‘Bones’: Season finale and more with Hart Hanson

I usually LOVE this show, but this episode was a let-down. I felt very cheated by the handling of Booth’s “death”. I would have loved to see them dealing authentically with the aftermatch of Booth being shot, seeing Brennan by his side in the hospital — some genuine emotion, rather than the faked-death ploy.
Zach as the apprentice makes no sense. It’s implausible that he would be taken in by Gormagon. By the time he would have met Gormagon, he already knew that this was an ongoing case in the lab, knew how unsettling it was, etc. Even allowing for Zach’s emotional detachment and his being ruled by logic, Brennan’s approval meant everything to him. There’s no way he would undermine the lab and his friends this way, even if you accept that he found Gormagon’s reasoning compelling (which I don’t believe).
That said, I love this show and will be back eagerly for season 4. And I strongly second (third? fourth?) everyone advocating for a real TV Watch for Bones! It’s about time!

I am very sad to see Zac leave, but I will never close the door on this show. The producers definitely left the door open for the character to return and I look forward to seeing him again.
Loved all the B&B moments. I do want them together, and I think the writers are clever enough to keep their relationship interesting even after they admit their feelings for one another. And Bones isn’t the only one who noticed how good Booth looks naked; I think I actually blushed during that scene.
There were a lot of jumps in logic in the episode, like going from point A to point G and not leaving viewers with enough info to fill in the the other steps. That’s probably the fault of the writer’s strike and the shortened season. I can’t wait until August 27th.

I am sorry to see Zack leave. It was like loosing a member of the family. It could have been done more dramatically and they would have gotten more mileage. I will watch the new season but they need to step it up. I do not watch for just the romance but the intrigue as well and it is getting a little stale. Terrific actors (I was an avid Angel fan} but please shake up the writers and the story line should get better.

You “kill off” a character when the character isn’t working. But Zack worked. He was an original and the perfect character for this show. Perfectly in tune with Dr. Brennan–two identical souls/intellects, out of sync with the touchstones of modern culture–and perfectly out of tune with Booth. In the beginning he was written as a hip/sarcastic Brainiac, but the writers quickly got a feel for him and went the other direction. This episode was slapdash almost to the point of incoherence. Zack falls under the spell of a more powerful personality/intellect? Not likely. When he faces a dilemma, he always asks someone for advice–Dr. Brennan, Hodgins, Angela, Booth, Cam. If this is a result of PTSD, the writers did a poor job of setting it up. Gormogon was such an important part of the last two seasons, I find it hard to believe that they would wrap the storyline so messily. And then Sweets says the guy was a nothing, a nobody. What’s the point in building up Gormogon’s evil villain cred just to deflate it in an instant? If this isn’t a dream sequence, it’s ferociously bad writing. A true jumptheshark moment. I’ve never missed an episode–no matter what night Fox sent it to. I feel cheated.

Well I most likely won’t be back next season. What was that?? Zack of Season 1, Season 2, heck Zack of last week’s episode, would never have killed someone. It just doesn’t make sense. And if Hanson felt like he had taken Zack’s character as far as he could, he could have written him out some other way. Maybe still have the explosion but have someone else be the apprentice? Zach would have still been out of the lab, but he wouldn’t have been a psychotic killer.
I feel the writers have completely ruined the characer of Zach, so much so that I won’t be able to go back and watch any Season 1 or 2 episodes now. I feel so let down. I’m really not interested in seeing what happens next, and I don’t think that will change any time soon.
I really hope Eric Millegan goes on to much better things than this show that just completely destroyed a character he spent 3 years helping to build.

Zack was the innocent heart of that show, and the fact that the producers thought they had gone as far as they could shows their limitations, not the character’s. As Brennan’s character drifts more into the pop culture mainstream and away from her cold, clear understanding of science, they’ll discover that Zack was more integral to the show than they had imagined. Fish out of water is funny, and the relationship between Zack and Bones–two fish out of water–was one of the crucial relationships. Colossally stupid. Sweets would have been a much better choice–as Gormogon himself.

I suppose we’ll have to chalk this up as another casualty of the writers’ strike. I think they would have done better by the show and the fans if they had let the Gormogon plot play out over next season, rather than rushing to a conclusion shot full of holes. Like many posters, I love this show overall and think it’s better than most of the other junk on TV (especially Fox). Let’s hope the writers fill in some of the gaping holes in last night’s story line in the first episodes of next season.

I thought it stunk and wrote at-length about it on my blog:
http://www.markterrybooks.com/blog.html
As a writer myself, I just don’t buy Hanson’s reasoning. The script felt rushed and illogical. If they really wanted Millegan off, or he wanted off, there could have been a dozen ways to do it without doing it the way they did–and still have emotional resonance and dramatic impact. Instead they went for an illogical shock that didn’t work. For a show that’s typically well-written and very well-acted, this episode’s writing had almost nothing going for it.