Was Micah real or a projection of Bones' imagination? He was real and here's how I know.
He first appears in the dead of night as Bones is spiraling deeper and deeper into her breakdown, addressing The Doctor as though she were there. Micah walks in on her and helps bring her back to reality, a little. A perfect scenario for a ghost, or an echo of projected rationality - an imaginary friend. And his appearances continue in this vein as Brennan works through the resonances of her similarities with the Doctor, to her heartbreaking realization that she'd blown it with Booth, signaling her return to, and acceptance of, reality. Herein lies the answer - Micah's last appearance takes place after she awakes from her nightmare and once again has her feet firmly planted in the here and now, a country unfriendly to imaginary figments.
That's my argument for Micah being real and I wish we'd see more of him. Perhaps he could even fix the disaster of this season's (2013) finale - Booth's forced rejection of Brennan's marriage proposal.
Whatever. And there's another element of Brennan's breakdown that, like Micah's reality, I only picked up on the third or forth viewing - Brennan's descent into Hell lasted three days, just like somebody else's. The analogy seems like a stretch until you think about it a little and realize that the reference is to death and rebirth, which is symbolically what both the Resurrection and Brennan's breakdown are all about.
Personally, I find this episode very hard to watch because of the tragic (in this case, tragic is the right word) fate of The Doctor and the turmoil of Brennan's three days in Hell, mollified only slightly by Brennan's final catharsis and acceptance of the consequences of her fears. Even so, I would rate this episode as transcendent, meaning it's off the scale by orders of magnitude. The more I watch it, the more Brennan's anguish touches me, the more I grieve for The Doctor and the stronger Bones' catharsis. Sophocles couldn't have done better.
He first appears in the dead of night as Bones is spiraling deeper and deeper into her breakdown, addressing The Doctor as though she were there. Micah walks in on her and helps bring her back to reality, a little. A perfect scenario for a ghost, or an echo of projected rationality - an imaginary friend. And his appearances continue in this vein as Brennan works through the resonances of her similarities with the Doctor, to her heartbreaking realization that she'd blown it with Booth, signaling her return to, and acceptance of, reality. Herein lies the answer - Micah's last appearance takes place after she awakes from her nightmare and once again has her feet firmly planted in the here and now, a country unfriendly to imaginary figments.
That's my argument for Micah being real and I wish we'd see more of him. Perhaps he could even fix the disaster of this season's (2013) finale - Booth's forced rejection of Brennan's marriage proposal.
Whatever. And there's another element of Brennan's breakdown that, like Micah's reality, I only picked up on the third or forth viewing - Brennan's descent into Hell lasted three days, just like somebody else's. The analogy seems like a stretch until you think about it a little and realize that the reference is to death and rebirth, which is symbolically what both the Resurrection and Brennan's breakdown are all about.
Personally, I find this episode very hard to watch because of the tragic (in this case, tragic is the right word) fate of The Doctor and the turmoil of Brennan's three days in Hell, mollified only slightly by Brennan's final catharsis and acceptance of the consequences of her fears. Even so, I would rate this episode as transcendent, meaning it's off the scale by orders of magnitude. The more I watch it, the more Brennan's anguish touches me, the more I grieve for The Doctor and the stronger Bones' catharsis. Sophocles couldn't have done better.