The Lines of Passion

Boy, was it a long hiatus. Us fans who are obsessive compulsive with Bones really had a hard time waiting for this episode. Or is it our passion for the show?

'Bones on the Blue Line' theme was just that. 'Passion' are powerful emotions or feelings. It is also boundless enthusiasm for something. One last thing it represents is Jesus' suffering during his last days. All three of these types where soon in this episode.

Crime and victims: The young man who suffered from lukemia for 8 years is a man who saw no future. When recieving the news of being cancer free, his passion for living soared so high that he shared this with Sweets.

The blind man who wrote the letters had two passions but on total opposite ends of the spectrum. He had good passion by being in love with a married woman but he saw that she was happy with her life so he kept it to himself. His bad passion was destroying the man and his sandwich shop because he got sick one day after eating there. He took this bad passion so far that he would not accept the man's reconciliation but instead choose to destroy this man.

Eddie and the Cop were passionate about each other. Soulmates is the way they described themselves. The thing is HH is showing us what could easily have happened if B&B did not spend time getting to know each other over the last 5 years.

Sweets: His passion was reawakened by the man who died. He dreamt of a life of being married for 60 years before he met this man or Daisy. It was brought back to the surface of what is really important in one's life.

Daisy: This shows us a person who is torn between two passions. Her passion for 'her Lancelot' and her passion for anthropology. As seen throughout the episode, her passion for Sweets got stronger and stronger. It got so bad that Cam literally kicked her out of the lab because of it.

Brennan: She is very passionate about her science. She spent most of the episode trying to get the reporter to accept what her books are truly about.

The problem here is that one's passions can make us blind to reality. Brennan has always thought that it was the science that made her books so popular but the reality of it is that it is everything in the books that make them so popular.

Booth: This episode was lite on the whole Booth telling once more. It pretty much reminded us what Brennan thought of Booth. Protector, good friend, dangerous, funny, brave and handsome.

Hodgins: Here is a man who is passion about an object or thing. When he found out that 'his move' was published in a book, he dropped all his science and went right for the source. He did not pass Go or collect $200.

One other thing Hodgins is passionate about is 'King of the Lab'. This shows us that a person's passions can become quite irritating. Cam knows he needs this title so gave it to him without all the fanfare that he would normally display.

Conclusion: Passion is a very personal and very powerful force in a person as can be seen from the above examples. It can drive us to kill or drive us to do good. It can blind us from reality or open our eyes to what is really important. A person passions can also borderline with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Pros: Love the whole Sweets/Daisy storyline in this episode.

Booth being Papa Bear all over this episode.

Brennan giving Angela the check for helping her with her books.

Cons: The motive for the murder was downright ridiculous and stupid and a whole lot of other bad words. Worst motive I've ever heard anywhere.

The ending scene with Booth and Brennan was another poorly written scene. It's like the writers threw it in there just to have a B&B ending.

Overall: A really good episode until the final scene. It did give us new information but it also just gave us the same old stuff that we've heard over and over.

This episode rates a 9.1. That ending scene was just that bad.

Drippy

Interesting take-- I always look forward to your analyses; they generally add a dimension I didn't fully appreciate.

Personally, I thought this episode was about appreciating what you've got-- a more obvious theme, perhaps, but a very pervasive one nonetheless:

1) In the very first scene, we see a young man (boy, really) absolutely beside himself because he's finally able to have the simple blessings that most of us take for granted-- a message to all of us to cherish what we have.

2) Sweets takes this to heart, and although he may be briefly tempted by the whole "sleep with exotic women in exotic places" ideal, he ultimately comes to realize that he already has everything he needs and, as an ultimate expression of his appreciation, he proposes.

3)Similarly (although more trivially), Hodgins forces Angela to face up to what she gave up when she gave him up. Knowing that he'll continue to haunt her is, in a way, her penance for failing to appreciate what she had in him.

4) Officer Grant fails to appreciate Eddie and leaves him for Colin-- and regrets it to the point that she kills Martin for it.

5) Sophie realizes only after his death that she had not only her partner's friendship, but also his love.

6) For the first time, Brennan comes to appreciate the help Angela has been providing her with for years. She expresses this appreciation by giving Angela 25% of her profits.

7) On a less positive note, I believe Booth begins to feel that he can't waste his life wishing for what he can't have, and should instead learn to be content with Brennan as his partner and perhaps look elsewhere for more.

I'm trying to figure out how Martin's blindness could fit into this. Maybe as some kind of metaphor for how he was crippled by his love for his partner that he could never express? Anybody have any ideas?

I wonder if it could be a reference to "Love is Blind".

If you look at it that way, Brennan was blinded by believing her science was why the fan's loved her books.

Just thinking here.

I enjoyed reading your comments, but I think you can also look at the episode from a different perspective.

Plato's theory of why humans seek companionship or completion is really at the heart of the intersecting story lines. Because Zeus tore humans in half, humans must constantly look for that other half to complete themselves.

Sweets spends much of the episode questioning how he wants to live his life. At one point he decides to help a woman complete herself by telling her that her partner loved her and wrote many of the letters for the clients with her in mind. Ultimately he chooses to complete his life, reconnect with his other half, by asking Daisy to marry him.

Sweets and Daisy are lighter versions of Booth and Brennan. They don't carry the same baggage as B&B. His intuition and motivation, she is science and intelligence. Daisy even describes herself in terms we've heard from Brennan-- she's attractive, good in bed and intelligent. Their "completion" can happen here.

Hodgins and Angela to a much, much lesser degree reconnect although it really is more of Hodgins reminding his former mate of one of the connections they had had. He is the most passionate squint in many ways and persistent in his attraction to Angela. In essence, his actions are potentially foreshadowing a re-connection, but certainly do echo back to the sense of completion he had had with Angela.

The case has the officer seeking a meaningful connection. Not a great case-- she did say she had issues with men. More of a case of shooting the messenger than attacking the source of the problem, but the case is mostly a throwaway anyway. Yet it is all about soul mates and what people are willing to do for another who completes them.

Then there's Brennan. She is not actively seeking that wholeness but she is confronted by her own lack of being complete. The reporter acts like a Greek chorus and badgers her with the truth about her novels-- people read them for the personal interactions between the main characters. This is, I would say, the producers/writers way of pointing out that the show itself is clearly more about the characters than the crimes, a shout out to the audience addressed in the exchange between Brennan and Booth. The reporter constantly reminds Brennan people seek to understand the relationship between Kathy and Andy in the novels.

Beyond the reporter peppering Brennan and making her question her own viewpoint on the novels, Raku's presence causes Brennan to admit to Booth that she is not the sole source of material for the books. Hodgins is right when he says that Brennan's inspirations come from "still waters" that run deep. We know she is capable of great feeling and sensitivity and can write characters and their relationships. The End in the Beginning, Brennan's "novel" showed that she could create dimensional and compelling characters on her own. But he is wrong in thinking her the source of the sex scenes in the book.

By admitting she doesn't write the "sparky bits" alone but gets notes from Angela, Brennan is admitting one of the ways she isn't complete. Arguably, Brennan's sexual experiences aren't as varied as Angela's, and so Brennan probably sees what she did as research. But by admitting how she got the material to Booth is admitting to him that she is still not complete. She still needs other people to help bring logic and feeling together. We know Angela helps her with that as does Booth. Brennan does take a step toward understanding how valued feeling is to her novels by sharing the royalties with Angela. She acknowledges her deficit to the two people who have provided her the most emotional growth and rewards one of them with what she considers a fair share of what she has earned.

Angela is Brennan's "soul mate" on one level; they complete the other as friends.

In her way, Brennan is strengthening that completion by showing her own humanity and sensitivity toward the person who had helped her put emotion into her novels.

On the surface, Plato's theory seems just another Greek myth. But myths were used to teach lessons and the lessons are echoed again and again in the episode. Brennan's completeness with another person, a soul mate, cannot occur until she can recognize the feeling part of her. We have seen it in her and both Angela and Booth are the ones who remind her of that heart. But Brennan doesn't trust it and has to "pay" someone to help her just as she has to use Booth as a sounding board to understand people and herself or be told by the reporter of what is really important.

I think the episode really revolves around completion. Brennan is at the heart of the matter since she is incomplete and the novel's origins support that. She takes a step forward by acknowledging the need for feeling, that forensics and science aren't everything, but she doesn't "complete" the most important relationship with Booth. Instead, she pooh-poohs Plato's theory at the end.

This right here is why I read forums-- added depth and variety of analysis. =D