In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross proposed the 5 stages of grief that humans experience when confronted with death. Everyone spends varying amounts of time in these stages, and expresses them at different levels of severity. The five stages are denial/isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
While Brennan would most certainly doubt the validity of Dr. Kubler-Ross's findings, the showrunners for this episode did an excellent job transitioning us (and the show's characters) through these stages.
Denial and isolation set in the moment we saw Sweets lying on the concrete last week. Like Booth, we so hoped the ambulance would make it in time to stop the internal bleeding. Like Cam, we doubted our ability to cope with Sweets's remains. And in the past week, I've found myself reticent to talk about the incident, wishing in a private part of me that it was all some kind of hoax on behalf of the Jeffersonian to root out the evildoers behind the big, bad conspiracy.
But it wasn't, and this episode dealt heavily with the aftermath of Sweets's death; most notably, Booth's vengeful anger. Booth was already coping with heavier stuff than usual, having just completed a short-but-violent turn in prison. Losing a friend that Booth admitted was "like family" made him prickly toward his colleagues, boss, and eventually Brennan.
Daisy helped us work through our depression over the loss of Sweets with some help from Brennan, reviewing his bones for signs of his hobbies (piano playing, soccer) and his misadventures (falling from a tree) to have "one last conversation" with the father of her child.
And once the facts of the case came to a close (more on that in a minute), the team assembled on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. for a farewell to Sweets. Brennan talked at length (really, it's on the long side) about how much impact Sweets had on each and every person present, concluding that "We are all who we are because we knew Sweets."
As someone who empathized very deeply with Sweets (his childhood abuse and instability, his goth phase, his inner fanboyishness, his secret love of "Coconut"), it was hard to see his story come to a conclusion, but in the end, he was surrounded by friends-turned-family and sent off into the breeze with a smile and a great song. I can accept that, and therefore reach the final stage of grief - as I imagine many of you did, too.
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While I applaud the show's efforts to carry us through the aftermath of Sweets's death, I have to admit that I found the mystery of the week and the very abrupt ending of "the conspiracy" pretty lackluster.
Last week, Cooper (a victim who they randomly plucked from some data stored on a memory card/nipple ring last season) turned out to have a hit-and-run on his record that was covered up by a squirrelly, pencil-pushing doctor named Durant. This episode revealed that both Cooper and Durant were being blackmailed, knew of each other because of the blackmail, and had information about the blackmailer.
Booth also followed up on a lead that was introduced right before Sweets's death, but the little birdy was singing a very different tune than before, almost as if someone had told him to keep quiet about his past history in the FBI.
However, the lead did drop the name J. Edgar Hoover, who, in addition to founding the FBI, collected secret files with information that could seriously damage the rich and powerful of his era. Angela, Hodgins, and Aubrey (a new agent at the FBI) determined that instead of the files being destroyed, they were passed on...to the next FBI Director (Desmond Wilson), to none other than the squirrelly, pencil-pushing Dr. Durant (Wilson's stepson).
In a last-minute confrontation with Booth, Durant attempted to justify his decades of blackmail and ill deeds as a duty of which the founders of our country would be proud; he insisted that the founders wanted the United States to be controlled by an elite class of citizens that "believe we have to take this country back from the rabble."
So there you have it; a conspiracy that was built up in the last few episodes of season 9 coming to a zealous and uninteresting conclusion just two episodes into season 10. I have to admit, I'm pretty disappointed; I definitely wanted Sweets's killer brought to justice, but the showrunners spent so much time dealing with our grief that they forgot to make the storyline compelling and worth following. I could have used a breather episode before finding out who was pulling all the strings.
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There are some bright spots, character-wise, that I want to mention before signing off:
First, I was thrilled to see Booth and Brennan's daughter, Christine, finally say a line! This kid has been in the background for several seasons, but hasn't said or done much. With parents like hers, Christine is certain to grow up into an interesting character; let's hope we get a few more glimpses into her life as the season progresses.
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Ok class, a few questions for the comments board (and thanks for making it so far through my review!):
- Did the episode help you reach the "acceptance" stage of grieving for Sweets?
- Do you think Booth's past his vengeful stage?
- How did you feel about the conclusion of the conspiracy storyline?
- What's the next big bad villain going to be?
- Are you looking forward to getting back to the murder-of-the-week format for a while?
- Is Christine going to become a itty bitty squintern?
- Is Agent Aubrey a satisfying new addition, or just a bad replacement for the Sweets-shaped hole in the show?
