Seeley Booth

Seeley Booth
First appearance	"Pilot"
Created by	Hart Hanson
Portrayed by	David Boreanaz
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	FBI Special Agent
Family	Jared Booth (brother)
Children	Parker Booth (son)

Seeley Booth is a fictional character in the American television series, Bones. He is portrayed by David Boreanaz and is a protagonist of the series along with Dr. Temperance Brennan, portrayed by Emily Deschanel.

Brief character history

Seeley Booth is a former Army sniper with the Rangers who is currently an agent with the FBI. He frequently consults with Dr. Brennan, whom he nicknames Bones in the first episode, and her team, acting as a liaison between the FBI and the Jeffersonian Institute. When it comes to solving crime, Booth has a very different approach from Dr. Brennan and her team, preferring a more human, interpersonal and intuitive set of methods. While he finds the information Dr. Brennan and her team uncover valuable, he often finds their means overly convoluted and restrictive, and adds his intuition and knowledge of people on top of it — something that clashes with Dr. Brennan's hard, objective and analytical approach which is mindful of its own limits. While Booth tries to keep personal and professional life strictly separate, aspects of his personal life leak through. He is a religious man by nature and a practicing Catholic, seeking to atone for the lives he took as a sniper through his work in the FBI . While in the Army he was apparently tortured, leaving him with emotional and physical scars. He was romantically entangled with a blonde lawyer named Tessa. He also has a four-year old son named Parker with his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca. Originally, the communication between Booth and Rebecca seemed hostile, and she denied him visitation out of spite; however it was later revealed that is not the case, and relations between them have dramatically improved. He has also mentioned having a brother named Jared. It was also revealed at the end of Season 1 that Booth is (still) recovering from a gambling addiction. Booth rekindled a relationship with Dr. Camille Saroyan when she joined the Jeffersonian team. The relationship ended after an intense case, with Booth asserting that on-the-job romantic relationships endangered the team in high-pressure situations. While Booth and Brennan maintain a professional relationship and friendship, there is also the beginning of a romantic tension within their relationship.^[1] Particularly, Booth is shown to be jealous of Temperance's romantic relationships in "Two Bodies In The Lab" (1x15) and "The Woman In Limbo" (1x22). Booth once arrested Brennan for shooting a murderer who was trying to set her on fire. Even though she was not convicted, she was still charged with a felony, which meant that her original application for a concealed weapon was denied. In the second season she was allowed a permit.

During the episode "The Killer in the Concrete" Booth was kidnapped and tortured by a West Virginia mobster and was rescued by Brennan and Max. At the end of the second season, Booth agreed to be Hodgins's best man in his wedding to Angela after Zack refused. It is unclear whether Booth knew that he was the second choice, but it became moot when the wedding was called off.

Characterization

Booth does not socially fit in with the collection of "geeks" (whom he and his FBI colleagues refer to as "squints") that make up Dr. Brennan's team. Booth fills out the stereotype of the "all American boy" — now all grown up — very well. He is world-wise, socially at ease with people, and apparently at ease with women (a contrast to the humorous social bumbling sometimes exhibited by some of Dr. Brennan's team). Booth is a fan of Classic rock and Arena rock music. He has expressed great affection for the group Foreigner and poked fun at Bones for her interest in new world, jazz music. He also likes the band Poco and sang their song, Keep on Trying with Bones. Booth is known to be fiercely protective of both Brennan and his partnership with her. When questioned about functioning on his job without her, he instantly replied "I'm with Bones, all the way." When her life was in danger, he went out of his way to be with her and protect her himself. Later, when Bones was kidnapped, Booth (despite having recently barely survived a deadly blast intended for Bones, and still wounded) took part in the rescue mission to find her. And in perhaps Booth's most famous example to date, he went and found a criminal who put a hit out on Bones and threatened the man himself. Booth stuck a gun in the criminal's mouth and said "If anything happens to her, I will find you and I will kill you. I won't think twice about it." Booth also seems to get on quite well with Angela and Hodgins, but finds Zack's cold naivety a little disconcerting, to the extent that he leads Zack to believe that the fact that Booth rarely acknowledges his existence is a sign of respect, so that he doesn't have to talk to him.

References