I love Bones. Angela's question about "Are you just pretending to be a jerk?" to Booth raises the question about what he truly does believe and how much he keeps to himself because he knows that personal beliefs and work don't mix.

I think Booth was being a bit of a jerk as his job and at the same time someone who is perplexed by the vagaries of language and what's acceptable usage when refering to a transgendered individual. It's not something I would think the average person ever spends time thinking about.

Booth seemed pretty comfortable in the church at the end and he seemed quite taken with the thought of redemption being transformative in a literal sense, not just metaphorical.

I think that Booth is a genuinely good guy. He was bothered by the transgender thing, and may have allowed his prejudices to come out in the interview, but it just took him a minute to get there.

I love him shushing Brennan in the church. The episode a couple of seasons back with the dead priest was another very good episode. I've always been very pleased with the way they treat religion.

Hubby's wondering at the increase in message-y eps, with the dog fighting and the transgender things. I guess into your 4th year, you start running out of weird twists on murders. Though they could go deal with the Grave Digger again, people!

Did I see the previews correctly? Nothing new until November?

Yup, nothing until November. Guess I can go back to watching MythBusters.

Lewis noted, in one of his passes through the room while I was watching, that Brennan is much more S1 Brennan and that while it was quirky and amusing then, after the growth she'd exhibited, it seemed rather ridiculous, especially for someone with her intellectual gifts who's gone through a tremendous amount of emotional growth in the last two years.

I said the way they should have handled that, if they did, indeed, want to take Brennan back to a more literal personality, was that they should've tied it back into Zach's betrayal. To have Sweets identify it as a form of PTSD or simply just an emotional retreat into a place where she feels safe, which is with the facts and as literal an interpretation as she can come up with.

That said, however, I thought this was one of the strongest eps this season. Still think they have all new writers on the show, but it's definitely better.

I keep having to do major amounts of hand-waving about Brennan's social obliviousness and literal personality. The writers aren't consistent with it (she knows Wonder Woman, but not the Grinch?) and I can't accept that someone who is so intellectually accepting of other cultures would be so offensive to people she's standing right in front of. Also, she's supposed to be a massively best-selling author, so much so that one of her books is being made into a movie, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone who is that out of touch with mainstream pop culture and common frames of reference would write anything easy enough for masses of people to read and enjoy.

but I find it difficult to believe that anyone who is that out of touch with mainstream pop culture and common frames of reference would write anything easy enough for masses of people to read and enjoy.

I agree with most everything (especially the hand-waving) but on this one, I think for the type of book she writes, you don't necessarily have to be with it, with respect to pop culture to write the kind of forensics thriller/mystery she does. She'd have to be up on all of the latest techniques for her field, which, obviously, she is, but pop culture, maybe not as much.

I am getting tired of the rotating lab assistants (I liked Wendell, though). The one quirk I have enjoyed, however, is how a few of them have chosen to leave, as opposed to being fired/dismissed from the lab.

Did I see the previews correctly? Nothing new until November?

Yes, but did you notice who turned up in the previews?

Yes!!! Unmeasured amounts of squeee from over here!