Always love me some solid trust and friendship from Booth's perspective. I enjoyed the relationship between him and Ken. Bones does a good job of understanding the reverence of cultural mourning norms. Overall, tragic episode story with a good supporting background of characters, yes including the interns!
7 Reviews
Cultural Differences Collide
Hitchcoc3 February 2023
This is a decent episode which features the death of a young Japanese woman, her brother a friend of Booth's. It turns out that the girl and her friend hired on as escorts for a service. There is some really solid forensics here as the lab people work, using brain tissue, water sources, and other appropriate evidence. The down side, as many reviewers mentioned, is a person named Tanaka whose gender is not immediately clear. The sophomoric Angela and her equally insensitive colleagues speculate on this, looking like a bunch of teenagers. In fairness to the portrayal of this person and the acceptance, we are just now starting to use appropriate pronouns for people and that has been a slow process. Remember this episode came out some 14 years ago.
I love Bones, but...
shamblerbatman28 August 2020
...the transphobia in this episode is alive and well. I always end up skipping through most of this episode because although there are some good parts I can't deal with the awful banter between the "squints" regarding Tanaka's gender. Aside from the fact that it's none of their business.... Angela forcing herself onto them to find out makes me queezy. I hope this kind of content stays in the past. :(
We've Come a Long Way
katewestrich6 November 2021
Watching this episode in 2021 helped illustrate how far we've come in a mere 12 years when it comes to discussing gender. The uses of he/she throughout this episode were just ... awful. Between the transphobic language and the overstepping of police - you shouldn't be involved in a case involving your family, no matter your role - really made this a hard episode to watch.
Tone Deaf Even for 2008/9
HelloBlockbuster18 August 2022
The "squints" are overly concerned with assigning Dr. Tanaka with an "either or" gender pronoun; meanwhile, Dr. Sweets literally described the situation of gender very well and the team ignored him. The writer's had a missed opportunity here for how they led this topic. Ultimately, I think they should have focused on Dr. Sweets educating the squints rather than the squints trying to gender assign Dr. Tanaka. But hey, it's 2022 now and we've come so far. (Yes, and no. Sarcasm but also not.)
Multiple episodes have had some cringe to them, with regards to male masculinity, lesbian relationships, etc. But this one just took the cake. When writer's know full well that they're perpetuating harm and furthering misunderstanding through their work-INTENTIONALLY-it's just gross, regardless of what year we are in.
I hope they all strive or have striven to do better in the past 14yrs.
Multiple episodes have had some cringe to them, with regards to male masculinity, lesbian relationships, etc. But this one just took the cake. When writer's know full well that they're perpetuating harm and furthering misunderstanding through their work-INTENTIONALLY-it's just gross, regardless of what year we are in.
I hope they all strive or have striven to do better in the past 14yrs.
Nonbinary people exist
maddiestoerp22 March 2022
The one thing I do appreciate is how Brennen never really regards Dr. Tanaka's gender and shows them consistent respect. But Cam, Hodgins, and Angela ogling their guest and being overly invested in finding out if they're a 'man or woman' (as if they have a right to know that) is so disrespectful and hard to watch. Sweets did mention the androgynous subculture that Tanaka belonged to, which I can see as him saying, 'hey, not identifying as a gender is A Thing', but then he gets oddly curious too and it takes it all back.
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