SleepyHollow Wiki
Advertisement
Bones Wiki
For more information on this topic, see "Temperance Brennan" on the Bones Wiki.

Temperance "Bones" Brennan (born Joy Keenan), Ph.D. is a main character in the American Fox television series Bones.


She appeared in the Sleepy Hollow episode "Dead Men Tell No Tales", which was the second half of a two-part crossover between the show Bones and Sleepy Hollow which began with the Bones episode "The Resurrection in the Remains".

History[]

Brennan is an forensic anthropologist who works in the Medico-Legal lab at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, D.C. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University, as stated in "The Girl in the Fridge". She has three doctorates, as referred to by Dr. Jack Hodgins in the episode "The Parts of the Sum in the Whole", in anthropology, forensic anthropology and kinesiology; it is implied that most of her work at the lab was related to either long-dead bodies or victims of genocide.

Her occasional contract work for the FBI shifted the focus of her work. She was paired with FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, and helped to solve two difficult cases; since then, they have worked together almost exclusively on modern-day murder cases.

Brennan works with a group of other well-qualified colleagues, including her boss and forensic pathologist Dr. Camille Saroyan, her best friend and forensic artist Angela Montenegro, the entomologist Jack Hodgins, and a host of eager graduate students. Booth refers to her crew of colleagues as "squints", because they come to crime scenes and squint at evidence. Also their team including FBI agent James Aubrey, late FBI psychologist Lance Sweets and Brennan's former assistant Zack Addy.

Brennan is a bestselling author, who has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for 18 weeks. She is trained in three types of martial arts,has hunting licenses in four states, and has a legally registered gun as well as a diving certificate. She promised to consider becoming a vegetarian after seeing how pigs were slaughtered (which was also the way her mother had been killed). However, in "The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken" her best friend Angela cites health reasons for Brennan's vegetarian diet. Brennan is also a trained amateur highwire performer, and speaks at least seven other languages. She often says she does not "put much stock in " and makes a point of noting that Dr. Sweets is not a real scientist as he "bases his life on the vagary of psychology and emotions".

Although Brennan seemed to have a relatively normal childhood, her parents disappeared when she was 15 years old. Her older brother Russ, himself still an adolescent, was unable to care for her and she was put in the foster care system. By the time she started college she had been to twelve different schools and has specifically said that she hated the lack of consistency. Her time in foster care was quite traumatic and abusive; Brennan indicated that she was once locked in the trunk of a car for two days because she broke a plate, and in the episode "The Finger in the Nest", she reveals to Booth that she walked into her elderly neighbor's house to find the woman dead. In the same episode, she also mentions to Booth that her parents were very concerned about her afterwards, because she started faking her own death. In Season 2, she mentions that during her time in the foster care system, she kept a list of foster homes she had been kicked out of on the bottom of her shoe.

Personality[]

Throughout the course of the "Bones"series, Brennan is portrayed as a straightforward, brilliant anthropologist, who lacks social skills. Her social ineptitude is especially apparent when it comes to sarcasm, metaphors which she often interprets literally, and pop culture jokes and is often the source of comedy in the show. In earlier seasons, she was characterized as straightforward and unable to detect social cues – she states that Booth once told her that she "stinks at non-verbal communication" – and was well-known within the FBI for being extremely difficult to work with. She began to acknowledge her lack of sensitivity after Booth bluntly told her outright that she was "bad with people" in "A Boy in a Tree". Her lack of "political savvy" and social skills was also a reason why she was passed over for Camille Saroyan as head of forensic division in the Jeffersonian in Season 2. Other characters have described her as "no fun" and "a rigid traditionalist". She had a difficult adolescence, and it is implied, often by Sweets, that her withdrawn social tendencies are a defense mechanism. She also sometimes struggles in identifying and explaining her emotions, and takes comfort in the rationality of her anthropological discipline.

Brennan's personality undergoes significant changes throughout the course of the series. Her thinking becomes less rigid in later seasons, something which is observed by Dr. Gordon Wyatt, who notes that she is now able to distinguish the difference between accuracy and truth. She is also able to put aside her rationality to support her friends in sometimes irrational pursuits, and to comfort Booth, even using science or quoting directly from the Bible to rationalize his religious beliefs. Her sensitivity and empathy towards others are also much improved, seen quite strongly when she comforts his grandfather,and when she attends a funeral so that the victim's single mother won't be alone. She also displays more "typical" human emotions when in extreme stress.

Ichabod Crane noted Brennan as having interminable skepticism, although this does leave him reassured that she will not realize the nature of the secret tomb they have uncovered underneath the White House. She dismissed Moloch as nothing more than a tall man with a skin condition.

Relationships[]

Seeley Booth[]

Seeley Booth is Brennan's husband and partner, and liaison between the Jeffersonian and law enforcement agencies.

He is also the creator of the nickname "Bones" which Brennan didn't really like at first, but slowly grasps onto it as a lovable nickname from her partner.gAlthoughh his working style initially clashed with Brennan's they have since become full-fledged partners. Their compatibility has become one of the central points of the show, in earlier seasons with many new characters mistaking them for a couple and co-workers, especially Angela, constantly speculating that they were "more than partners".

For the majority of the series Booth and Brennan denied that their relationship was anything more than friendly professionalism, they admitted to Dr. Sweets that they kissed and nearly spent the night together after their very first case together. After this discussion, Booth attempted to convince Brennan to give a relationship a try. However, she declined, telling him that she, unlike him, is not a gambler, and isn't able to take that kind of a chance. They have subsequently attempted to date other people, although the fact that Booth once comments that he regards Brennan as his "standard" for other women suggests that he has not completely moved on.

During a case that the two trapped in an elevator during a blackout for several hours, Booth and Brennan admitted that they are each interested in a relationship, but require more time to sort out their own feelings before they make such a commitment. In episode "The Hole in the Heart", which saw the death of Vincent Nigel-Murray at the hands of renegade sniper Jacob Broadsky, Booth has Brennan stay at his apartment for her safety. Later that night, Brennan, still overcome with shock and grief over Vincent's death, goes into Booth's bedroom and they talk about the events of that day, and then allows Booth to hold her in bed. It is implied in the following day that they had sex. In the last scene of the season 6 finale, "The Change in the Game", after the birth of Angela and Hodgins' son, Brennan tells Booth that she is pregnant and that he is the father.

Since entering a relationship with (and later marrying) Booth and then having children, she has undergone development personally and a caring wife and protective mother. Usually strong-willed and independent, she has since admitted on multiple occasions that her happiness was contingent on Booth's and could not envision herself living a fulfilled life without him.

Ichabod Crane[]

Abbie Mills[]

External links[]

http://bones.wikia.com/wiki/Temperance_Brennan

Notes & References[]

Advertisement