Great Minds Think Different

I hate to admit I was wrong about this, but my conscience compels me.

In my review of Bones season 4 episode 23, I got all in a huff over what I thought was an erroneous treatment of Japanese personal pronouns and ended up writing:

And there’s absolutely no way to infer gender from second- or third-person pronouns.

This is, I now realize, blatantly false. It is in fact very easy to infer gender from certain third-person pronouns, those being kare “he” and kanojo “she”. (Random side note: these words can also mean “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” respectively.) So I was completely bloody wrong about that.

In my (feeble) defense, I have this to offer: the use of personal pronouns in Japanese to refer to people is not common; certainly it’s much rarer than it is in English. Most often, people are referred to either by their proper name, by a demonstrative such as kochira “this person here” or simply not referred to explicitly at all (Japanese permits omission of subject and object from a clause when they can be inferred from context). In formal contexts, the demonstratives are usually preferred over the personal pronouns. The most common scenario I can imagine in which a third-person personal pronoun would be used is in reported speech, such as recounting a conversation. Using personal pronouns there would still be relatively uncommon.

Excusatory heuristics aside, I can’t explain away the obvious factual error, which is somewhat embarrassing. I promise to more rigorously fact-check any linguistics-related content in future.

Oh boy oh boy. An episode focused on Japanese people? Yay for me.

OK, let’s just start with a list of things. I have to whine about all of these, and it’s best to get it all over with now.

• The guy who played Ken Nakamura: he looks Japanese, but his accent is messed up and when he actually speaks Japanese, it sounds a bit off. Also, he introduced himself in Japanese to the restaurant guy as “Ken Nakamura” which is wrong; you introduce yourself family name first, like the restaurant guy did (“Takedo Bruce”). My guess is (a) bad writing and (b) the actor is a Nissei who isn’t a native Japanese speaker but knows a bit.
• The guy who played Bruce Takedo: looks and sounds genuinely Japanese.
• The, uh, person who played Haru Tanaka looks and sounds genuinely Japanese. Interesting point: “Haru” is a nickname for both masculine and feminine Japanese names, like “Pat” in English.
• The girl who played Nozomi Sato: if she’s Japanese, I’ll eat my hat. But come on, writers, come up with a more original name than “Sato”, please. (“Sachi” was a good choice of original name, though; I had to look it up to verify that it’s real. I’ve never heard of anyone named Sachi before.)
• The guy who played the sleazy pimp: he could have Japanese blood.
• Back to the question of Tanaka’s gender. (Also, seriously: “Tanaka”? I get the feeling that one of the writers took a Japanese class once and they just lifted the names of the fictitious characters in the class textbook.) Angela apparently looked him/her up on the Internet, and found most of the results in Japanese, “with no personal pronouns”. Now hold on just a darned minute. Where in the hell ass are you going to find gender in a Japanese personal pronoun? Huh? SOMEBODY CALL ME WHEN THEY FIND GENDER IN A JAPANESE PERSONAL PRONOUN

  *calm down*

  Whoooo. Good God. No, OK? Japanese personal pronouns are not gendered. Japanese doesn’t have grammatical gender even for people. It barely even has grammatical number. The only way you can infer anyone’s gender from a personal pronoun is from first-person ones: some are only used by men, some only by women. But if Tanaka is a member of some subculture that glorifies androgyny (I’ve never heard of this; there are way too many of these subcultures for me to keep track) he/she (see? the hell with grammatical gender) would not be using a gendered personal pronoun. And there’s absolutely no way to infer gender from second- or third-person pronouns. So shut the hell up, partly Chinese woman.

• They can identify that the victim was a native Japanese speaker from a feature of the palate? Color me highly skeptical. I doubt that any language causes permanent changes to the physiology of the mouth. Even if they did, there’s no reason for Japanese to affect the hard palate. Japanese doesn’t have any purely palatal consonants other than /j/ (transliterated as “y” in English). In fact, the consonant inventory of Japanese is almost a subset of English’s consonant inventory; the exception is /ɕ/. It’s an alveolo-palatal consonant, but it’s not an obstruent, so I don’t see how it could affect the physiology of the palate at all.
• Ironically, I have no objections about what little actual Japanese dialogue there was. It’s correct. Obviously Emily Deschanel sucks at speaking Japanese, but that’s excusable.

So they’re looking to hire one of the interns permanently? I really hope it’s Vincent. Clark is hilarious, but not as much as Vincent. Wendell is just boring, although a perfectly likeable guy. I’m not sure how they’re going to resolve it. They all have desirable characteristics (to Brennan) but I can see them going with Wendell because Booth prefers him. And it was interesting that they brought in a random guest character to serve as a pseudo-intern for this episode, to avoid having to make a decision just yet.

Other than all the Japan-related stuff, not much to say. Last episode was a hard act to follow, but this one wasn’t too bad.

I didn’t write about 420 and 421 because they weren’t particularly fascinating, but 422 was one of the best episodes in a long time.

My rule for determining the killer didn’t apply. The mystery wasn’t gripping but definitely interesting, not giving anything away till the end (with a clever reveal) and faking me out several times (and Brennan made the final leap this time!). No intern this week, but we didn’t need one (the undertaker took on that duty to some extent). Above all else, though, this episode was hilarious beyond measure.

Unlike every other episode this season, this one was basically a comedy of errors, with the added constraint that the team had to steal the body from the dead guy’s wake. There were tons of subtle, tiny moments of comedy, which is exactly what makes this show great. It’s like they saved up these moments all season long and used them all now. The codeword “translation” for murder. Hodgins giving the dead guy 20 bucks and Booth taking it. Booth showing Brennan how to make a sad face. The undertaker getting it on in the bathroom. Brennan’s hand gesture for getting it on. Hodgins’ toast coming unhinged as he saw the body being stolen. The body being stolen, rather incompetently. Hodgins, Angela and the dead guy’s assistant having their three-way awkward moment. Angela’s awful excuses for not being able to look at the body (“his hair like Hitler”). The undertaker repeatedly losing it as he was put under stress (“I did acid in high school, it’s probably why I’m not a doctor”). “We’re encountering some fluid seepage”. Sweets’ oblivious conversation with the undertaker (who loses it again). The list goes on and on, but the last thing I have to mention is Cam fretting about whether the dead guy is smiling too much and then putting her sunglasses on him in a panic.

I don’t have much more to say about this episode. I just had to write something, since it was such a fantastic episode and maybe a sign that things are looking up at the end of a lackluster season (which should be ending any time now; I think either episode 23 or 24 will be the last of season 4).

PS: I know there was a super-good “Chuck” on Monday, and I want to write about it; I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Darn it all if that wasn’t a darn good episode of “Bones”. The murder mystery was one of the less inspired (and my rule correctly predicted who the murderer was), but when it comes right down to it, how can you criticize an episode involving Billy Gibbons with the soundtrack basically consisting of random ZZ Top songs?

I feel like the Billy Gibbons plot really didn’t go much of anywhere, but who gives a shit? BILLY GIBBONS, man!

As we already know, Mr. Nigel-Murray is my favorite intern of the revolving-door set from this season. In this episode, he and Hodgins finally finished developing the same kind of rapport that Hodgins and Zack used to have (complete with Cam in the stern mother role). I even like it better with Vincent because he’s just a funnier character. (It helps if you know how spot-on true it is, but I loved his comment about needing a pot of tea after dealing with the body goop in the garbage bags. A British person can be cured of any ill with a nice hot cup of tea. “Doctor Who” has even made reference to this. It’s completely true.) Vincent clearly takes joy in acting like a little kid with Hodgins, and Hodgins obviously likes him despite his facial expressions every time Vincent starts in with the trivia. The show has its socially-inept genius in Brennan. The show did not have a guy whose primary role is to spout random irrelevant trivia without really knowing why he does it, and it’s a lot better for having him. “Bones” flourishes when a bunch of characters with wildly exaggerated personality quirks are in a room together with a few people who are normal and react with bewilderment to the weirdos, and Vincent definitely helps drive that sort of situation. I suppose it’s too much to hope that they’ll keep him as a permanent cast member, but I hope so anyway.

Speaking of their little experiments, I totally thought that Angela would have some sort of flying-turkey-related injury that Billy Gibbons would notice and flip a shit about. They missed a chance.

Brennan was on top form. She understood the “groundbreaking” joke. I especially liked her touching the spot on the chair and yelling, “I touched it with my bare hand! See?”

The episode had more than its fair share of whackjob background characters, like the researchers at the Collar Institute and the death-threat guy they brought in for questioning, with his constant mocking of Sweets for being a mere psychologist. (As someone who knows a bunch of psychologists, this made me giggle a lot.)

This was the first time in a while (that I remember) where the episode climaxed with some of the team in danger. There was “The Hero in the Hold”, where Booth was trapped on the ship that was scheduled to be sunk, but to me that doesn’t quite count since Booth didn’t get in danger through the investigation. That was a good episode, though. But back in season 2, the team put themselves at risk regularly, including a few memorably riveting episodes like season 2 episode 12, when a serial killer was actively coming after them. Season 4’s problem is mainly that: it’s almost never gripping. Earlier seasons, especially season 2, had the team racing against time or actively in danger themselves. This season, the mysteries are static and unengaging. There doesn’t seem to be a recurring-serial-killer thread tying the whole thing together, like Howard Epps or the Gormogon.

Booth lightened up a little bit, thankfully, but I still think he’s screwing up the show’s balance between dark murder mystery and comedy. By the nature of the stuff the Jeffersonian does, the mysteries always deal with particularly grisly murders. It’s a difficult task to strike a balance between the creepy murder mysteries and the lighthearted comedy that makes the show worth watching among the billions of other crime procedurals out there, and for the most part “Bones” does an admirable job. I’ve never seen any other show even try to do it, probably because it is so monumentally difficult*. But Booth is starting to ruin the mood. When he’s swooping around in a snit while everyone else is engaged in the sort of subtle, funky humor that distinguishes this show, it pushes the tone too much in the direction of a gritty police drama. It’s possible to show Booth being a fine FBI agent while also having him lighten the hell up. Earlier seasons did a great job of this.

*”Chuck” and “Scrubs” both have this task to a certain extent, but they’re different. “Chuck”’s spy storylines are so exaggerated that they’re pretty much part of the comedy; “Chuck”’s dark side comes from the fact that a sympathetic character is in such a wild predicament, but it’s balanced out by the character himself, whereas “Bones” doesn’t have victims of the dark side of the story in the same way (the murder victims are always pretty much MacGuffins). “Scrubs” derives its effectiveness from jumping back and forth between the dark side of the medical world and the absurd comedy with both feet. It’s not trying to strike a balance in the same way as “Bones” is; it’s taking the best of both worlds and fearlessly throwing them together.

Like I predicted: the fact that Cam has an adopted kid now made absolutely no difference. I don’t get points for that, though; it was obvious.

The end of the episode held a good old Booth-Brennan Sexual Tension moment that’s been missing for the past few weeks. I love these moments because you can’t help but laugh: how can two people be so frigging oblivious? By this point the characters must know they’re destined to resolve this sexual tension in epic fashion, but for now they’re in denial. You can see it in their little moment against the wall after Hodgins and Vincent blow up the lab. And it’s great! This is one of the main threads of “Bones”’s comedy side, and it’s still good after four seasons. Few other shows have pulled it off this long. Of course, by staying with this for four seasons they’ve created an easy path towards an almighty shark jump, but I trust them to keep it up.

The trademark season-ending Major Twist ought to be coming up soon. What could it be?

Didn’t bother reviewing last week’s “Bones” because it wasn’t terribly interesting, but this one was.

Obviously the focal point was Cam’s past. I can’t really remember a time in season 4 when the focal point was the actual murder mystery, but that’s OK. “Bones” is aware that it’s a procedural drama merely as an excuse for character drama, sort of like “House”.

It’s good to see other sides of characters sometimes, and since her introduction, Cam has been portrayed mostly as a tough, strictly work-oriented sort of person (apart from the hilarious subplot from earlier this season where she slept with Angela’s ex-husband). Now her lack of love life is explained, if a little tenuously, and somewhat resolved. It nagged at me the whole time that Cam probably should have been taken off the case because of her personal connection to the victim, but I guess that was the weekly hole in realism required for the plot. I doubt that Cam’s possession of an adopted child will affect the show much, although they might see fit to create a murder mystery that ensnares the kid somehow.

A Cam-focused episode was nice no matter what, since she’s usually a side character who determines cause of death at the beginning of the episode and then just exhorts everyone to keep working for the rest of the time. Interpersonal drama involving her is pretty much gone; back in season 2 there was sexual tension between her and Booth and professional tension between her and Brennan, while in season 3 there was that enjoyable little subplot where she and Booth pretended to still be going out for her family gathering. OK, so in this season there was a little return to the territorial bickering between her and Brennan (last episode, which I didn’t write about) but that ground has been well-tread. (It was also a manifestation of Brennan’s increasing lack of relevance to solving cases; see later.)

Angela’s attempt at celibacy produced some pretty funny results, which were improved by the presence of Clark the intern. He and Mr. Nigel-Murray are definitely my favorite interns now that Daisy is out. The crowning moment of the episode was Clark getting his feathers all ruffled when his romantic partner, with whom he is romantically involved, was talking about vibrators with Angela. Also, I was sure Angela would end up doing somebody before the end of the episode, and I was pretty sure it would be Hodgins, who seems to be bringing back the comedy after a long stretch of being a misanthropic bastard. Unfortunately, he seems to have transferred the moody angst and seriousness to Booth, who hasn’t shown any trace of levity for the past few episodes.

The science this week was pretty shallow, but there’s nothing to complain about apart from hypnosis does not work like that. If hypnosis were that effective, the justice system would be rather different.

Finally, the murder mystery was pretty shallow too although its ties to Cam’s past kept it interesting. Unlike most episodes, I did not call it correctly (I thought it would be the hospital administrator lady) even though if I’d followed my rule, I probably would have (the murderer is an innocuous background character in either the first or second chat with people close to the victim).

Now, here’s a general trend I’ve noticed. Is it just me, or does Brennan almost never make useful contributions towards solving cases anymore? For most of the season it’s been bothering me that the final, most important link is almost always supplied by Hodgins noticing that some dirt from the victim’s shoes comes from a 100-square-foot patch of ground on the banks of the Potomac, or Angela writing a magical computer program that produces a lovely 3D animation of the murder. On occasion Booth is the one to connect the dots that the scientists have uncovered. I know I just mentioned earlier that “Bones” uses crime procedural as an excuse for character drama, but it’s getting to the point where it’s starting to hurt Brennan’s character. There’s got to be some evidence that she’s a brilliant crime solver. If she just peers at dead bodies, identifies their age, gender and race and then stands around noticing useless things and failing to understand pop-culture references, it gets harder and harder to think of her as the leader and chief brain of the lab. In fact, it’s easier to think of her as a generic socially awkward person who exists simply for the rest of the characters to poke fun at. I think it’s high time for some character development (and not the half-assed kind I complained about in my last review) or at least a return to being the master crime solver in the lab.

There are several other issues I have with this season as a whole, but I’ll hold off on discussing them until the season’s over (which it will be pretty soon). For each season so far, there’s been a big upheaval at the end of the season, which I should probably take into account.

I think I’ve gotten attached enough to “Bones” to start reviewing individual episodes. While it’s not as much of a character-based show as “Scrubs”, there are usually other things I can talk about. When the current season ends I’ll do a review of the whole show. (I’ll probably do the same with “Chuck”.)

So this episode distinguished itself with some startlingly bad and shallow science. Everything I know about forensics I learned from TV and Wikipedia, but I do remember a little something from high school chemistry class which told me the answer to the dissolving-bones problem as soon as the leading clues were given. What reacts with a mineral of calcium, an alkaline earth metal, to give off hydrogen gas? Gee, I wonder. Maybe a strong acid. How could an entire forensics team at a world-renowned forensics lab miss that? Maybe they’ve learnt so much else since high school that they forgot what they learned in the third week of eleventh grade.

I have several other complaints about this little plot point:

• Hydrogen gas burns much faster than that. Ever heard of the Hindenburg? Which brings me to…
• How were they so sure it was hydrogen gas? It burns very rapidly and completely cleanly (the reaction has no product except water — hence hydro + gen).
• Was there really nothing else the gas from the remains came in contact with that could have ignited the hydrogen? It isn’t exactly hard to set on fire. (They did get the fact that it wouldn’t damage the remains right, though.)
• Maybe not a good idea to put your faces so close to a fire of some unknown chemical, Hodgins and Mr. Nigel-Murray.
• What form was the acid in? The tire cleaner would have been liquid, so presumably there must have been some liquid acid still in the remains to continue the reaction. Wouldn’t they have noticed any such liquid, or wouldn’t it have drained out when they moved the remains?
• The magnesium hydroxide thing was wrong on so many levels. If you’re really going to try that, it’d be nice to know how much acid you need to neutralize before you go dumping a strong base all over it. The base would have caused damage too; it’s not like it neutralizes acid and the rest of it turns into powdered sugar. An acid-base reaction produces water; there was none. I’m also pretty confident that magnesium fluoride (the result of reacting the strong acid HF with the strong base Mg(OH)₂) is soluble in water, thus either providing an easy way out of the “petrified corpse” problem, if not an outright avoidance of the whole problem (i.e. MgF₂ dissolving in the water the reaction produces). BTW: acid-base reactions provide fascinating elementary-science experiments. If you mix exactly the right quantities of hydrochloric acid and lye (both quite harmful to humans by themselves), you will get nothing more dangerous than table salt dissolved in water.
• The time course is all wrong. They established time of death at 2-5 days before the discovery; assuming that was right, shouldn’t the bones have been mush by then given the apparent rate of the reaction shown later?
• No damage to anything other than the bones from the acid? I know from experience that it can do a real number on skin.
• No trace of an acid-soaked corpse being transported in some sort of vehicle? That seems like it’d be a good piece of evidence. Wouldn’t they be looking for a vehicle as soon as they realized the murder didn’t happen at the dump site?

I know the acid was mainly a plot device, and a mildly interesting one at that, but I just can’t let science that bad go free.

Apart from the stupid science, I also called the murder mystery as soon as the murderer was introduced. In season 4 the mysteries gotten unfortunately predictable. The murderer is almost always an unimportant-seeming character introduced near the beginning of the investigation: once the victim’s identity is known, Bones and Booth go talk to people who were close to the victim. One of the background characters in either the first or second chat with one of these people is the killer. Previous seasons weren’t this bad.

I know I said in my review of Dollhouse that I should quit getting upset over it, but Angela’s magical bone reconstructing program. Jesus H. Christ. Just…no. Also, I know I should save this for the whole-show review, but I have to get it off my chest: somehow they found an unattractive white/Asian Halfie (I know, right? I didn’t know it was possible) and got her to play a character who is irritating on multiple levels, including by making a mockery of my profession. It hurts my brain a little more than other shitty TV computer programmers. (And she’s grossed out by the dead guy? For fuck’s sake, she pores over dead bodies for a living, where did that little nugget of unprofessionalism come from?)

The character-development arc for Bones (becoming a better interrogator) seemed arbitrary and tacked-on. It seems like she’d be a rational enough person to realize that some people are inherently better at some things than other people. Maybe this is part of some actual character growth (distinct from development — guess who remembers his high school English class?) wherein she develops an irrational side. Can’t decide yet if I like that idea or not.

Also, product placement. I can’t remember this show ever having fallen that way this bad.

Not all about this episode is bad. Mr. Nigel-Murray came up in the intern rotation, which is always a good thing. He’s my favorite. And they even gave him a little character development!