Temperance "Bones" Brennan facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, PhD.
Bones character
Photograph of Brennan, as portrayed by Emily Deschanel
First appearance	September 13, 2005 (1x01, "Pilot")
Last appearance	March 28, 2017 (12x12, "The End in the End")
Created by	Hart Hanson
Portrayed by	Emily Deschanel
Information
Nickname(s)	Bones (By Seeley & Parker Booth) Tempe (By Max Keenan, Russ Brennan and Jared Booth) Sweetie (By Angela Montenegro) Bren/Dr. B (By some co-workers) Joy (name by birth)
Aliases	Wanda Moosejaw Roxy Scallion Natasha (of Boris and Natasha)
Gender	Female
Occupation	Anthropologist, Forensic anthropologist, Kinesiologist, Author
Title	Doctor (triple Ph.D.)
Family	Max Keenan (father; deceased) Christine Brennan (mother; deceased) Russ Brennan (brother)
Spouse(s)	Seeley Booth
Children	Christine Angela Booth (daughter) Hank Booth II (son) Parker Booth (stepson)
Relatives	Hank Booth (grandfather-in-law) Edwin Booth (father-in-law; deceased) Marianne Booth (mother-in-law) Jared Booth (brother-in-law; deceased) Amy Hollister (sister-in-law) Hayley Hollister (niece) Emma Hollister (niece) Margaret Whitesell (second cousin)
Religion	Atheist
Position	Main Character
Home	Washington, DC

Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, Ph.D. (born Joy Keenan) is a fictional character portrayed by Emily Deschanel in the American Fox television series Bones. An anthropologist, forensic anthropologist, and kinesiologist, she is described in the series as a leading authority in the field of forensic anthropology. Brennan first appeared on television, along with other series characters, in the "Pilot" episode of Bones on September 13, 2005. She is the main protagonist of the series along with FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz).

Brennan is loosely based on author Kathy Reichs. Her name originates from the heroine in Reichs's crime novel series, also named Temperance Brennan. The main similarity the two share is their occupation as forensic anthropologists. Brennan appeared in Comcast's list of TV's Most Intriguing Characters. She was included in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters. Her relationship with Seeley Booth was listed in Entertainment Weekly's "30 Best 'Will They/Won't They?' TV Couples".

Character history

Temperance "Bones" Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who works in the Medico-Legal lab at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, D.C. She received her bachelor's degree and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, as stated in "The Girl in the Fridge" and "The Tutor in the Tussle". She has three doctorates, as referred to by Dr. Jack Hodgins in the episode "The Parts of the Sum in the Whole", in anthropology, forensic anthropology and kinesiology;

Her occasional contract work for the FBI shifted the focus of her work. She was paired with FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, and helped to solve two difficult cases; since then, they have worked together almost exclusively on modern-day murder cases.

Brennan works with a group of other well-qualified colleagues, including the entomologist Jack Hodgins, her boss and forensic pathologist Camille Saroyan, forensic artist Angela Montenegro, and a host of eager graduate students. Booth refers to her crew of colleagues as "squints", because they come to crime scenes and squint at the evidence. He is also responsible for her nickname, "Bones", which she initially detested.

Family and early life

Although Brennan seemed to have a relatively normal childhood, her parents disappeared when she was 15 years old. Her older brother Russ, himself still an adolescent, was unable to care for her and she was put in the foster care system. By the time she started college she had been to twelve different schools and has specifically said that she hated the lack of consistency.

There has been contradictory evidence about her time in the system; in one episode, Brennan stated that her grandfather got her out of the foster system, but in a later episode, she indicates that she never knew her grandparents (possibly the two references are to two separate sets of grandparents, paternal and maternal). However, taking into consideration the fact that Brennan's parents had assumed new identities when she was three years old, the grandfather who had taken her in from her time in the foster system may not have been her biological grandfather.

Her time in foster care was quite traumatic; Brennan indicated that she was once locked in the trunk of a car for two days because she broke a plate.

In the first season, she hands Booth the file on her parents' disappearance and he agrees to look into it as a personal favor. It is later revealed in Season 2 that her parents, who were bank robbers specializing in safety deposit boxes, changed the family's identity after they stole some damaging FBI documents regarding the murder of an FBI agent and the false imprisonment of civil rights activist Marvin Beckett. Brennan's birth name was Joy Keenan. Her mother (real name Ruth Keenan, known under the assumed identity of Christine Brennan) had hoped to someday return to her children and family but made a tape for Brennan to watch on her 16th birthday in case that never happened. Brennan later discovered that Ruth/Christine was murdered in 1993, two years after she and her husband went on the run.

Her father Max Keenan re-entered Brennan's life when she and her brother were being threatened by an old acquaintance, who turned out to be Booth's boss, Deputy Director Kirby.

Characterization

Throughout the course of the series, Brennan is portrayed as a straightforward, brilliant anthropologist, who lacks social skills. Her social ineptitude is especially apparent when it comes to sarcasm, metaphors which she often interprets literally, and pop culture jokes and is often the source of comedy in the show. An example of this is when she mistakes Colin Farrell for Will Ferrell. In earlier seasons, she was characterized as straightforward and unable to detect social cues – she states that Booth once told her that she "stinks at non-verbal communication" – and was well-known within the FBI for being extremely difficult to work with. She began to acknowledge her lack of sensitivity after Booth told her outright that she was "bad with people" in "A Boy in a Tree". Her lack of "political savvy" and social skills was also a reason why she was passed over for Dr. Camille Saroyan as head of forensic division in the Jeffersonian in Season 2. Other characters have described her as "no fun" and "a rigid traditionalist".

She had a difficult adolescence, and it is implied, often by Sweets, that her withdrawn social tendencies are a defense mechanism. She also sometimes struggles in identifying and explaining her emotions, and takes comfort in the rationality of her anthropological discipline. Although it has been stated that Brennan was based on an autistic person, this has never been confirmed in the plot of the series. The creator of the series has stated that the character was never labeled as having the syndrome in order to increase the appeal of the show on network television. This influence on her character also helps to explain her extreme rationality in early seasons, as well as some of her social difficulties. Brennan is a self-proclaimed atheist and often points out what she believes to be the irrationality of religious and spiritual beliefs. This has led to more than one argument with Booth, who is a devout Roman Catholic; he becomes particularly irate when she compares less common religions, such as voodoo, to Christianity. During the Sleepy Hollow crossover episode "Dead Men Tell No Tales", Sleepy Hollow protagonist Ichabod Crane notes that Brennan is so skeptical that she would dismiss the demon Moloch — the primary antagonist in the first two seasons of Sleepy Hollow — as nothing more than a tall man with a skin condition, although this does leave him reassured that she will not realise the nature of the secret tomb they have uncovered underneath the White House.

Brennan is a bestselling author, who has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for 18 weeks. She is trained in three types of martial arts, has hunting licenses in four states, and has a legally registered gun as well as a diving certificate. She promised to consider becoming a vegetarian after seeing how pigs were slaughtered. However, in "The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken" (season 5, episode 6) Angela cites health reasons for Brennan's vegetarian diet. Brennan is also a trained amateur highwire performer, and speaks at least seven other languages, including Spanish, French, Latin, Chinese, Pashto Japanese, Norwegian (although she says only "skull" and avers that, as a forensic anthropologist, this is a word she knows "in just about every language"), Farsi, Yiddish, and German. She has also admitted to knowing a bit of Russian. She often says she does not "put much stock in psychology" and makes a point of noting that Dr. Sweets is not a real scientist as he "bases his life on the vagary of psychology and emotions".

Brennan's personality undergoes significant changes throughout the course of the series. Her thinking becomes less rigid in later seasons, something which is observed by Dr. Gordon Wyatt, who notes that she is now able to distinguish the difference between accuracy and truth. In season 4, Booth takes her along to his interrogations and helps her learn how to set aside her scientific perspective and relate with the victim's family and suspects on a more interpersonal level. She is also able to put aside her rationality to support her friends in sometimes irrational pursuits, such as Angela's quest to raise money to save a pig from slaughter, and to comfort Booth, even using science or quoting directly from the Bible to rationalize his religious beliefs. Her sensitivity and empathy towards others are also much improved, seen quite strongly when she comforts his grandfather, and when she attends a funeral so that the victim's single mother won't be alone. She also displays more "typical" human emotions when in extreme stress. One example of this is her fear of snakes in "The Mummy in the Maze," when a girl is in the process of being scared to death in a room, the floor teeming with snakes. This goes against her empirical nature, as, when Booth tells her that the snakes aren't venomous, she states that she is aware, but still refuses to step in the room, causing Booth to carry her on his back. Usually strong-willed and independent, she has since admitted on multiple occasions that her happiness was contingent on Booth's and could not envision herself living a fulfilled life without him.

Brennan begins to feel both dissatisfaction and discomfort with her work toward the end of the fifth season. She also sees some futility in her work, stating that no matter how many killers they catch, there will always be more. To help her gain new perspective, she later decides to head up an anthropological expedition to Indonesia for a year to identify some ancient proto-human remains, after mulling it over during the episode. However, 7 months later, she and everyone else return to D.C. in order to save Cam's job, and they all decide to stay.

As season 6 progresses, Brennan must confront her feelings for Booth, whom she rejected in the 100th episode from the previous season. Having returned from 7 months of introspection, she has come to terms with her romantic affection towards him, even admitting that she regretted not having given them a chance together, midway through the season. However, Booth returns from Afghanistan with a new love interest, war correspondent Hannah Burley, whom Brennan befriends. When Hannah rejects Booth's marriage proposal, Brennan must help him through the emotional fallout.

Since entering a relationship with and marrying Booth and then having children, the character has undergone development personally and is shown to be a caring wife and protective mother. She would often put aside her own atheistic views and uses her hyper-rationality to justify Booth's religious beliefs, as shown in season 8 where she references the Bible in order to persuade Booth to forgive his mother and in the season finale where she agrees to a church wedding, rationalizing that she could appreciate the "beauty" of the ceremony and its significance to Booth. She also showed concern in Season 10 about Booth's change in demeanor following his release from prison and exoneration, noting that he had not attended mass for some time.

Relationships

FBI psychologist Lance Sweets postulates in a number of episodes that Brennan's apprehension over having relationships is largely due in part to the abandonment she experienced as a teenager after her parents disappeared. It is said that she "hides" herself behind a front of hyper-rationalism and she always keeps people at arms' length, except for those closest to her (namely FBI partner later husband Seeley Booth and best friend Angela Montenegro).

Seeley Booth

FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth is Brennan's husband and partner, and the principal liaison between the Jeffersonian and law enforcement agencies. Prior to their marriage, he is also Brennan's principal love interest throughout the series. Although his working style initially clashed with Brennan's, they have since become full-fledged partners. Their compatibility has become one of the central points of the show, with many new characters mistaking them for a couple and co-workers, especially Angela, constantly speculating that they were "more than partners". Booth and Brennan have repeatedly risked their safety to save each other, including when Booth took a bullet meant for Brennan. After Booth rescues Brennan from the corrupt Agent Kenton, Booth lifts her off the hook she was hung on by putting her tied hands around his neck even though he himself was severely injured.

Initially Brennan was mostly dismissive of Booth due to their opposing worldviews and work styles – which is a source of friction and banter between them. Although she refused to admit it at first, Brennan enjoyed working with him from the beginning, even after their falling out when Booth got her drunk and "fired" her, and, in Season 1, she cajoled him into launching an investigation after finding three bone fragments on a golf course so he could work with the Jeffersonian team on the case despite the fact that the FBI technically had no jurisdiction. She often unknowingly offends him on a number of occasions during the first few seasons with her tactlessness, only realizing after being gently admonished by Angela or another member of the team. She comes to admire his ability to connect with people and read behavioral cues when interrogating suspects after coming to terms with her own lack of social skills. After finding out about his childhood and haunted past in the Army, she also begins to respect him as a person. Booth, who is particularly taciturn in revealing emotions or speaking about his past, begins to open up to and confide in her. Since entering a relationship with (and eventually marrying) Booth, she is shown to be extremely supportive of him, even at the expense of her friendship with Angela. Additionally, she put aside her own misgivings several times for Booth's benefit; for example, she agrees to have Christine christened into the Catholic church and referenced the Bible when trying to talk Booth into forgiving his mother. In later seasons she is shown to be very protective of him and has inflicted physical pain on suspects who have harmed him.

The relationship between Brennan and Booth has often become strained when either partner has a significant other. For example, Booth was quite irritable when Brennan dated Agent Sully, and their relationship was also strained when Booth's brother Jared was showing an interest in Brennan. Brennan constantly needled Booth while he was dating Tessa.

Tim "Sully" Sullivan

Brennan had a brief relationship with FBI Agent Tim Sullivan (Eddie McClintock), also known as Sully, whom she met while on a case when Booth was in therapy due to his grief-induced rage over his self-perceived role in the death of Howard Epps. Sully asked Dr. Brennan out on a date after their case was completed, and they began a relationship. Their relationship ended, however, when Sully decided to sail a boat down to the Caribbean, and Brennan declined to leave the Jeffersonian to go with him despite Angela trying to persuade her to follow him; psychiatrist Doctor Gordon Wyatt (Stephen Fry) speculated that this was due to Brennan being unable to live a life without purpose. Despite Dr. Wyatt's original perception as to why she stayed, there exist strong indications, especially through Angela's observations of the situation, that the real reason she stayed was because of Booth. Sully returns in Season 12.

See also

In Spanish: Temperance "Bones" Brennan para niños