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qosAfter years of never watching series tv, Wolfling and I have become huge fans of Bones. Monday night always finds us on the couch cuddling while we watch the show.
Last night was the season finale, and we're both ready to kill the writers.
I can not believe they made Zach the serial killer's apprentice!
Why would they do such a ridiculous, cruel thing??
Maybe the actor wanted out of the series, and they thought this would be a great audience shaker-upper.
Personally, however, I think it reflects an ongoing negative bias that undercuts the strength of the show: that really smart, logical people are necessarily also lacking in "natural" human emotions. It's part of the basis for Brennan's character -- although in that case she has the trauma of lost parents to explain her lack of empathy, dedication to work, and etc. But Zach is just brilliant -- and therefore he has to also be missing an essential element that makes him fully human. He has to be out of touch with popular culture, have no emotional contact with anyone outside the lab, be bewildered by the emotional nuances the rest of us take for granted.
And "of course" because of his logic and his emotionally-crippled innocence, he'd be prey to a serial killer's wiles. Even though there's nothing to provide any basis for this in the series. We've never seen him actually display any traits that would indicate he was capable of this. In her gentle confrontation with him, Bones pointed out that his supposed valuing of the good of the whole over the good of the individual was belied by his choice to risk himself to prevent harm to Hodgins -- but every day in that lab the team works hard because of the value of an individual life: and not just the living, but the value of the dead, who deserve to have justice, to have their true name attached to their remains, to be laid to rest with dignity and with closure for their families. I can't believe none of that had any impact. Booth claimed that Zach had a weak personality, making him vulnerable. But I never saw Zach's personality as weak -- only weird.
And the writers of this show have consistently shown a bias against those who are "weird" -- especially in contrast to the "normal" example of warm-hearted, empathic, straight-arrow, square, conservative Boy Scout-ish Booth. (Who was a sniper in the Rangers, but they just gloss over that most of the time and don't really address the characteristics that allowed hi to do that job well -- even though they show him carrying some angst about it at dramatically appropriate moments.)
It's one thing when a shocker ending reveals something authentic about a character, makes the audience go "Damn! Should have seen that coming!" This was just a sucker punch, dramatically and morally.
Last night was the season finale, and we're both ready to kill the writers.
I can not believe they made Zach the serial killer's apprentice!
Why would they do such a ridiculous, cruel thing??
Maybe the actor wanted out of the series, and they thought this would be a great audience shaker-upper.
Personally, however, I think it reflects an ongoing negative bias that undercuts the strength of the show: that really smart, logical people are necessarily also lacking in "natural" human emotions. It's part of the basis for Brennan's character -- although in that case she has the trauma of lost parents to explain her lack of empathy, dedication to work, and etc. But Zach is just brilliant -- and therefore he has to also be missing an essential element that makes him fully human. He has to be out of touch with popular culture, have no emotional contact with anyone outside the lab, be bewildered by the emotional nuances the rest of us take for granted.
And "of course" because of his logic and his emotionally-crippled innocence, he'd be prey to a serial killer's wiles. Even though there's nothing to provide any basis for this in the series. We've never seen him actually display any traits that would indicate he was capable of this. In her gentle confrontation with him, Bones pointed out that his supposed valuing of the good of the whole over the good of the individual was belied by his choice to risk himself to prevent harm to Hodgins -- but every day in that lab the team works hard because of the value of an individual life: and not just the living, but the value of the dead, who deserve to have justice, to have their true name attached to their remains, to be laid to rest with dignity and with closure for their families. I can't believe none of that had any impact. Booth claimed that Zach had a weak personality, making him vulnerable. But I never saw Zach's personality as weak -- only weird.
And the writers of this show have consistently shown a bias against those who are "weird" -- especially in contrast to the "normal" example of warm-hearted, empathic, straight-arrow, square, conservative Boy Scout-ish Booth. (Who was a sniper in the Rangers, but they just gloss over that most of the time and don't really address the characteristics that allowed hi to do that job well -- even though they show him carrying some angst about it at dramatically appropriate moments.)
It's one thing when a shocker ending reveals something authentic about a character, makes the audience go "Damn! Should have seen that coming!" This was just a sucker punch, dramatically and morally.
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Date: 2008-05-20 06:35 pm (UTC)