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[labellementeuse]

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. I did not see that coming. oh god, I'm going to miss him so much, oh my god. *crying* Hold me, someone?

So much I loved about this - my favourite scene would have to be the one with Hodgins and Cam which was pretty incredible. I did think the funeral joke at the end was pretty cheap but I'm guessing that's a consequence of the shape of the season - they had to deal with 15's cliffhanger and move on quickly.

God, I'm still in shock, I just don't believe this. Man.

Comments

[kitsunerei88]

T___T I'm upset. Like, I was hoping that Zack would come back as a minor character (like Caroline), but Eric Millegan sent out an email to the newsletter list apologizing about not being able to say anything earlier (he'd promised) and saying he has been auditioning for new things over the past two months, so who knows T_____T But Zack was always my favourite character, so I'm really upset! Still, I don't think even the actor knows anything for certain, so maybe we'll be lucky and get some Zack cameos in the psych ward?

I thought the bathtub scene was gratuitous and completely unnecessary. I mean, it worked, and it was funny, but I didn't think it was a great scene altogether. It was unnecessary and seemed like it was pandering to the fans. Like the "alternate universe" episode people have been talking about for S4.

I think the whole thing could have been worked out much better, but of course the writers strike and so on . . . T_____T And I think a lot of people are having trouble grasping "Why" for Zack, so while it DOES make sense (he's naive, and he's never really felt comfortable in his own skin, and he always wanted to do something significant . . . or that's the feeling I got, especially after the Iraq thing), it definitely could have been explained better.

I want to see how S4 works up though, because I want to see characters further reactions and the changed team dynamic. I will be EXTREMELY aggravated if they don't work up on this and just move on as if nothing has happened.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

so maybe we'll be lucky and get some Zack cameos in the psych ward?

*crosses fingers* While Zack has never been my favourite, he's such an important part of the squints dynamic for me - actually for me to choose a Bones favourite would be tough, because they're all precious to me, especially the core five that have been with us since S1. So I agree with everyone who thinks this is utterly shattering, even though he's not my special thing.

I'm spoiler-free for Bones so I can't comment on S4. Broadly, I would agree that certain scenes in this episode felt out-of-synch with the rest of it - the bath scene and the funeral scene, specifically. Crucially, these were the scenes that connected it to the previous episode. Someone I was reading said, and I think I agree, that ep 15 may have been conceived of as the cliffhanger season ender, and then when they got ep 16 as a proper conclusion, they had to wrap up 15 sufficiently as well as do ep 16. So I think the ep did suffer from that.

In re: people understanding the "why" for Zack, I both agree and disagree. yahtzee63 has a post here (http://yahtzee63.livejournal.com/361394.html) about the Whys of Zack for this episode and I think it's very good, especially the way she notes how Zack's personality, despite theoretically being utterly rational, is constantly being influenced by people around him, especially Bones and Hodgins but also people like Cam - in some ways I think the evidence of each of our characters is present in Zack's actions here: Angela's encouragement to be in touch with emotions, the bigger picture, Booth's influence to do something right and important, Jack and Temperance's contributions were of course adequately outlined in the show... Cam's a little harder to pinpoint. I would like to tie it into the way she behaves maternally as well as boss-like towards him - always in the mode of mother-knows-best rather than cuddly-mother. I can't quite hook it in.

I don't think they could possibly move on from this barefaced: they made a character decision to write him out (Eric Millegan didn't want to leave) which means they must have made it consciously and I hope not as a cheap easy solution...

[kitsunerei88]

I mean, I love Hodgins and Angela and Sweets too (<== a bit of a minor character lover), but Zack was always my favourite. ^^''

I think this season really, really suffered from the writer's strike. This season of Bones had, originally, much larger ambitions - they were going to spend more time on Zack's time in Iraq, and Booth's family, and of course there were going to be more twists in the Gormagon plotline and then I think they were going to finally resolve The Grave Digger, but overall, I think they did pretty well with what they had.

I actually understand why Zack did it, because in some odd way I kind of connect with the character. I'm lame like that; Zack's intelligence has always set him apart from the others, even at the Jeffersonian, and he has always wanted to fit in, I think. In some ways, I think he trusts their judgment better than his own (S1, during the security interviews - "I think I would ask Brennan or Angela first"). As for Cam, I watched a couple behind-the-scenes features on the S2 boxset, and Eric mentioned how pleased he was to have more Zack and Cam moments, so I'm actually thinking that they were toying with the idea of them as a couple . . . though I might just be insane, of course. And Cam's line "I knew from the moment I met him that he'd cause me pain" fits in with that picture as well.

I certainly don't think they will move on without confronting this fairly extensively (if they're going to sacrifice my favourite character, they damn well better use it to develop the others characters more!) I'm just being paranoid.

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

I sincerely doubt they're not going to develop/dwell on it - one of the things about this episode that felt very odd to me is that there was no follow-up on Bones shooting Pam Noonan, which in the usual scheme of things would have merited a scene or two of discussion. Zach leaving for the reasons he did is _huge_ - look how much of the first ep was about Bones's unwillingness to replace him - and the emotional continuity is a big part of this show. It'll be there.

Hey, if nothing else, the new Squint is going to have "Did you know the last person to have this job turned into a serial killer's assistant?"anxiety. :P

I really do feel with this ep that it was like three or four eps - the fake funeral/follow-up to Booth nearly dying would normally be a whole ep, the finding the bones in limbo thing feels like the subplot to another, and then the explosion/revelation of Zach a third. I think they really did just take their outlines for the rest of the season and compress them down, which, while it got some good stuff in, had its problems. For instance, they normally would have had time for another five minutes or so of emotional run-down at the end.