Hot Takes: Agent Booth Is Not As Interesting To Me As He's Expected To Be

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you may already vaguely know my stance on this, but I feel this topic deserves some elaboration in the form of a "Hot Take" blog post.

Hot Take: Special Agent Seeley Booth of the Fox hit Bones is seen as a white knight, knight and shining armor, the hunk of the century, every woman's dream and every man's aspiration. Except, not to me. He ranges from uninteresting to mildly entertaining to just plain annoying in my eyes. Let me first be clear, I am in no way judging the people who do like him. The purpose of these Hot Takes is to present my possibly unpopular opinion on popular subjects, and spark a conversation. No judgement here.

Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) is an FBI agent in Washington D. C. and a former U.S. Army Ranger. In Bones he partners with Dr. Temperance Brennan, a famous forensic anthropologist and author, and they solve crimes. Dr. Brennan's specialty is to find clues within the bones. Surrounding them is a cast which includes Angela Montenegro, a forensic artist whose job it is to identify the victims and create digital simulations of what might have happened based on the data given to her by the others in the lab; Dr. Jack Hodgins, forensic entomologist, botanist, and mineralogist whose job it is to use bugs and particulates to gain clues about everything from crime scene, where the victim was originally from, to what the weapon was made out of; Dr. Camille Saroyan, the coroner and forensic pathologist; Dr. Lance Sweets, FBI psychologist and criminal profiler; and a list of anthropology assistants and interns. that include Dr. Zack Addy, Dr. Clark Edison, Daisy Wick, Wendell Bray, Colin Fisher, Vincent Nigel-Murray, Arastoo Vaziri, Finn Abernathy, Dr. Oliver Wells, Rodolfo Fuentes, and Jessica Warren.

The Positives

First I'll point out the things I actually do like about Booth. He is very sweet and tender with Brennan. In the show, Brennan struggles to catch on to social subtleties that others can, and Booth is one of her trusted people that lovingly explains things to her when she approaches a situation without tact or when she simply doesn't understand what someone's trying to tell her. He is also really good at his job at the FBI and is a good father. His protective nature is not in and of itself a problem. On the contrary, I think we can all agree that everyone needs someone in their life (of any gender) who will protect them at all costs.

The Western Male Archetype

On the flip side, there are things about Booth that I take issue with- and I guess if I'm being honest, there are cultural implications from the impact of Booth's character that I take the most issue with. To begin with, Booth falls into 3 out of 4 male archetypes: the warrior, the protector, and the sports hero. The 4th is entrepreneur, which I don't think he fits. These 4 archetypes represent the "masculine" traits that are acceptable and expected for men in Western society. This doesn't leave a lot of room for the thousands of other male personalities that exist out there, including the ones the other male characters fall into: the scientist (Hodgins and Zack in particular), the nurturer (Sweets), the poet (Arastoo), and the trivia dispenser (Vincent), just to name a few (I made that last one up, I didn't know what else to call him). Furthermore, it implies that warrior, protector, sports hero, and entrepreneur are roles only men can fill, which is bogus. These traits by themselves aren't exactly the problem, but the problem is that these traits are the ideal at the expense of other "less desirable" traits. Here's one huge example:

Booth and Sweets' Friendship

I've already said that something I like about Booth is that he's very sweet and tender with Dr. Brennan. The problem is he is that way with Brennan and Brennan only. He can kind of be that way with Dr. Saroyan, but his lack of willingness to be vulnerable and tender with others really comes into focus in his relationship with Dr. Sweets. Sweets is sweet and tender by nature and looks up to Booth like an older brother. More to the point, Sweets has no family when he comes to the FBI, and perhaps unconsciously at first attempts to find one with Booth and Brennan. Yet from day one Booth makes fun of him for being a so-called immature geek. In The Cinderella In the Cardboard, when Brennan tells Sweets that she thinks Daisy is cheating on him, Booth's response to finding out about it is "Oh no, now he's gonna come in here and he's gonna cry and stuff." This is played for humor, but it speaks to the issues I have with Booth's character. He spends all this time trying to maintain some arbitrary standard of masculinity made up by Western society that the mere thought of Sweets coming into his office crying annoys him. True, he doesn't say any of this to Sweets, which I suppose is an upside, but we the audience saw it. Even when he actually interacts with Sweets about it, he won't hug him and instead gives him an affectionate punch on the arm. It isn't even like Sweets didn't want a hug. He asked for one, and Booth outright refused because "men don't do that", or something to that effect. In The Mystery In the Meat, when Brennan asks Booth who his best friend is, hoping it's not her because she's a whole different relationship, Booth won't answer her. You could take this scene one of two ways: either he won't answer because in his mind she's still is his best friend whether she thinks so or not, which is valid; or possibility two is that Sweets is his best friend and Booth won't admit it, after 7 years. He barely admitted it in El Carnicero en el Coche, when he refers to Sweets as the "little brother I never wanted, but I'm glad that I have." All this culminating in The Conspiracy In the Corpse, when while he's laying there dying, Sweets is talking about how Booth would've been proud of him because he fought back, as if that's what would have given him value in Booth's eyes. To me it's really sad that that's what Sweets is worrying about while he's dying- that Booth will be proud of him for fighting back. Not that Booth would be devastated to lose him simply because he loved him, or proud of him because he was a good person, always searching to do the right thing, sweet to Parker and Christine, and an effective member of his family, regardless if he had fought back. It's not necessarily overt, but this is toxic masculinity.

Only One (Acceptable) Type of Male Heartthrob

Another thing I take issue with, which is less about Booth's character and more about how he's portrayed. It's expected and assumed that he is the de-facto heartthrob of the show because he's tall, broad-shouldered, strong and mighty, but has a sweet and tender side (again, to some people). What about the fact that this standard of masculinity fits maybe 2% of men on the whole planet? What if there are some people who couldn't care less if their "heartthrob" is strong and mighty? What if quirky is more their speed? Or adorability? Maybe they like having facts spewed at them. Maybe it melts their heart less to hear "I will die to protect you" and more to hear "I promise that if you ever fail in the future, I will do absolutely nothing but just give you a hug." I'm not going to get into all the ways the other male characters are more interesting to me because then this article would be way too long, so I'll focus instead on the main characters. I will, however, point out that Vincent is adorable and anyone would be lucky to have him.

Dr. Jack Hodgins

Hodgins does fall into toxic masculine traps from time to time, and admittedly he can be a bit of a jerk to people when he doesn't trust them yet, but he doesn't necessarily live in those places. He also doesn't fall into any of the four male archetypes. He even rejects the entrepreneur he could be in favor of what actually feeds his soul: working with bugs, plants, fungus, and minerals to catch bad guys. One of Hodgins' biggest assets, in actuality, is his sense of humor and jovial nature. More than I want to see Booth chase after a bad guy with a gun, I want to see the big smile on Hodgins' face when he gets going with one of his numerous experiments.

I also feel that his relationship with Angela is far more equal and mutual than the relationship between Booth and Brennan, where Booth is the protector. One thing I didn't appreciate about Booth and Brennan getting together was that after awhile Brennan became more an extension of Booth, and a lot of things about her character I used to love were forgotten or severely cut back. But with Hodgins and Angela, Angela stayed 100% Angela and Hodgins stayed 100% Hodgins. This was true with another TV will-they-won't-they relationship; when Shawn and Juliet got together on Psych, Juliet didn't become less Juliet. In some ways, they each became more of themselves by being together. In short, I see Hodgins and Angela as equals in their relationship.

Dr. Lance Sweets

Sweets falls into absolutely none of the four male archetypes, in any way. Most of the time he doesn't even try. This doesn't mean he's immune to toxic masculine traps, because every man is. But Sweets is more comfortable being tender and vulnerable, which in my eyes indicates someone way more secure with their masculinity than someone like Booth who does things like join the Army and the FBI to prove their masculinity. In literally every way, Sweets is a much more interesting character to me. If I'm watching the show and there's a scene with the two of them, I guarantee I'm watching Sweets the whole time. What's interesting is that in our culture, characters like Sweets are undervalued as the kind of geeky sidekick. Even in the show, it's constantly pointed out how too young Sweets is to be taken seriously. Like, Booth is the hunky man and Sweets is the adorable little boy, as if for some reason this is an undesirable trait. I'll tell you that adorable is the trait that 100% of the time grabs my attention first. The second is visible tenderness. I don't care if some guy can throw me over his shoulder and heroically rescue me (literally or metaphorically). Does he treat me like an equal? Does he celebrate my success? Does he hold space for my emotions? Is he okay with expressing his emotions to me? Some people give Sweets crap for certain aspects of his relationship with Daisy, which I plan to address in a future Hot Take article, but he does every one of those things with her.

When the others are treating her like a big annoyance and she's fired from the Jeffersonian because of that, Sweets is the one person who sees her for who she really is, seeing past some of her annoying behaviors. He openly shows affection for her to prove he's not ashamed of her. He helps her achieve success by helping her with some of her social short-comings, and helping her with her government psychological evaluation to get clearance to work by herself at the Jeffersonian. He celebrates her success by delivering her clearance card to her himself, which is another interesting contrast to Booth who felt threatened by the fact that Brennan made more money than him. No one said it better than Dharma Finkelstein on this subject in an episode of Dharma & Greg where Greg feels threatened by the same thing and keeps insisting that "the money you make is your money, and the money I make is our money." Her response: "I get it. It's supposed to be dumb." It really is. Sweets is not the least bit threatened by Daisy's success, and instead relentlessly cheers her on. I know I mentioned it already, but perhaps his greatest line to Daisy is when he said "I promise that if you ever fail in the future, I will do absolutely nothing but just give you a hug." This is what I mean by holding space for my emotions. In The Bones On the Blue Line after that guy on the train dies in Sweets' arms, he doesn't come to Daisy right away with everything that's bothering him because of it, but eventually he does. He even tells her later on that having an emotional relationship with her is more important than a physical one, and he doesn't want the physical one without the emotional one. More to the point, Sweets has countless instances of talking about his emotions both with Daisy and with people who are not Daisy. In fact, I'm fairly certain that he expresses his feelings to every character at some point, even Caroline Julian.

Lastly, the undervaluing of a character like Sweets overlooks the ways in which he was a hero in a less obvious, less "manly" kind of way. Sweets says in one episode "I got into psychology to help people", and while that's not necessarily in his job description most of the time, he finds a way to do it anyway. It was because of his empathy towards Javier in El Carnicero en el Coche that they figured out who killed the victim, subsequently took down the whole gang, and eventually got Javier out and into a better home- which was Sweets' ultimate goal from the beginning. This is just one of countless instances where Sweets uses empathy over intimidation or physical strength to find the truth.

To me this kind of character is way more interesting then the typical male archetype, and I don't understand why these characters are undervalued so much.

Again, the photos used in this article do not belong to me, and are used merely to help make my points.