Good morning!
Let’s think about the moment in Booth’s office when he’s just arrested Margaret and he and Brennan are talking about the brothers going back into foster care. She asks him if he has any idea how bad the system is and he turns the question on her “Do you?”
And I wonder – did he know already about her time in foster care? Was that a question designed to get her to tell him, to open up a little? He’d already read the file on her parents (or so he told Angela) and a fact like the minor daughter being in state custody would have been in it. And when he came to her office before she got dressed for the party, there was no question in his voice when he said “you were in foster care.” It was just a statement (that led to the ‘my grandfather got me out’ thing which we’ll just make like Show and hand/wave away).
From a broader sense, does Booth make a habit of it, because that’s an easy way to draw information out of her – by having her volunteer answers he already knows? If so, why? Is it because interrogation is his strength?
Discuss!
And here’s your B&B of the day:
The “They BOTH Look Better Than Nice, If You Ask Me” B&B
from Boy in a Bush: Season One
Bones Theory 
December 28, 2011 at 8:14 am
I LOVE the end scene. Booth is pretty dazzled. You can just see a little cartoon over his head, “ooooh, preeety.” Aw. I hope we get a smiliar scene post-baby BB, one where they go out for a real date night. That would be cool. Anyway, there was one episode where Angela said Booth down plays his smarts/strengths, namely interrogation/reading people, at times and I think that could fit with him letting Brennan volunteer information he knows already, or letting her come to a conclusion on her own. You cannot force Brennan. In the premeire of S7 we learned that Booth seems to believe/feel/think/know that he and Brennan will be married one day and that she will be the one doing the asking. He’s going to let her come around to that idea on her own time/terms.
December 28, 2011 at 9:42 am
In this episode I always assumed that he didn’t know that Brennan was in foster care, mainly because he was baffled as to why she was so upset. But it would make sense that it would be in her parents’ file so maybe he did know.
December 28, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Maybe he was just buffled because, even though he knew, he didn’t think she’d react so “sentimentally”, given how she talked about ‘compartmentalising’ and ‘not letting emotions cloud her judgement’ and all that. He barely knew her at that point, so he wouldn’t really know how sensitive such matters can be for her, and that there are things that even she can’t compartmentalise and be all reasonable and collected about. Maybe this was one of the fist moments that allowed him a better look of Brennan behind the “Walls of Reason”.
December 28, 2011 at 9:53 am
The foundational code for a good attorney is never to ask a question in court that you don’t already know the answer to. It’s a strategic thing and Booth uses that lawyer’s strategy with Brennan. He intuits how Brennan is feeling and plays it from there. And he also uses it to create connections with her. Booth confides things to Brennan he would never confide to anyone else and has from the first season and he works to get Brennan to open up to him. This shared trust is why their commitment to each other is as strong as it is.
December 28, 2011 at 10:38 am
Well, we do know a couple of things from watching Bones. On one hand, we have been told that Booth is very intelligent but loves to play it down so that he sort of fly under the radar. However, on the other hand, the evil PTB love to leave a lot of things up to our imagination.
You pose a great question, MJ…what does Booth know at this point? It’s very possible that it was all spelled out in her file….or its very possible that the writers didn’t think about that and was writing Booth as if he did not know. Sometimes hard to say with this show!
But I will comment on that lovely picture…I think this picture is in the dictionary under the word “dazzled”. We see it when Brennan comes out in the hot Roxie dress, when she is in her circus getup, etc. Gotta love when Booth is just rendered speechless by Brennan!
December 28, 2011 at 10:54 am
This episode also has one of my favorite moments – when Brennan tells Booth “if I can’t respect the law, I can at least respect you.’ When she says that, Booth is just totally befuddled and surprised and his reaction is sort of Wow! and he just starts mumbling. If you listen, though, you can hear him say something like “that came out of nowhere” in his ramblings.
I remember watching that the first time and thinking, “Dude, you are so toast.”
December 28, 2011 at 11:58 am
You know, I’ve never had an issue with Brennan saying her grandfather got her out of foster care. I don’t think it needs to be handwaved at all. Why not just conclude that she lied? She barely knows Booth. She does not like talking about herself or her past. Angela is her best friend and we see her confide many things in Angela during season one that she has obviously not told her before.
In this episode, Booth is asking a very personal question. Brennan deflects with a fib.
I know HH has said this was a plothole he left open, and the reason probably has to do with changing Brennan’s backstory between seasons 1 and 2, but frankly, I don’t think it’s a hole that needs closing at all. We don’t have to take everything characters say at face value.
December 28, 2011 at 1:05 pm
I could accept that with any other character except Brennan. She doesn’t lie-ever. If she didn’t want to tell Booth anything all she had to do was affirm the fact that yes, she was in foster care until she was 18 and let it go at that without adding any further details. She didn’t need to embelish it with a lie.
December 28, 2011 at 5:35 pm
At this point in the series, I can’t see her lying about something like this.
Did Booth have her parents file at this point? I thought he did not have it until The Man on the Fairway,
December 28, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Brennan gave Booth the file in Fairway but in one of these first episodes, Booth mentions reading the file about her parents. I can’t remember which episode it was but the conversation comes after Booth says something about the squints not knowing what real life is, Angela tells him that Brennan lost her parents at 15 and that qualifies as real life, Booth makes the ‘seen the file/read the file’ comment and then says something about ‘for someone who doesn’t like psychology she sure has a lot of it.’
And you’d think if I could remember all that, i could remember the name of the episode.
December 28, 2011 at 6:56 pm
It’s the pilot. 🙂 That’s exactly what I was thinking about regarding whether he know or not.
December 28, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Imo, even if we shrug off her words with “oh, she was just fibbing,” that’s basically a hand/wave. It’s us as viewers having to come up with our own satisfactory explanation for a plot hole left by the writers.
Fwiw, I don’t think the grandfather-that-wasn’t is a big deal. This was the first season and obviously they didn’t have a fully fleshed out character for her in their minds yet. Plus, he was never mentioned again.
I reserve the right to amend that opinion if we suddenly get a grandfather popping up now, after seven years of hearing that Max and a
December 28, 2011 at 6:44 pm
This is what happens when you get a new phone and have no clue how to use it – truncated posts. Gah.
This was supposed to end, “…..after seven years of hearing that Max and Russ are her only family.”
December 28, 2011 at 10:02 pm
I do think it can be explained with just saying that Brennan was fibbing. I wouldn’t say that Brennan doesn’t lie ever. I think that lying about something like this is something Brennan would have learned just to get people to leave her alone about something like this. It is something that she wouldn’t want to discuss and the easiest way to get everyone to leave you be about something like being in foster care would be to just say something like my grandfather got me out, then to just move onto something else.
I actually think it’s much better if they never do bring it up again. I definitely would have a tougher time accepting them coming up with a “grandfather” in the future than just ignoring that comment forever more.
I think the reality is that at the time they were still working out her back-story, and finally settled on something that didn’t quite match up with what they wrote in this episode, since they way they had her talk in here made it play more that she was younger in foster care, and that her brother was there too. So yes I do kind of hand wave that whole bit. I don’t have a problem though just thinking that she didn’t want to discuss it with him, she wasn’t as close to him then, didn’t trust him as much as she can to trust him later so just told him a story that she thought (had probably learned) would stop him from pressing.
I’m sorry if this is a little rambling or repetetive, but I blame it on the after migraine stage I’m in right now.
December 28, 2011 at 4:42 pm
I just want to get to the plot hole that is Booth’s mom. What is her deal?!
December 29, 2011 at 10:43 am
I just wanted to comment that I could buy Brennan lying about her grandfather…because she does lie, to say that she doesn’t, well is a lie! :)….2 lies off the top of my head: Brennan lied to Booth in the Proof in the Pudding, which is known by Cam AND in the Babe in the Bar ep, when Booth wanted to spend time with Hannah, it was Brennan’s idea to lie and tell their friends that he was working…so she aint above a lie or two.
December 29, 2011 at 10:52 am
And she has lied to rescue Booth. And she will lie about her feelings in a heartbeat (knowingly or unknowningly). Overall, though, Brennan doesn’t like to lie, she normally doesn’t lie, and she hates being lied to.
December 29, 2011 at 12:05 pm
She’s also lied to suspects on numerous occasions so like all human beings Brennan is capable of telling lies when it suits her needs.
October 26, 2014 at 5:45 pm
“my grandfather got me out of the system” maybe just a pat answer to give when some one asks about foster care so she doesn’t have to go into a lot of detail that is nobody’s business…..
November 27, 2014 at 12:29 pm
Late to this post, but as an aunt to a few foster kids, the GFather comment could have been built into a great back story. Like the janitor in the Queenbee, Brennan had people who saw her differently and the potential of her. Someone she identified as GFather could have been from the foster family who saw the potential of her and help bridge from the system to her successful transition to academia.
Foster kids will attach to extended family members of the foster family, especially if there is reason to attach. In my fan mind, the GFather figure could have helped with her transition out of the system and died while she was in university. Like all pain she comprtmentalizes until events force her to examine the feelings and she accepts the truth of them.