Bones Season 3: ''Pain in the Heart'' (Gormogon's apprentice)

Season 3, Episode 15 ‘‘Pain in the Heart’’ SPOILERS, obviously.
We’re going through Bones on Netflix right now, which we like for the way it faithfully honors nerds. But did that episode seriously just happen? Zack Addy is Gormogon’s apprentice? For reals? Did they seriously just remove my favorite character from the show in an epically stupid plot twist?

I give them credit… a tiny, microscopic amount of credit… for not pulling an Edward Norton on us and having Zack be some kind of secret horrific monster plotting for everyone’s destruction. But…really? I’m supposed to believe this kid just decided mass murder in the name of secret societies was just compelling enough rationally that he would compromise his career and reputation for a cannibal?

Please, someone explain this to me. I must be missing something.

And I’m supposed to believe this happened right - and I mean in the very same episode as - a Booth death fake-out?

I want Zack back! :mad:

I’m sorry- that episode actually never happened. Therefore, I refuse to discuss it.

You know, I actually thought it was a clever episode right up until the end. I was thinking, ‘‘Wow, look how Gormogon has made them all suspicious of one another and how they’re tearing themselves apart when in reality there’s no way any of them could be involved…’’

If they had to write Zack off the show, he could have died in that explosion. ‘‘Oh my god, look where our baseless assumptions have gotten us! Let us never mistrust one another again!’’

Really, it was that easy.

It’s not even that they had to… they did it just to fuck with the audience. The Bones producers wanted a huge surprise for Gormagon and the only way to do that was to make him one of the main cast members. Zack was picked at random.

You forgot how that episode also began with unmitigated (unrelated) stupidity.

ETA - IIRC, this is what happens when writers go on strike. The funny thing is, I know several people who have only seen that episode, of all episodes! And that whole Gormagon thing had been so cool and interesting up until then!

I pretty much gave up on the show after that. I’ll still watch reruns or new episodes if there’s absolutely nothing else opposite it.

During the writer’s strike I was pretty pissed at the writers, but I eventually came around. You gotta do what you gotta do and the writers thought they were being shafted in the paycheck department. I guess I can deal with fewer TV shows for a few months.

But the Gormagon finale was such a giant middle finger to the fans and the cast that I became pissed at the writers all over again. Fuck 'em, they never should have went on strike. They don’t deserve more money if this is what they’re going to do when the strike is over.

That’s what I meant by the Booth death fake-out thing. But at least in that case I knew it was a fake-out because it’s an old episode and I’m aware Booth still appears regularly in current ones. It was stupid, but no stupider than countless other TV shows who have done the same stupid thing.

So I guess the question I really have is whether this show is going to suck from now on, or whether this was just one of those random terrible episodes that inevitably happens.

Search Eric Millegan on YouTube (I can’t access it from work). Eric is the actor who portrays Zack Addy on Bones, I think he was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder pretty soon after he got the role.
I think the Gormagon story arc was supposed to go on for a lot longer but as Justin Bailey mentioned that was the year of the writers’ strike, so they had to wrap up the season pretty quickly and deal with Zack having less of a role.

For the rest of the seasons ithe quality kind of seesaws. Last year was pretty bad, but this year it’s better.

It’s never that painfully stupid again. Some of the later episodes aren’t great, but if you enjoyed the first three seasons (barring this episode of course), you’ll enjoy the rest of it.

Bones is more one-offs than arc-based episodes anyway, so there’ll probably never be a clear marking point of “now it sucks!”

We have just recently gotten into Bones on Netflix as well (just started Season 5). I do wonder how much of that had to do with Eric Millegan’s bipolar. Remember the end of Season 2 also had him leaving for war, but then he was back again. It just seems like he/the writers/someone, wasn’t sure of him being able to come back at least one other time.

Without spoiling too much, I will say that you haven’t seen the last of him. And as a very minor spoiler:

the thing that bothered me the most about this story-line is resolved in another episode

but I won’t say any more about that.

Also, on a tip from someone, I went back and rewatched the episode (season 2 I think) “The Woman in the Car”, where they are all interviewed by the top secret lady. Wish I could find the exact quote! She does question him on whether or not someone could give him a logical reasoned plan on giving up the secrets to the country or something like that. Not that I think it was a foreshadowing done on purpose, but it does give us an idea that he could be persuaded to do something like this.

I miss Zach too, and, while I like one of the ways he was replaced, I don’t like the other.

Sweets grew on me pretty quickly, but I dislike the majority of the interns that circle through.

Yeah, don’t give up. Keep watching. You will get a tiny amount of closure later.

However (and I STILL want Zack back) an amusing story line develops where Bones goes through many interns and some of them are QUITE good and QUITE quirky.

Don’t give up.

What a coincidence - I just saw this episode the other day. I had been spoiled (thanks, Dad), so I knew who the apprentice was, but it was all so…sudden. No hints, no foreshadowing. It was just weird.

I guess this is what happens when there’s a writer’s strike: sudden rush to finish up the storyline.

Zach was my favorite character. Sweets is great too but I think there was room for both of them.

I was spoiled about Zack being the apprentice before I started watching the show, so I had a bit of a different perspective on the character up to that point. Instead of seeing Zack as “cute, cluess guy,” from the beginning I was seeing him as “high-functioning sociopath.” The character worked pretty well both ways.

And of course we were all like, ‘‘OMG, it’s Sam Weir all grown up!’’ Yeah, we like Sweets too. Enough to overlook all the blatantly unprofessional actions he takes as a psychologist.

Zack will always be King of the Lab though.

This season Sweets is much more mature and professional. Tempe and Booth take him more seriously.

Yeah, the show has never been that bad since then, partly because, hey, you can only really reach for the stars so many times in your life. I believe that may be the worst episode of any show ever, at any time in any place in any part of the space-time continuum, particularly with regards to its treatment of the fans.

Look, the show is not good. It has never been and never will be good. But please don’t judge it by that episode!

I actually liked the episode, especially the way that Brennan talked Zach down. And I thought that the later episode where Booth is trapped on a boat with a ghost was a thousand times worse, although it, too, was mitigated by a later episode.

They did made it minimally better with a subsequent episode where Zach escaped the institution to help with a case and the real truth of the Gormegon incident came out with a talk to Sweets. I kind of thought it was going to lead to a return of Zach, but no such luck. Can’t say I’m too fond of these rotating interns.