Bones S05E03

When do kids start having sex? Younger than ever, according to assorted polls. In any case, the real central question of tonight's sideplot seemed to be, "When should kids start having sex?"

Bones declared that she hadn't found someone who could give her a "satisfactory introduction" until she was 22, but the majority of the team seemed to have had their first times around the age of 16. Furthermore, the consensus seemed to be that kids shouldn't start having sex as early as their parents did.

One way to try and deal with undesirable behaviour in adolescents is the attempt to get children to learn from their elders. I let myself be coerced into having sex earlier than I wanted to, despite my mother urging me not to repeat her mistakes. Eight years later, I found myself giving the same lecture to my little sister, warning her against my OWN mistakes. Does that approach ever work? I doubt it. These lectures can even drive our loved ones away. And yet we continue to make these desperate pleas for our children to be cautious during a time of life characterised by startling physical changes and raging hormones.

Still, adolescents are perpetually engaging in behaviours that adults wish they wouldn't. It seems to be inevitable. Thus the origin of the Rumspringa; in the Amish faith, adolescents are granted some leeway while they make their way down the challenging path to adulthood. At the end of the Rumspringa, if one chooses to join the Amish faith, they are held to much stricter standards. As Bones pointed out in tonight's episode, the Amish faith has an 85% retention rate. Something to consider.

I think Cam settled on the right approach to teen sex when she told Michelle to wait "as long as you want to." As an intensely personal topic, the decision on when to have sex must also be personal.

NCIS S07E02

Poor Ziva!

She spent the entire episode apologising and hoping that she could be with the team again. She wasn't at her funniest or most scathing, but she was vulnerable and that was important. It can be extremely difficult for a strong person to submit to the judgment of another, but it's absolutely necessary to make yourself vulnerable that way in order to establish connections with the people you care about. The defining moment for me was when Gibbs said, "I know," and Ziva responded, "The point is, now I do too." What she really did throughout this episode was to say, "You knew better than I did. I was wrong."

It's a hell of a hard thing to do. But it's also incredibly important to validate the other people in your life this way. It's not enough just to change your mind - you have to be completely open and honest with someone, and tell them that you've come to understand their point of view.

Abby did that too, in the midst of railing at Ziva for not trusting Tony. Even though she was yelling at Ziva, she also admitted that maybe what Ziva had done was understandable, and therefore forgivable.

In the end, Ziva had to bare her soul to Gibbs in a desperate attempt to prove that she trusted him. That turned out to be what he needed in order to trust her again. The payoff for Ziva wasn't just getting her job back, it was getting a family. I think that's worth a little soul-baring.

House S06E02

Okay, so House wasn't completely "fixed" by his time on the ward, and he now has to find a way of coping with his physical pain that will keep him from turning back to Vicodin. Thus, despite the interesting question of whether or not self-diagnosis via the mechanism of web research is helpful, to me this episode was about outlets.

What's an outlet? For the purposes of this entry, any activity that allows us to channel negative thoughts and emotions in a direction that is creative rather than destructive. To be successful as an outlet, an activity must be ongoing, stimulating and satisfying.

One outlet, particularly prominent in this episode (though not discussed directly), is sex. As an act of physical release and of emotional connection, sex provides an excellent outlet. In conversation, the topic of sex can either increase or defuse tension. A blatant example of the first was Thirteen offering to tell "the story" about her roommate at Sarah Lawrence. The episode was rife with examples of the second - I only wish I had kept track of the number of "balls" jokes tonight.

The outlet suggested by Dr. Nolan is a hobby. House decides to join Wilson at his cooking class, and turns out to be a fabulous chef. The reason for his success at cooking, unfortunately, is the same reason that he ultimately finds cooking unfulfilling. He understands the chemistry of it, so he can figure out what ingredients will contribute to the appropriate balance of bitterness, salt, sweetness, sourness and savoriness, the right amount of piquancy and astringency. Looking at cooking that way, there is no challenge in it for him, and his attention returns to the pain in his leg.

The outlet that House really needs is one which fully engages his mind, challenges him. He finds this towards the end of the episode in (surprise, surprise) a return to diagnostic medicine. He loves solving those endlessly variant puzzles, and it's just possible that he loves helping people too.

Bones S05E02

Great advice from Sweets tonight: be the student! Learning from someone can be a great way to strengthen your relationship with them. Quite aside from the benefits of gaining new information or a new skill, being a student for someone sends a number of valuable messages. It says that you value their knowledge, trust their judgment, share their interests. There is also an element of power in the role of teacher; submitting to another's authority also indicates that you trust them.

These signs are all doubly valuable in a relationship like the one between Bones and Booth. Particularly bright and talented people sometimes avoid anything they aren't good at, attempting to preserve an illusion that they are good at everything. Learning something new inevitably involves uncertainty and even the occasional failure, and failure can be terrifying when you're used to success. Letting someone else see you fail may seem scary, like exposing a crack in your armor. But imperfections are humanizing, and draw people together. If you don't admit to needing support in some area, nobody will ever be able to provide it.

NCIS S07E01

Through most of tonight's season premiere, I was afraid I'd end up with nothing to talk about. Towards the end, however, I was hit with an astounding realisation. Tony Di Nozzo is a prime example of my philosophy of fiction. All of his interpersonal relationships are informed by movies - and he has seen oh-so-many movies.

The case which caught my attention here was the comparison Tony drew between his position (as a prisoner, bound and dosed with truth serum) and the movie True Lies. It was a fairly typical Tony-style movie reference. The details didn't fit exactly, but certain important elements were there, enough to provide a way for him to view the situation (and, in this case, a way to distract his captor for those last few seconds Gibbs needed).

There was another philosophically interesting moment for me tonight. When Ziva was brought in, I was expecting to see a variation on the prisoner's dilemma. Of course, the variation I was expecting was a situation wherein the two prisoners were in love. The twist we actually got led to a much happier ending, and an ending that probably won't result in a disastrous loss of viewers.

It's clear from both these examples that the fictions we apply to reality are most useful if we don't use the entire story. Bits and pieces are the most revealing.

House S06E01

Well, the season premiere of House felt more like a series finale. I'm very curious to see what direction they take next week. Nevertheless, there were a couple of thought-provoking themes in the two-hour special.

The first thing to catch my attention was the array of odd characters on the ward. Throughout the majority of this episode, House acts as the audience's eyes, and when he enters long-term care it is immediately apparent that he's the Normal One. I think many people experience this feeling when they join any group tacetly designated as "different." It doesn't matter if I'm different too - I'm not NEARLY as odd as THOSE people. This is an understandable tendency. Any person's conception of "normal" is necessarily focused on his or her own identity.

And yet, understandable or not, labeling yourself as the Normal One can have disastrous consequences. It might make you look at a group of the "different" - perhaps doctors, celebrities, the wealthy - as superior, making you doubt your own worth. More often, though, it will make you look at a group of the "different" - the mentally ill, the poor, Trekkies - with pity. Pity is nothing but thinly-veiled condescension.

Dr. House is known for his condescending attitude, but on the ward he gets a painful lesson in the value of the "different," in this case different medical disciplines, when his disregard for psychiatry has some disastrous consequences. This brings me to my second topic: Freedom Master.

House, in his desire to lash out against the establishment, tried to take Steve (also called Freedom Master) out of his depression by convincing him that he WAS, in fact, gifted with superpowers. It worked. The deliriously happy Steve leapt out of the parking garage and ended up in hospital.

The point to note here is that the pursuit of happiness is not always congruent with the pursuit of a happy life. One brief happy moment may not be worth all the pain that follows, and no, nobody can do everything. We may not be able to accurately foresee the long-term consequences of our actions... but it's worth taking a guess. Part of being Homo sapiens sapiens, right?

Bones S05E01

It's funny, sometimes, what elements of a story have the greatest impact on us. For me, the single most poignant action in the entire hour of the Bones season premiere, was Booth kissing Brennan on the top of the head.

Nothing says "I will protect you" quite like a kiss right on the top of the head. I don't know where the feeling of security comes from... maybe it's because the body thinks, "Way up there? That must be someone big," and so we're willing to let ourselves be taken care of. Maybe something special is communicated through the crown chakra. Maybe it's something about all those blood vessels the scalp has. Whatever the reason, I find it immensely reassuring to be kissed there, and I know I'm not the only one.

Kissing someone on the top of the head can be a simple but powerful way of expressing that you care for the person. Make sure you know how someone will react before you go kissing them, of course. Taken the wrong way, it might be viewed as either condescending or simply icky.

A Project of Questionable Value

When I was in grade 6, my teacher accused me of reading too much. Back then I sometimes heard people refer to my habit as "escapism." Maybe I didn't like my environment at the time, but I hold that I've gained far more from reading than anyone ever gave me credit for.

Fantasy and science fiction are often derided as nothing more than unicorns and spaceships that take the reader far away to a land that's easier to deal with. If that was the case, the connotations of the term "escapism" would be richly deserved. But what if those unicorns are vicious, and those spaceships crash?

Novels, movies, comic books, they're all full of problems. Even if they aren't problems that could possibly occur in the real world, they are real problems because of the most important element of any story worth telling... the characters.

Read ten books and you'll meet a hundred new people. If the books are written well, you'll care about those people. They will seem real to you. And that's not a delusion, it's a tool. Watching how the characters interact will always tell you something about how people work because every character, no matter how outlandish, originally sprang from the mind of a real person. The more characters you meet, the more you'll have to hold up to a new acquaintance when you wonder how he or she will behave. I think for every individual there is a character somewhere to identify with. It will never be exact, but it's a way of seeing. A way of understanding.

As the current television season starts, I find I'm drawn to more and more shows. Character-driven shows. My intention is to blog about the points in each that stand out to me as real for one reason or another. Maybe someone else, somewhere, will start looking at fiction as a lens, too. Maybe, just maybe, it'll help them understand someone else a little better.