The Bones That Weren't
Oh, baseball. I don't know much about you, but what I do know is that I love when you don't have extra games and therefore don't make us wait an extra week for new Bones.
Of course, having the first scene after the body is found be Booth and Hannah can almost make a person wish baseball had lasted an extra week.
Gross gross gross gross gross.
When he's all “I'll miss you” to Hannah when she leaves... normally, to something like this I'd be like “Well, SOMEBODY is overcompensating like a madman.” And while I still think that may be part of it, I've started to shift ideas.
Remember that lovely little scene in The Man in the Outhouse when they established that Booth and Brennan have a “surrogate relationship” of sorts?
It's reversed now, in a very odd and unusual way: Hannah is now the surrogate in Booth's life for Bones.
We know that for at least the past five years, Booth has not had a legitimate serious relationship, nothing that rivals what he has emotionally with Brennan, until now. It's been awhile. And then he falls for Brennan, and he has all these extreme feelings for her – but he can't do anything about it. He can't express those feelings, through words nor actions. He has so much love for her, but he could never get it out.
Now, he has Hannah. Hannah is the closest thing to a relationship as serious as what he has with Brennan that we have seen. Except, he can express his love for Hannah, unlike with Brennan. He can have romantic dinners with her and tell her how much he loves her and have tons of sex with her. He can finally express all the love he has had inside him that he hasn't been able to express for AGES. And why is he just waiting till now to do it as opposed to getting with some random floozy? Because Hannah because she is similar enough to Bones for him to justify his actions of love on her to himself.
When he's all “Hannah is the best thing in the world omg I love her so much omg omg” like a teenage boy in love, it's not so much that he's overcompensating and trying to convince someone and himself that everything is perfect – it's that he has so much love that's been bottled up inside him for too long, and now that he has someone to get it out on, he's getting it out a LOT.
As a disclaimer to this and everything, basically, let me say: I think Booth does have very real feelings for Hannah. Whether or not those feelings are love, whether they are just “love” or if he is “in love” with her, all that is debatable. But it would be insulting to the character of Booth to insist that he doesn't really love her; Booth would not string someone along like that knowing they'd get hurt in the end, even if he's not completely conscious of it. If he had a feeling at all that things weren't right with him and Hannah, he would break it off. Otherwise he wouldn't be the same man Brennan loves, and therefore, the love they have would not be the same, and it would all be illegitimate.
Booth, Bones, and Sweets at the diner. Always a lovely scene.
And always ends up in some discussion of their personal lives.
When they start talking about how Sweets and Brennan think Hannah is doing more work because she's bored at home, first made me think of how she did the exact same thing, that she's taking an opportunity to simultaneously make like she's completely ok with Hannah and Booth's relationship by bringing it up herself and ALSO try to bring out a shabbily-produced negative consequence of their relationship, last week.
After that, though, I realized; she's only ever said that it's Booth doing things wrong in his and Hannah's relationship; never Hannah. Yes, part of this is probably because she doesn't want to seem like she's against the relationship by saying bad things about Hannah, and part of it is also how the showrunners are really trying to emphasize that Bones and Hannah are friends, but even so, I think there's more. Some deep-seeded irrational hurt and anger at Booth for loving someone other than her, perhaps?
Perhaps.
And then, of course we have the “a 2 by 3 by 4 slab” exchange, among many others, to point out yet again, how super-literal she is being. And we all know what that means, kids: she is hiding feelings like a motherfucker.
And we'll use Brennan's use of “totally jazzed” to begin an inference about her increased use of metaphors.
“But I thought her being super-literal was a sign of her hurting deep-down? Then why is she being MORE metaphorical now, isn't that the opposite of literal?”, you ask?
Well, there are a couple things to take into account here:
- The way she goes about using metaphors and sarcasm and irony and all that is very organized, methodical, literal way. Like when she breaks down “irony” into logical terms, for example.
- A lot of it could very well be her trying to pretend like she's getting better socially by using random metaphors, but it's the way she does it, if she does it without making a conscious choice to do it, that really determines if she's improved or not, not if she does it or not.
- And 1 and 2 can be supported by the fact that she's super-literal when she responds to something a person has said directly to her (like in the slab quote), but the metaphor really only happens randomly and from her own prompting. Makes it more likely that this is something she is consciously trying to do, and emotional and social development to be truly impacting, it has to delve into the subconscious.
Now, I get that it is upsetting to see them going on like life is normal. I sit and watch the show and occasionally my brain wanders off from the moment and thinks, “...wait a second. How the FUCK are they even functioning right now?!” But really, it makes sense that they're going to try to move on. No matter how much they think that it's meant to be, they're going to fool themselves into thinking it'll never happen and they'll try to move on. It's what people do. We can't fault them for being human.
And we have another “Thanks, Bones”. And that whole moment is not as overt as the one in the third episode, as after the phone. Nor as their moment during the science show in the fourth. Maybe because Hannah is right there. Maybe because with her life in danger, he's realizing he can't have both feelings for Hannah and Bones. Maybe he's realizing the gravity of the situation as a whole. What's more important than facial expressions, etc. in these types of things though, is the duration. Someone can look at you and make the biggest facial expression, but it's nothing if it only lasts a second. It's how long a person looks that matters. And he looked. He took his time in talking, and he kept staring at her, even after she left. It was ALL in the eyes this time. They've had many an eye connection before, but it always involved more of the face. This was ALL eyes. And it doesn't indicate less connection on their part. But it indicates that they're going deeper and deeper within themselves in this situation of theirs, reaching out less about it. Those feelings he still has for Brennan that are packed away are starting to rustle around a bit, because that “thanks” had more than one meaning. He was thanking her for saving Hannah's life, yes, but it goes beyond that. He's thanking her for putting her own feelings aside for his happiness. It's on a subconscious level, yes, but I think deep down, he knows that her pointing out the issue with Hannah's leg was a sort of mini-sacrifice for her. The feelings are getting rustled up just in the slightest, and so he's going to push them down even deeper. And the same goes for Brennan. I think it'll get a little darker before the light, kiddos. But that increased dark may just be what allows for the light in the end. Shit can only stay buried for so long.
With how they both insisted to Sweets that Booth was just “persevering” in going on with his work after Hannah was shot... oh, what a lovely breath of fresh air. Banding together against Sweets ... just like the old days. And just what they need right now.
I've talked about it so much that I'm sick of it, but just for consistency's sake, I'll point out the fact that she knows and mentions that Booth would want to know why shows how deep-rooted her feelings are for him, how deep-rooted he is in her being. NO ELABORATION. Because I have talked about it so much in past episodes. But it needed to be noted.
NON B&B OBSERVATION: When Booth was holding the juice for Hannah, I just couldn't get the thought of, “What the fuck, she has arms, Booth. Why are you feeding her juice. What even.” out of my head. Yes, it's a cute romantic whatever thing, but really, SHE DIDN'T BREAK HER ARMS. She can drink juice herself.
And then, we end with the sunglasses. Oh, the sunglasses.
You'd think that, with how some people reacted to that, that Hannah might as well have spit in Brennan's face.
Like, really people?
First off, Brennan's a freaking millionaire. I'm pretty sure she can do without one pair of sunglasses.
And second; I know we all like to think Hannah is the devil incarnate, but really, I don't think she had any ~evil~ intentions in asking for the sunglasses. She recognizes that Brennan is someone very important to the man she loves. So, she wants to befriend Brennan. She recognizes that Brennan is an unusual person. So, she tries to befriend Brennan in an unusual way. And Brennan responds.
Now, you get to a more subconscious level, and her deeper intentions behind this have possibilities. There is what I said above, that she just wants to befriend someone she knows is important to the man she loves. But, also, she could already have a subconscious idea that Brennan's a threat. Befriending the enemy is a common way to deal with a threat. Hannah gives Brennan logic she can't refuse (the whole thing about following social customs) in order to forge a friendship. I don't think Hannah is conniving in the least; I don't think she's planning to “befriend the enemy” or anything like that on a conscious level. But when you have the subconscious of someone like Hannah, who is paradoxically both intuitive and logical... things become more difficult to infer.
The whole character of Hannah is completely fascinating to me, honestly. She's this odd hybrid of Booth and Brennan that you would think would never work but actually does. And so she gets along with both of them. She's intuitive AND logical. She's smart AND emotional.
And now we have a new segment I'd like to call “Leila the Fangirl Yells at Brennan (But Not In An Angry Way)” (which really, I do all the time in these posts, but now I'm just naming it):
“Booth would be very unhappy if you died”
OH MY GOSH. BRENNAN. REALLY. YOU HAVE GOT TO STOP BEING SO HEARTBREAKING. YOU ARE TOO GOOD. YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH, YOU KEEP PUTTING HIS INTERESTS AT FIRST SPOT. WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THAT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT SHOWS THAT YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH. ASHFUIAWHDFWEJG89.
To end, I have a little motto for this season, in case you don't like the mushy-gushy metaphorical crap I put at the end of the post for the season five finale:
As long as Booth wears the cocky belt buckle, there will always be hope.
