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May. 21st, 2008 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stillaneOkay, having just caught up with the Bones finale, I believe my reaction can be summed up as follows:
What the fucking fuck?
No, seriously. What? They... what?
To my mind, they dropped the ball twice over here. First off, I'd actually be perfectly okay with the "Booth comes to his own funeral! Surprise!" approach - is anyone shocked that the "Character A is dead... Just kidding!" storyline is one of my very favorites ever? - but it needed a little more setup than that. The fact that it went from a fade-to-black straight to the funeral didn't work; there needed to be an episode in between, to let the audience go through a full round of visceral surprise, extreme skepticism, and finally grudging worry. They needed to get us to the point of doubting our own TV-watching expertise, and they didn't do that. Also, and this is just a guess, but I'm assuming other people had issues with the whole thing being a plot to catch someone totally random. I would have actually liked that angle, if it were played right; with a good emotional hook, it could have been really effective at putting us in Bones' head in terms of frustration with our own lack of knowledge about what was going on. With the whole shooting turned into a five minute diversion, though... not so much.
You really only get one shot per series at the death fakeout storyline, and I'm rather bummed about the lost mindfuck opportunity here. *sigh*
Now let's talk about the mindfuck they did go for.
Zach. Just... Zach? Really? I'm supposed to believe this in any way at all?
They set the whole Gormagon theory up as being dependent on a weak personality being commandeered by a strong one. I have a couple issues with this as applied to Zach. One being that he is, in fact, a weak personality. Confused about societal interactions? Definitely. Awkward as all hell sometimes? Sure. Willing to chuck it all in pursuit of a fun-filled career in killing and eating people just because some crazyass occult fanboy says, "Hi! Come to the Dark Side. We have human cookies!"? Not damn likely.
However, let's for the sake of argument pretend that Zach is a giant blank slate with no deep-seated values of right or wrong. We're supposed to believe that Gormagon popped up with his magic chalk and went to town, and that Zach remained otherwise fundamentally unchanged (when he wasn't off committing ritualistic murder, practicing amateur oral reconstruction, and worshiping at the feet of his Master)?
The internal consistency of this idea just doesn't jive. On the one hand, there's the whole time factor. In three months, Zach went from the guy who secretly adores his big, weird family and fights to distance himself from the horror of a child's murder to Cannibal In Training? If nothing else, where the hell did he find the time? He works for Brennan. It's like a perpetual Workaholics Anonymous meeting in that lab. Given the hours they seem to keep, I'd be amazed if any of them have time for a regular yoga class, let alone for picking up an extracurricular murder hobby.
And then there's my biggest problem with it all. They make a big point of Zach's holding everyone he works with in the highest esteem - from blaming Hodgins' theories for kicking off the whole mess to the Big Box O'Love at the end - and yet they conveniently let him miss out on the concept that serial killers are bad, m'kay, which everyone in his sphere of interaction adheres to emphatically? Huh uh. I don't buy him deciding that an outsider who has proven exactly zilch to him is more rational and correct than these people who he cares for. There had to be a void for the cannibalistic nutjob to step into, and I don't believe that there was one with Zach. He was full-up on role models already.
Okay. So that's the reasoned, logical thought process behind why I hated this twist. The completely illogical, emotional reaction is more like: *gibbers incoherently* That is a crappy thing to do to any character, but especially one you've invested so much time into treating delicately. You don't just build up someone as delightfully complex and oddly sweet as this and then stomp on them with iron boots. Just no. No.
I'm kind of furious. For a show that's so often gotten their surprising moments exactly right, this was such a huge letdown. This is the same show that gave us Max, for god's sake; if they can make a guy who shoots, guts, and torches other people as a statement into someone unquestionably likable, surely they could have handled this better.
No, seriously. What? They... what?
To my mind, they dropped the ball twice over here. First off, I'd actually be perfectly okay with the "Booth comes to his own funeral! Surprise!" approach - is anyone shocked that the "Character A is dead... Just kidding!" storyline is one of my very favorites ever? - but it needed a little more setup than that. The fact that it went from a fade-to-black straight to the funeral didn't work; there needed to be an episode in between, to let the audience go through a full round of visceral surprise, extreme skepticism, and finally grudging worry. They needed to get us to the point of doubting our own TV-watching expertise, and they didn't do that. Also, and this is just a guess, but I'm assuming other people had issues with the whole thing being a plot to catch someone totally random. I would have actually liked that angle, if it were played right; with a good emotional hook, it could have been really effective at putting us in Bones' head in terms of frustration with our own lack of knowledge about what was going on. With the whole shooting turned into a five minute diversion, though... not so much.
You really only get one shot per series at the death fakeout storyline, and I'm rather bummed about the lost mindfuck opportunity here. *sigh*
Now let's talk about the mindfuck they did go for.
Zach. Just... Zach? Really? I'm supposed to believe this in any way at all?
They set the whole Gormagon theory up as being dependent on a weak personality being commandeered by a strong one. I have a couple issues with this as applied to Zach. One being that he is, in fact, a weak personality. Confused about societal interactions? Definitely. Awkward as all hell sometimes? Sure. Willing to chuck it all in pursuit of a fun-filled career in killing and eating people just because some crazyass occult fanboy says, "Hi! Come to the Dark Side. We have human cookies!"? Not damn likely.
However, let's for the sake of argument pretend that Zach is a giant blank slate with no deep-seated values of right or wrong. We're supposed to believe that Gormagon popped up with his magic chalk and went to town, and that Zach remained otherwise fundamentally unchanged (when he wasn't off committing ritualistic murder, practicing amateur oral reconstruction, and worshiping at the feet of his Master)?
The internal consistency of this idea just doesn't jive. On the one hand, there's the whole time factor. In three months, Zach went from the guy who secretly adores his big, weird family and fights to distance himself from the horror of a child's murder to Cannibal In Training? If nothing else, where the hell did he find the time? He works for Brennan. It's like a perpetual Workaholics Anonymous meeting in that lab. Given the hours they seem to keep, I'd be amazed if any of them have time for a regular yoga class, let alone for picking up an extracurricular murder hobby.
And then there's my biggest problem with it all. They make a big point of Zach's holding everyone he works with in the highest esteem - from blaming Hodgins' theories for kicking off the whole mess to the Big Box O'Love at the end - and yet they conveniently let him miss out on the concept that serial killers are bad, m'kay, which everyone in his sphere of interaction adheres to emphatically? Huh uh. I don't buy him deciding that an outsider who has proven exactly zilch to him is more rational and correct than these people who he cares for. There had to be a void for the cannibalistic nutjob to step into, and I don't believe that there was one with Zach. He was full-up on role models already.
Okay. So that's the reasoned, logical thought process behind why I hated this twist. The completely illogical, emotional reaction is more like: *gibbers incoherently* That is a crappy thing to do to any character, but especially one you've invested so much time into treating delicately. You don't just build up someone as delightfully complex and oddly sweet as this and then stomp on them with iron boots. Just no. No.
I'm kind of furious. For a show that's so often gotten their surprising moments exactly right, this was such a huge letdown. This is the same show that gave us Max, for god's sake; if they can make a guy who shoots, guts, and torches other people as a statement into someone unquestionably likable, surely they could have handled this better.
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Date: 2008-05-21 05:45 am (UTC)I'm not upset about Zach leaving, because I really wasn't invested in the character that much. But the fact that, as you said, this show that usually gets things SO RIGHT, got this SO WRONG. It just really bugs me. Bones is usually my safe show...but this one was just so...ugh!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 06:36 am (UTC)The problem, I think, is that we know too much about them all, and they know too much about each other. In order to be a proper serial-killing secret baddy, you really have to have some degree of mystery. There's got to be room for the crazy to seep in, you know? With these guys, we don't really have the gaps you'd need for that to work plausibly. You could maybe do it with Sweets, you could very remotely have a shot at doing it with Cam, but the rest... We know what they go home to, and it's not a creepy lair.
And the explanation...it was logical? Huh?
Right there with you. *headshake* No one as hard-science based as Zach is going to accept "Because I said so" as an argument for brushing his teeth, let alone committing murder. Science is this kid's religion, and no half-assed conspiracy theory is going to sway him. Real logic, maybe, but it would need to have proof behind it. To get to the point of believing an entire society is worth wiping out for the good of humanity, that would have to be some darned good proof, and I can't quite see ol' Gormagon the Magnificently Bonkers accomplishing that.
Bones is usually my safe show
I know what you mean. I've caught episodes here and there as long as it's been on, but only recently settled down to watch the whole thing consecutively. It was just a solid, happy place to hang out for a while... which sounds odd to say about a show with frequently appearing corpses, but there you have it.
I'm sad to see Zach go just on principle, but I'd have handled it much better if he'd been a casualty of Gormagon, instead. I was thinking during that final scene that it would have worked perfectly well as a post-death grief session. At least that plot would have made some sense.