The Verdict in the Story (3×13)

“The Verdict in the Story”

Episode 3×13

Written By: Christopher Ambrose

Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc

B&B are at another crime scene. Brennan laughs at Booth’s rolled-up carpet theory. Caroline arrives.

CAROLINE: I did not know she could laugh.

BOOTH: What are you doing at the crime scene?

CAROLINE: Dr. Brennan is suspended from all crime-related duties.

BOOTH: What?

BRENNAN: What? For laughing at Booth?

BOOTH: That really doesn’t bother me.

CAROLINE: We have a date for your father’s murder trial. Booth is the arresting officer. You can’t work together until it’s over.

BRENNAN: This is not necessary.

BOOTH: They don’t need to separate us.

BRENNAN: I’m very compartmentalized.

BOOTH: Very compartmentalized.

B&B break the news to Sweets at the diner that the partnership is splitting up.

BOOTH: Well, Sweets. I’m – I’m gonna miss you. It was a real pleasure working with you.

SWEETS: Really? You are?

BRENNAN: I, too, find him intriguing in a non-rigorous, pragmatically irrelevant kind of way.

BOOTH: I agree with what she said.

The Brennan/Keenan’s discuss the trial. Enter Clark who will testify.

BRENNAN: This is not Clark’s first trial.

MAX: Oh, he’s a full-grown scientist?

CLARK: I shave sir. I have a driver’s license. I’ve won a couple fist fights. I’ve saved a life. I’ve lain with woman. I’ve been hustled at pool. I’ve defied my father’s wishes. I have broken hearts and I have been heartbroken. So, by all the markers of this society, I am a grown man.

RUSS: Is he gonna talk like that at dad’s trial?What about that genius kid at your lab?

MAX: The oversized eyes and the toaster head? That guy?

CLARK: I’m sorry if my normal sized head and eyes diminish your confidence.

BRENNAN: Zack is working for the prosecution.

MAX: Okay. Welcome aboard, kid.

The squints talk, and Zack is very Zack.

ANGELA: I hate this. I hate it.

CAM: What? Strangers on our forensic platform?

HODGINS: Ange doesn’t like that we’re on different sides.

ANGELA: All of us together and Brennan alone.

ZACK: Not alone. She’s with those African American people.

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CAROLINE: I’m gonna say to you what I always say to you before a trial because this one is no different than any other trial.

ZACK: You’ve never said that before.

CAROLINE: What?

HODGINS: You’ve never told us that a trial is no different from any other trial.

ZACK: Which suggests that this one is different.

CAROLINE: Have you no control over these people?

CAM: None whatsoever.

Even a trial can’t break B&B’s connection across the aisle.

BRENNAN: Booth.

BOOTH: What?

BRENNAN: I could so be objective.

BOOTH: I know, Bones. Okay. Just shhhh.

JUDGE HADDOES: You two, please. Keep to your own sides of the aisle.

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BOOTH: It might not be good coffee, but hey at least it’s lukewarm.

BRENNAN: We’re not supposed to talk.

BOOTH: We can’t talk about the case but we can talk about crappy coffee. Put the cup in front of your mouth when you talk.

CAROLINE: No. No. Ya’ll cut that out.

BOOTH: Good luck, Bones. Oh, and remember I’m the one who gave you this delicious coffee.

BRENNAN: Why?

BOOTH: Why? Because I’m the first prosecution witness against your father.

Angela refuses to testify.

ANGELA: Friends don’t send friends’ fathers to the electric chair.

BRENNAN: Maryland uses lethal injection.

ANGELA: Well, the principle holds, sweetie.

B&B get back to whispering.

SWEETS: I obtained my undergraduate psych degree from the University of Toronto, Masters Degree in Abnormal Psychology from Temple University and my Doctorates in Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Analysis at Columbia University.

BOOTH: Doctorates? As in more than one?

SWEETS: I won simultaneous Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships to write my book, “The Art of Evolutional Profiling”-

BRENNAN: More than one scholarship too.

SWEETS: Which is what brought me to my current posting at the FBI.

BOOTH: No wonder Dr. Geeks can never hang on to a girlfriend.

SWEETS: There I do partners therapy and psychological profiling.

BRENNAN: It’s Dr. Sweets.

BOOTH: I know, Bones. I was just saying…Dr. Geeks as in geeks. Meet Dr. Geeks.

JUDGE HADDOES: Excuse me, Agent Booth? I would like you to switch seats with Dr. Saroyan. You, Dr. Brennan, please switch seats with your brother.

BRENNAN: Why?

JUDGE HADDOES: You don’t whisper as quietly as you think you do.

BOOTH: Yeah, you know, you do whisper a little loud.

BRENNAN: You started it.

Sweets goes full-on imprinting.

SWEETS: I’m writing a book. Taking a clinical approach to efficacy and focused outcomes. You shouldn’t work well together, but you do. I’d like to study it further.

BOOTH: I don’t get it.

BRENNAN: He wants to study us.

SWEETS: Once a week, nothing changes.

BOOTH: Now why would we want to do that?

BRENNAN: I can’t think of a good reason.

SWEETS: Okay, see. That thing you do when you talk to each other while excluding the third party, namely me, its an adaptive mechanism for, uh, disparate entities to bond together against their own individual impetuses to dissociate. It’s, um, it’s what-

BOOTH: What does that mean for us?

BRENNAN: Nothing useful.

BOOTH: Tell you what. Why don’t we make a deal with him where we allow him to study us. In return, he gives us psychological profiling on demand.

SWEETS: Okay.

BRENNAN: No, you like that sort of thing but I don’t see the point.

BOOTH & BRENNAN: He really likes us.

SWEETS: Alight, you know what. I’m sorry I made the offer. I take it back. Forget it.

BRENNAN: Sweets is pretty good in the interrogation room.

BOOTH: Yeah. Profiling on demand, interrogating back up…

BRENNAN: Well, and to be honest, I was impressed with his credentials.

BOOTH: I’ll tell him okay.

Booth provides support.

BOOTH: You liked the idea of him beating the murder charge.

BRENNAN: Yes. But he did it. We both know my father did it.

BOOTH: Bones, wanting your father to come home instead of going to prison, that’s- that’s okay.

BRENNAN: But what I do – what we do is put murders like him away.

BOOTH: Okay. You’re not Dr. Brennan today. You’re Temperance.

BRENNAN: I don’t know what that means.

BOOTH: The scientist part of you got sidelined, temporarily.

BRENNAN: I still don’t know what that means.

BOOTH: Bones, just, take the brain, okay, put it in neutral. Alright? Take the heart – pop it into overdrive.

BRENNAN: Sometimes I think you’re from another planet.

BRENNAN: And sometimes I think you’re really very nice.

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BRENNAN: I have a way to lodge reasonable doubt in the jury.

BOOTH: We can’t talk about this.

BRENNAN: Please? You’re the person I talk to about things like this.

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BOOTH: Brain and heart, Bones. Brain and heart.

They use Brennan to twist jurors’ thinking about Max. Booth takes the stand.

BOOTH: Could Bones have killed Kirby? Temperance Brennan – I’ve worked with this woman. I’ve stood over death with her, I’ve faced down death with her. And Sweets, he’s brilliant, he is, but he’s wrong. She could not have done this.

*Man we are at the height of Bones’ greatness in these episodes. So much to unpack and so much to love. How each squint processes the situation. How Brennan has to struggle to compartmentalize. How Booth supports his partner throughout. How, at the end, they just hug with no words. How Booth steps back to allow Brennan to hug her dad, but doesn’t take his eyes off her, and she with him. All. The. Feels.