The Girl in the Mask – SHOW DISCUSSION

wow, finally an episode to my liking. case-focused, more serious, and above all.. no booth silliness, thank god! it's been a while. so good to see him back to being an earnest agent, a good friend and a smart sophisticated guy.. not some redneck goofball wearing beer hats, yelling at british traffic and dragging dead bodies around. thank you!!

okay, the whole tannaka thing was a little over the top.. but that seems to be the case with anything that involves angela lately, doesn't it?

and i really liked the way brennan treated the japanese agent. very suave and respectful. good job!

all in all one of the best episodes this season imo. just old school bones.. almost season 2ish. very nice.

MoonlightGardenias wrote:The "is Tanaka a girl or a guy?" thing was the one thing I didn't really like about the episode. I mean, it was kind of funny for a while, but it sort of got old and it felt kind of inappropriate. And really, while I know why Angela was curious and all...I wish they'd actually show her more than making face when she's there for a bad corpse, or making sexual references. I don't actually know what's in her job description and I know due to product placement we don't see much of the Angelator anymore but still. It would be nice to see her do her job.

Anyway, the foreshadowing and conversations about love and family, having "that person" (while Booth is making "those" eyes at her)...it's squeeful at it's best. I do like that we're seeing Brennan grow, but I don't want her completely jumping into this new persona she's kind of been carving out this season. At least not yet. But so far, we've had her admit Anthropology gets things wrong, love can/does exist, and that she'd like that one person to spend her life with. I knew this was dubbed the season "In which Brennan (finally) figures it out" for a reason.

Moonlight, what do you mean by "product placement?" Are you refering to something that has to do with casting issues?

I definately agree with the majority on this one. It was a great episode, and bittersweetly reminiscent of those early day episodes that we fell in love.

It's interesting how a really well written and executed episode makes the bad ones stick out even more like sore thumbs. Someone mentioned earlier about Bones going from being socially awful and oblivious to tact one week, and then suddenly transform back into the character she has GROWN to be over 4 seasons: graceful, empathetic, and consciencous, with just enough hesitation to let us know she is still at fledgling at this. Booth would have been so proud to have overheard that exchange she had with the victim's brother. The loveliness of the scene only makes me cringe more at scenes from episodes prior. Especially the "Brennan's an idiot in the interrogation room" thing, as well as her blatent discriminatory comment toward the praying Indian intern. Her intolerance made no sense considering as a part of her vocation she has immersed herself in a wide variety of cultures. I'm glad they did it right this week, but I wish we could get some consistency going. I'm very uncomfortable with them jumping up and down the spectrum with Brennan. She deserves better. But back to praise, cuz I hate saying bad things about Bones: Great episode. I loved last week's too, but I'm glad we're back to edgy and serious tones, and proper character development. Ok, I'll stop rambling now...

I wasn't as enamored of this episode as others it seems. It was a good, solid episode: some good lines, the ending was cute. Other than that...eh.

Also, I have to disagree that Brennan was more empathetic this time. She was still curious about relationships and emotions, more as an observer than an actual participant; also her comment at the end, the "that is highly improbable" was a reminder that she doesn't get it, not yet. However, it was Booth's case, Booth's friend, Booth's friend's sister, and we've been shown that she'll do anything for Booth. Being good and moderately considerate to his friends fits that bill.

The loveliness of the scene only makes me cringe more at scenes from episodes prior. Especially the "Brennan's an idiot in the interrogation room" thing, as well as her blatent discriminatory comment toward the praying Indian intern. Her intolerance made no sense considering as a part of her vocation she has immersed herself in a wide variety of cultures.

I don't wanna get into something here, but I would like to point out that she's just as rude to Catholics, Christians in general, Buddhists and I'm sure, should the opportunity present itself Jews. She took exception because it affected her personally and that was perfectly in character. If Booth decided to do the rosary everyday at 3 pm. (it's a Catholic thing) I'm sure she'd be just as bothered about that. She thinks of Religion as a form of collective delusion and has never shown the necessary tact to deal with it on a regular basis. I mean, seriously? She told Booth that Jesus is a zombie... How was that any different?

She didn't get it right this week. Again, her last comment to Nakamura took care of that.

I see your point heiro. You're right that she has been equally offensive to other religious philosophies, but I still feel that her tolerance throughout the show has been inconsistant at times. Take 'the woman in the garden' for instance. Brennan says about the body with the rosary: "She was religious. She should have had a casket, proper burial with her name on a headstone. We are going to find out who she is and we are going to give her that." I still feel she handled this situation with much more delicacy (sp?) than she has handled other situations in the past. She's still learning.

Shelly wrote:I see your point heiro. You're right that she has been equally offensive to other religious philosophies, but I still feel that her tolerance throughout the show has been inconsistant at times. Take 'the woman in the garden' for instance. Brennan says about the body with the rosary: "She was religious. She should have had a casket, proper burial with her name on a headstone. We are going to find out who she is and we are going to give her that." I still feel she handled this situation with much more delicacy (sp?) than she has handled other situations in the past. She's still learning.

Shelly, I remember when I saw this scene, thinking how empathetic she's being. Thinking that it was out of place for her, but when I read your post it clicked for me.

It isn't necessarily that she was being religiously tolerant. It was that in her line of work she deals with human remains, and showing respect to those human remains is, and always has been very important to her. (One scene that I think back to is when she admonished Zack for referring to bodies as soakers or crispy critters.) In that scene she wasn't being tolerant of the religion so much as she is being respectful of their burial practices!

In that scene she wasn't being tolerant of the religion so much as she is being respectful of their burial practices!

You said it best, DB!