Watching Bones

I really liked Wendy’s observations about the Angela/Hodgins breakup in the season premiere. She really nailed some of the issues I had with the whole storyline and how it played out. However, I was re-watching a few episodes I’ve got saved on my media center in order to erase them to make more space, as well as trying to see any signs that may have been there of Zack’s reality break. There was something else I noticed that stuck out and kind of added to my frustration about the whole breakup.

In the episode The Soccer Mom in the Mini-Van (originally aired Oct. 2007), a bomb squad expert from the FBI comes to the lab to “help” and Hodgins - who’s in a newly begun relationship with Angela - is tripping over himself and practically drooling over this woman. (They actually took a moment to focus the camera on her cleavage to make the point.)

Special Agent Frost walks in in her smart and very attractive business suit and knocks Hodgins over. It’s like he looks up and sees only breasts. Booth tells him that she’ll be working with him, and his introduction to her goes as follows:

Hodgins: Yes please. What? No. Um. Hmm? JHodgins. D,d, doctor. We’re, okay.
Frost: I beg your pardon?
Angela: He’s Dr. Jack Hodgins. Angela Montenegro. I do facial reconstructions. And him.
Frost: Pleasure to meet you.

Hodgins realizes that his stuttering and stammering can’t look good to Angela, so when he later goes to apologize, he digs himself in even deeper by trying to explain that all that is just a “bodily thing.” Realizing that even that didn’t come out right, he tries again by starting out, “I’m not going to say that she’s not attractive,” to which Angela agrees, “oh yeah, she’s totally hot.” She goes on to tell him flat out that she doesn’t care what’s going on in his pants, as long as it stays in his pants. Seems to me like there’s no question about loyalties here, and even though Hodgins is drooling over this woman, Angela isn’t threatened or upset. So somehow when the tables are turned, they aren’t able to see the situation in the same way.

In her recap of the season premiere (where the breakup takes place), Wendy says in her post:

I think they came together very sweetly and naturally but since then I really don’t think they’ve been realistic at all. Hodgins has forever been a doormat, with Angela just steamrolling him. They never have a real fight like a healthy couple.

They’ve also never been really tested.

And, when they were…they fell flat on their faces. They don’t know how to deal with adversity together. They don’t know how to say “we have a problem, let’s fix it.” It’s just “We have a problem. Bye.” I knew ahead of time they were busting up in this episode, but I still found it dissatisfying, at least in execution. It was so unemotional. They are more emotionally invested in work-place arguments than they were with the relationship-ending fight. I am fully behind the fact that we needed a quick resolution to the much, much drug out story of their quest to get married, but this just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Yet again, back in the Soccer Mom episode, they move right past Hodgins momentary infatuation with Frost without blinking an eye. In fact, they’re even able to find the humor in it.

Angela: Where’s the bombshell from the bomb squad?
Hodgins: She went back to the FBI to catalog evidence. Thank God. She was driving me crazy! It was just science, all the time. Then, she tries to destroy perfectly good evidence…
Angela: What about the breasts?
Hodgins: I started thinking about them, dragging on the floor, when she’s 70…

Shortly after this discussion, they “retire” to the medieval storage room. How has their relationship changed so much that it ends so quickly and without any fight to save it?

What do you think - should we be rooting for them to get back together, or just leave things as they are. Is the squints team better off with them not being a couple, or are we missing something important here?