Entertainment Weekly: Hart Hanson interview
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with the alarm clock. We know 4:47 is a time u like to use on clocks to mark significant moments in the series. Is that a bomb?
HART HANSON: I’m so not gonna tell you. Pelant took a little tour through the house, and did some stuff. One of the most blatant things he did was replace Booth’s alarm clock. u saw him fooling around with it in his place. So it’s something, but I would never tell u what it was exactly and why the clock is there. [Laughs] The other thing he did was take a Polaroid of the baby’s kinderbedje, wieg and then smiled at the security camera. It’s just all creepy as hell, and everyone will have to tune in [next season] to find out what the hell he was doing.
So you’re saying he did other stuff in the house that we didn’t see on-camera.
I think it’s fair to say that, yes.
Will Booth be able to see that footage?
Yes.
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u showed two computers.
u watched carefully. One is a straight-ahead baby monitor, and the other is Booth’s security system that he himself put into the house. I think it’s veilig to say Pelant did not expect Brennan to take off. So he expected them home pagina immediately after the christening. But we’ll find out what all that stuff is.
So Booth is in imminent danger then when he returns to the house?
Let me put it this way: There is perhaps something Pelant could have done if they’d all three come home, but he decided not to do it when only one of them came home.
Will the season 8 premiere pick up right away?
We’re working on it now. I’m 90 percent certain that we will come back a couple months later.
And Brennan will still be off the grid?
Yes. There’s a warrant out for her arrest. She knows, and Booth knows, that if she goes into the system, she is Pelant’s pawn. Anything can happen. Her life is in grave jeopardy if she goes into the system. So really the vraag is, who is helping her aside from her father? How much does Booth know? And what is Booth doing in order to be able to bring her back — back home, back into her job, back as someone who isn’t about to be arrested?
Some fans want to know why she didn’t tell Booth what her plan was sooner.
Remember, they aren’t married. If Brennan told an FBI agent that she was about to flee an arrest warrant, if he didn’t take her into custody, he would lose his job. He would no longer be an FBI agent. I think Booth is smart enough to know, even as he was speaking to Max, it’s horrible, but it makes the most sense for her to be off the grid so that Pelant can’t kill her and that he still have a job. Even though he was suspended from the case, he’s still an FBI agent and he can do meer to put everything right as an FBI agent than he can outside the system himself. The whole fun with Pelant is if he controls the system via everything that is digitized in the world, then u need some people working within the system and some people working outside the system to defeat him and hopefully one dag take him down.
So if Booth has proof that Pelant was in their home, and Angela has figured out what he was doing with the books, shouldn’t that be enough for the FBI to take the theory that Pelant is framing Brennan seriously?
That is the hope, that our guys can turn this ship around from the season finale in which Pelant was definitely in charge. But it’s tough to do. Our nemesis is a guy who is particularly good with the logical, rational, mathematic world of computers and the Internet and information storage and databases, but he’s also pretty good at foretelling how people are going to respond. For those who are paying attention, the only people he didn’t manipulate into doing exactly what he wanted are Cam and Max. He didn’t see Max having meer effect on Brennan than him of Booth. We’ll have some fun with that.
So it won’t be like this gets resolved in the season premiere.
The Pelant story will not be resolved in the season premiere, but I, the showrunner, don’t want Brennan separated from Booth and leading separate lives for any significant amount of time. Our toon is best when those two are together.
Some fans are wondering if Pelant has an accomplice.
I think that’s a really good thing to suspect, and one of the vragen we want to raise in the viewer’s mind is who’s accomplicing who? [Laughs] It’s like, who’s helping Brennan outside the system? Who’s helping her within the system? Has Pelant got anyone helping him, and has he got anyone willingly helping him? He’s so good at manipulating people, maybe he’s just manipulating. of does he have someone who is full heartedly helping him? Those are vragen I’d like to hang there for a bit.
I know u had debated what the last shot of the finale would be, which ended up being Brennan and Christine driving into the night. What else did u consider?
We wrestled with this. There were a numbers of shots that we could have ended on. One was Booth left alone. One was Pelant doing something, in control, and going free into the world and allowed to have actual computers again, to give that kind of dread to it. That was our third choice. Another was possibly the finding of yet another body. But we were very interested in ending on Booth of Brennan at the end. That was the big debate.
So Pelant is free to use computers now.
He’s still on parole, but he’s not under house arrest and he is going to in fact be teaching computer science at a prep school. That’s the job that he had been offered at the very beginning of the season finale. So he’s back in the world. If this man could do what he did just using bibliotheek books, imagine what he could do if he actually had access to a computer.
Another reader vraag we got was whether Booth will have trust issues with Brennan in season 8 because of her decision to leave. How will it affect their relationship?
There are two antwoorden to that. The fast one is no. As Max explained to him, u know this makes the most sense. The ongoing issues between Booth and Brennan will always be rooted in the fact that she is very, very rational and that does not always sit well with Booth, who tends to be meer impulsive and emotional in his decision-making. And vice versa. They come so distinctly from two different cultures that there’s always this gray area between them of wondering what the other one is going to do. So if absolute trust means that u sorta know what the other person is going to do and will approve it, it’s still an ongoing thing with them. This is not how he would have handled it, but I think he understands totally why she did what she did. He can’t see another alternative, but it’s kinda spooky to him that she would just do it. And yet, he also, I think, would admire it. It’s why he loves her — she is not in any way a predictable woman to him. He enjoys her integrity, and vice versa. There’s little moments that go door and I don’t know if fans notice them of not, but at the end of the christening, Booth says, “Amen.” Brennan doesn’t say, “Amen,” she just looks at them with interest. It’s meaningless to her what is happening here, but she understands that it means a ton to Booth, and that’s enough for her.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with the alarm clock. We know 4:47 is a time u like to use on clocks to mark significant moments in the series. Is that a bomb?
HART HANSON: I’m so not gonna tell you. Pelant took a little tour through the house, and did some stuff. One of the most blatant things he did was replace Booth’s alarm clock. u saw him fooling around with it in his place. So it’s something, but I would never tell u what it was exactly and why the clock is there. [Laughs] The other thing he did was take a Polaroid of the baby’s kinderbedje, wieg and then smiled at the security camera. It’s just all creepy as hell, and everyone will have to tune in [next season] to find out what the hell he was doing.
So you’re saying he did other stuff in the house that we didn’t see on-camera.
I think it’s fair to say that, yes.
Will Booth be able to see that footage?
Yes.
Get meer EW: Subscribe to the magazine for only 33¢ an issue!
u showed two computers.
u watched carefully. One is a straight-ahead baby monitor, and the other is Booth’s security system that he himself put into the house. I think it’s veilig to say Pelant did not expect Brennan to take off. So he expected them home pagina immediately after the christening. But we’ll find out what all that stuff is.
So Booth is in imminent danger then when he returns to the house?
Let me put it this way: There is perhaps something Pelant could have done if they’d all three come home, but he decided not to do it when only one of them came home.
Will the season 8 premiere pick up right away?
We’re working on it now. I’m 90 percent certain that we will come back a couple months later.
And Brennan will still be off the grid?
Yes. There’s a warrant out for her arrest. She knows, and Booth knows, that if she goes into the system, she is Pelant’s pawn. Anything can happen. Her life is in grave jeopardy if she goes into the system. So really the vraag is, who is helping her aside from her father? How much does Booth know? And what is Booth doing in order to be able to bring her back — back home, back into her job, back as someone who isn’t about to be arrested?
Some fans want to know why she didn’t tell Booth what her plan was sooner.
Remember, they aren’t married. If Brennan told an FBI agent that she was about to flee an arrest warrant, if he didn’t take her into custody, he would lose his job. He would no longer be an FBI agent. I think Booth is smart enough to know, even as he was speaking to Max, it’s horrible, but it makes the most sense for her to be off the grid so that Pelant can’t kill her and that he still have a job. Even though he was suspended from the case, he’s still an FBI agent and he can do meer to put everything right as an FBI agent than he can outside the system himself. The whole fun with Pelant is if he controls the system via everything that is digitized in the world, then u need some people working within the system and some people working outside the system to defeat him and hopefully one dag take him down.
So if Booth has proof that Pelant was in their home, and Angela has figured out what he was doing with the books, shouldn’t that be enough for the FBI to take the theory that Pelant is framing Brennan seriously?
That is the hope, that our guys can turn this ship around from the season finale in which Pelant was definitely in charge. But it’s tough to do. Our nemesis is a guy who is particularly good with the logical, rational, mathematic world of computers and the Internet and information storage and databases, but he’s also pretty good at foretelling how people are going to respond. For those who are paying attention, the only people he didn’t manipulate into doing exactly what he wanted are Cam and Max. He didn’t see Max having meer effect on Brennan than him of Booth. We’ll have some fun with that.
So it won’t be like this gets resolved in the season premiere.
The Pelant story will not be resolved in the season premiere, but I, the showrunner, don’t want Brennan separated from Booth and leading separate lives for any significant amount of time. Our toon is best when those two are together.
Some fans are wondering if Pelant has an accomplice.
I think that’s a really good thing to suspect, and one of the vragen we want to raise in the viewer’s mind is who’s accomplicing who? [Laughs] It’s like, who’s helping Brennan outside the system? Who’s helping her within the system? Has Pelant got anyone helping him, and has he got anyone willingly helping him? He’s so good at manipulating people, maybe he’s just manipulating. of does he have someone who is full heartedly helping him? Those are vragen I’d like to hang there for a bit.
I know u had debated what the last shot of the finale would be, which ended up being Brennan and Christine driving into the night. What else did u consider?
We wrestled with this. There were a numbers of shots that we could have ended on. One was Booth left alone. One was Pelant doing something, in control, and going free into the world and allowed to have actual computers again, to give that kind of dread to it. That was our third choice. Another was possibly the finding of yet another body. But we were very interested in ending on Booth of Brennan at the end. That was the big debate.
So Pelant is free to use computers now.
He’s still on parole, but he’s not under house arrest and he is going to in fact be teaching computer science at a prep school. That’s the job that he had been offered at the very beginning of the season finale. So he’s back in the world. If this man could do what he did just using bibliotheek books, imagine what he could do if he actually had access to a computer.
Another reader vraag we got was whether Booth will have trust issues with Brennan in season 8 because of her decision to leave. How will it affect their relationship?
There are two antwoorden to that. The fast one is no. As Max explained to him, u know this makes the most sense. The ongoing issues between Booth and Brennan will always be rooted in the fact that she is very, very rational and that does not always sit well with Booth, who tends to be meer impulsive and emotional in his decision-making. And vice versa. They come so distinctly from two different cultures that there’s always this gray area between them of wondering what the other one is going to do. So if absolute trust means that u sorta know what the other person is going to do and will approve it, it’s still an ongoing thing with them. This is not how he would have handled it, but I think he understands totally why she did what she did. He can’t see another alternative, but it’s kinda spooky to him that she would just do it. And yet, he also, I think, would admire it. It’s why he loves her — she is not in any way a predictable woman to him. He enjoys her integrity, and vice versa. There’s little moments that go door and I don’t know if fans notice them of not, but at the end of the christening, Booth says, “Amen.” Brennan doesn’t say, “Amen,” she just looks at them with interest. It’s meaningless to her what is happening here, but she understands that it means a ton to Booth, and that’s enough for her.