I do want to note, though, that may or may not have been intentional: Booth seems head-over-heals for her, and she for him, but they really don't seem to have that unspeakable chemistry that B&B have. It may just be me who's getting this, but really trying to look at it objectively... there's no, or hardly any, electricity when they kiss, when they're together, when they're talking. And if this was an intentional choice that was made in casting, it is brilliant, and will be so great for future ~drama~ they might have: But, Hannah is perfect for Booth, technically! Yes, but what about the chemistry? They don't have it.

Booth and Brennan do.

Oh, snap.