bones: first real finale spoilers!

look both ways, guys. // fox promotional photo

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been a little anxious about the Bones finale lately.  If you were spoiled for last year’s finale, you’ll remember that by this time in ’09, we had already heard key phrases like “artificial insemination,” “alternate reality,” and “health crisis.”  This year, not only have we not heard about any big themes heading into hiatus, but we don’t really have anything seriously coming to a head right now, aside from Booth and Brennan’s relationship, but when it that NOT in play?

At the end of the day, it’s an easy problem to have, right?  Right now, I’m dealing with the possibility of my favorite television couple in the history of television couples  never seeing each other alive ever again, let alone having mischievous tree-climbing little children.  I don’t need to spoiler-cut the fact that Booth and Brennan will be together someday.  It’s just a matter of whether or not Hart Hanson has the stones to risk “OMG DESTROYING THE CHEMISTRY” by actually having them give it a go.

(Quite frankly, I can’t imagine that getting to make out more frequently at work wouldn’t amp up the tension between David and Emily to levels previously thought unreachable.)

Will this finale be the (cough) “beginning” (cough) of Booth and Brennan’s strictly-unprofessional relationship?  Or will we finish this year like we have all those previous–with a frustrating near-miss?  Spoilers and speculation after the jump.

Last week-ish, when the sides came out for the penultimate episode, “The Boy with the Answer,” I was far more interested in a throw-off line of Angela’s than in all the Gravedigger nonsense.  (I really should post about that, eh?)

“We’re planning a honeymoon,” she says. “We’re going to take off for at least six months.”  (The “we” being Hodgins and Angela. Damn, I’m behind on this blog.)

Booth and I, of course, were immediately confused, because, um, you can’t take off six months.  This is a procedural, meaning that every character has to be in every episode, even when it’s a flashback to before we even knew you.  (Damn, so behind.)  So I filed that away and went about my business.

And then here come the sides for the finale, “The Beginning in the End,” which you’ll surely recognize as a play on the last season finale’s “The End in the Beginning.”  In these sides, we see Brennan show interest in a far-off anthropological discovery–and a later mention that the team is splitting up for a year.  Specifically, there’s this exchange:

Caroline: If this is gonna be your last case together, then you do it properly.
Brennan: It’s not our last case.
Booth: We’ll be back in a year.
Caroline: Tight as a drum, that’s what I want. And trust me, the way you two are running from each other, it’s your last case.

Oh, the intrigue!

So, let’s analyze, shall we?  I see a couple of distinct possibilities.

1. Hart Hanson is committing out-and-out fuckery.  He’s been known to do this in the past–remember how Booth and Brennan were going to make out in the premiere? I definitely wouldn’t put it past him, but for the sake of this blog, let’s analyze the spoilers as though they are real.  So then we have…

2. Brennan really does leave for a year, abandoning Booth.  The four-month hiatus will chronologically cover her absence, with the premiere picking up with Brennan’s return.  I find this really hard to believe, because it’d be very un-Bonesy to skip that much time, and we started season five with Brennan’s big return, so … been there, done that.

3. Brennan doesn’t leave and Booth and Brennan get together. First of all, highly unlikely.  My girl Leigh and I discussed a few possibilities for this scenario, including one of hers I liked in which Brennan, confused, can’t bring herself to leave her partnership and her partner and shows up on his doorstep without a logical explanation.

4. Brennan doesn’t leave and Booth and Brennan still don’t get together.  I find this the most likely scenario.  Imagine this: Brennan gets off the plane at the last minute and drives like a maniac through DC trying to get to the Booth.  Booth, meanwhile, has his sirens wailing as he drives toward the airport to stop her.  The episode ends with Brennan at Booth’s empty apartment and Booth at the airport gate (you know he’d have used his badge to get past TSA), another opportunity missed.  And as the great Dan Rydell of Sports Night once said, “You miss enough of them and the ballgame’s over.”

5. Mae’s theory of WIN. Last night, on the phone with the great @mae_vaughan, who is skilled at speculation even when forgoing fandom for her new baby nephew, she dropped this theory on me.  We know, via Ausiello, that there’s an exchange in the 100th that goes, “If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.” “I’ll call a cab.”  Did you hear that?  ”If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.”  Assumedly, this happens in the flashback portion of the 100th, but it wouldn’t be out of the question for this to come back up in the finale.

“If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.”

Do you see where I’m going with this?

“If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.”

“If we don’t WORK together anymore, we can have SEX.”

Yeah, so the speculation being that, as they face the END of their professional partnership, there’s a pretty serious BEGINNING to their personal one, as they take her last night in the States to, y’know, not work together.  Only, of course, they’re not going to stop working together.  Imagine, if you will, that her cell phone rings right as she’s toeing off his stripey socks.  They ignore it and get back to business.  Lying in bed together later that night, still super-naked, Brennan reaches for her cell and dials her voicemail.  ”Sorry, Dr. Brennan, the dig is off.”  Cue Brennan’s terrified face, looking at the man she loves and has finally, finally, well-and-truly you-know-what-ed, who she now has no escape from.  AND ROLL CREDITS.

Just saying, that’d be awesome.

There’s one more thing we may have to contend with, and that’s the fact that this episode is expected to, in some ways, mirror last year’s finale.  Recently, Hart Hanson cryptically tweeted a photo of his breakfast sitting atop the sexy pages from “The End in the Beginning.”  At the time, grasping for “please let this finale have meant SOMETHING” straws, folks speculated that the sexy times in that episode were not so much a figment of Brennan’s book/Booth’s coma dream–a facet of Mr. B and Bren’s life–but rather a flashforward of sorts.  Minutiae like the clock time and the nightstand contents changing mid-scene support this theory, although I do not ascribe to it.  I’m much more prone to believe that it was an epic set dressing fail than a real, thought-out, years-in-advance plot device.

But I will say, if Booth and Brennan finish the season with “Do you want me to prove it to you?” and the idea that they’d have ended up there whether they were Booth and Bones or Seeley and Temperance or Mr. B and Bren, while Jack and Kate die miserable and alone on the island and in the alternate reality on Lost … I will never watch television again.