Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye Contact and Evolution

"I taught you about eye contact, you taught me about evolution," Booth says to Bones in the best line of this fine, sad, Season 5 finale, written by exec producers Hart Hanson and Stephen Nathan.   The second best phrases were "anthropological microcosm" and "crap," spoken respectively by Bones and Booth about a hoarder, murder-victim's cluttered apartment.

So, yes, this show was about letting go of the past - at least for a year, for our major characters - and trying something new.  This includes Sweets and Daisy splitting up because she's going to Maluku for what could be the dig of the century on the origins of humanity.   Jack and Angela off to Paris for a year, because, as Jack aptly notes, he does not want to break in a new FBI - forensic anthropologist team.  And that would be because Bones is also going to the former Spice Islands (Maluku) as head of the expedition, and Booth is back in the military and off to Afghanistan for this same year.  That leaves just poor Cam holding the bag of bones at the Jeffersonian.

In sum:  a couple split (Sweets and Daisy),  a couple together but splitting from Washington (Jack and Angela), and a couple not a couple splitting from each other as well as Washington (Bones and Booth).

A pretty grim tally, if you ask me, but there is this one important mitigating factor.   Bones the show will be back in the Fall, which is obviously far less than a year.   Were television time real time, we would be without Bones as we know it for a year.   But in reality, Bones and Booth and everyone else will only not be together over the summer, when we the viewers would not have been seeing them anyway, except via DVR or whatever, which we can still do anyway.

So what's the big deal?   Well, first of all, we can't be sure what will be going on this Fall.   Though Bones and Booth will both be in the story, no doubt, they may be in different parts of the world, and, for all we know, Jack and Angela might not ever come back at all, which would be even worse.  But even if the Fall begins with everyone back at the Jeffersonian, our willing suspension of disbelief will still be vexed - because, ordinarily, that Coleridgean state (after Samuel Taylor Coleridge - see his Biographia Literaria) would lead us to believe that Bones and Booth and team would be happily solving cases all summer long.  Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

But, part of the power and charm of Bones has always been that the relationships have not been all fun and games - far from it - so why should this be any different?   The truth is that this season finale is deeply consistent with all that is Bones, and makes me more eager than ever to see the Fall.


5-min podcast review of Bones Season 5 finale

See also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings



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