SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to talk about the happenings of the Bones season five premiere. If you haven’t watched this episode, and don’t intend to watch until the weekend, then I respectfully advise you to get your ass out of this post and go to another site as quickly as possible. Else, you will be angry and, most likely, blame it on me and the Democrats. You have been warned!
Are they gone? Good. In my preview post I mentioned that Seeley Booth would be dealing with some issues resulting from his brain surgery. Now we know what those issues are, and they may change the dynamic of the show for the foreseeable future. Or, they may not.
What it boils down to is this: Seeley’s in love with Bones. Or not. It’s hard to determine if the feelings he has are phantoms from his season finale coma dream (which was a result of Bones reading from her latest book … or not), or are legitimate emotions that have bubbled to the surface thanks to the dream. Either way, it adds a new level to the relationship built with Temperance over the last four years. Question is, can this twist work for the show and not have people screaming that the program has hopped the Selachimorpha?
It can, as long as the producers of the show work it properly. If Booth portrays Ross Geller, and does nothing but fawn over Rachel Bones in order to make her love him, then the whole thing will be a total disaster. Seeley has shown that he’s an emotional guy, but those actions would really be unlike the man we have all come to adore. At that point, Bones would go from “dark comedy,” to “stupid dark comedy.”
On the other hand, it they play the love card with subtlety, it could work out well for the series. Look, we all know that these two wacky kids are going to get together sometime during the run of the show, be it now or in season 27. What the producers need to figure out is if viewers want the continued slow build-up to the inevitable, or to get it out of the way to prepare for a whole new set of circumstances. Personally, they should let the whole thing stew for a while longer. But, that doesn’t mean that Booth’s feelings should disappear entirely and the relationship go back to what it was. Seeley’s love for Bones should remain, only to have viewers breath a bit easier as to who is in love with whom.
The biggest wild card will be how the producers want to portray Temperance in all of this. It was said many times in the season premiere that Brennan is extremely fragile when it comes to love. It would probably be a bad idea for Booth to express his feelings for her, then suddenly say “Whoops! My brain was misfiring. Never mind all that.” Then, unfortunately, we run into a Moonlighting/Cheers situation, where we spend a season with the characters despising each other and we end up watching 43 minutes featuring secondary characters we don’t even like. That’s not good for a show. One would hope that, eventually, Tempy would see that Seeley is the man for him. When that happens is anyone’s guess.
So, now that you’ve digested the season five premiere, what’s your opinion?
Clacked by Richard Keller 
on Sep 17, 2009 @ 21:00 EST5EDT
I thought they handled it quite well
I think you mean that Seeley is the man for her.
I do think they handled it well. Is it just me or was there something off with Sweets? There was something not quite right about the character or possibly the actor’s portrayal, but I just can’t put my finger on it.
What was with the need to hug Brennan when she got back? It is not like she hasn’t gone way before, granted we have not been show in but it has been discussed.
There’s always been something a little off with Sweets – that’s why so many of us thought that he was Gormagon or Gormagon’s assistant. After last year’s revelations about his past, his behaviors make more sense, but put them into the context of this episode. The characters are moving forward. Hodgins and Angela are able to be kind and friendly to one another again. Booth and Brennan are moving forward towards some sort of permanent relationship. Yes, for all we know, Sweets still has Daisy, but Sweets was badly abused as a child. He wants permanence. Change in people is frightening to him. Which puts him in an awkward bind. To do his job, he needs to help them evolve and move forward, but doing so upsets his status quo. In these respects, I think they play Sweets really well.
This episode seemed a bit darker, not in the writing or the tone, but visually. I’m sure the lab coats are a darker shade of blue than in the past, or they just turned the lighting down a little.
Sweets was a lot more serious than in the past, especially in the scenes with Caroline. His makeup was a little different too, and several times they made reference to him trying to prove he’s not a kid, so maybe its something to do with that. Maybe its just JFD evolving how he handles the character a little more.
(Another note about the Sweets/Gormogon thing, loved the shoutout to that in the season 4 finale – which I only watched recently)
So when does the revolving lab assistant door start again? That was a notable omission this episode.