Feeling: shocked, but coping

Thinking: What I'm always thinking.

Ok, where should I start? I've been on message boards all day, talking about the ep. last night. The horrible ep. Truthfully, I have been able to come to grips with it a little better. I am by no means ok, and I don't know if I truly ever will be. I mean that in the sense that of course I'll be able to move on, but I'll always wish it hadn't happened that way. However, it did.

I guess I should say what "it" is.

Alright, well first off, I was wrong about Booth faking his death to catch Gormogon. He faked it to catch some fugitive whom we don't know. The guy would not come out of hiding if he knew Booth was alive, but he was also an idiot because when he thought Booth was dead, he decided to go to his funeral to find out if it was really true. Of course it wasn't and Booth caught the guy.

Anyway, on to the worst thing.

Alright, this whole time I am thinking two things. I am thinking that the person who works at the Jeffersonian is actually Gormogon, and I'm thinking that this person is evil, that is they chose to be that way. I did not factor in that G has an apprentice, or that he likes to manipulate people into doing his bidding. With that, you can probably see where this is going, that is if you know the show. Regardless of whether it makes a whole lot of sense, the point is true. Who, of the main characters, could possibly be manipulated into thinking that helping G was right, and not be evil? Yeah, that's right. :,(

So, like I say I am trying to cope. It's been more than a day now, so I'm pretty much over the depression stage, but still in the slightly shocked stage.

Oh, I forgot to say what happened...

Ok, I don't remember all the details, but basically Bones received a package that contained a mandible with "fake" teeth that were supposedly homemade. Zack and Hodgins were going to do this experiment to try to determine how the teeth were made. Zack had his hands in those gloves that fit into a glass wall, for putting things like chemicals that could possibly hurt a persons face into things. So Zack was going to put some chemicals into this container, then Hodgins asked if he could do it and Zack said he would do it. Hodgins said since when did you become the master (foreshadowing, in a way :( ), and me the student? Then Zack says, "When I became the indisputable King of the lab", but I don't know what he was referring to. I didn't know that the King of the lab could ever be indisputable. Anyway, though, so Zack put the chemicals into the container, but instead of doing what it was supposed to do (that is, if it was the right chemicals), it exploded. It exploded against the glass, right where Zack's hands were. I can tell you that what followed was my Absolute LEAST favorite moment so far on this show. Zack is alive, but basically he got severe 2nd and 3rd degree burns. It's possible they may heal to the point where he could use them a little, after many skin grafts and therapy, etc., but Zack was saying that he would probably have to get prosthetics. yeah, so my god, that made me feel terrible.

The show was going along and they kept alluding to people. Sweets said it was Hodgins, and Cam said it was Sweets. They were both wrong, of course.

Hodgins found some evidence that linked to an area near his house and he went to show it to Cam. She looked at him in a suspicious way and he said something about how there are a lot of other people living near there and then he asked why he would show her that if he was G. She said something about how he knew they would find out he hid it, so he might hope that showing her that would take suspicion off of him.

Well after that, obviously Hodgins realized who it was. I mean he knew it wasn't him, so logically, who else could it be? Who else lived that close to him, and also worked at the Jeffersonian and had access to all the materials needed for the plans. Yeah.

Hodgins went to visit Angela in the hospital and she said Zack didn't want any pain medication. He said he didn't want any because it gave him bad dreams. Then he started to say something about the experiment and Hodgins pressed the button for the pain medication and Zack fell asleep. I think he was probably so exhausted and in so much pain by then, that he fell into a deep sleep and didn't have any bad dreams.

The reason that Hodgins did this is obviously because he knew that Zack was going to incriminate himself. I don't know if it was because Zack wasn't thinking clearly because of the pain he was in, or if part of him realized what he did, but he was going to say something that would give himself away and Hodgins did not want it to go like that. He didn't want Zack to confess to something like that with Angela there watching over him, just seeing him as vulnerable Zack. I'm sure he knew that someone would find out, but he wanted him to have a little more time where people didn't know what he had done. It was really a very touching thing. Of course it was supposed to be set up that you thought Hodgins was doing that because Zack was going to incriminate him, but I knew that was not the case. I still didn't suspect Zack, but I knew it wasn't Hodgins, so I did not see him as trying to quiet Zack for his own gain.

In all honesty, I was in absolute complete denial. Maybe if I had thought about why Zack could've been involved (I'll get to that), I would have realized he was the only one it could have been (if it had to be someone we know), but it really did not occur to me. It wasn't until it was said, actually stated by Bones that Zack was a part of it, that I understood, well I didn't completely understand, but in the sense of understanding that Zack was involved with G.

So, Booth and Bones went to the hospital to talk to Zack. Cam was there with him and when she saw B and B, and realized what was going on, she said "I didn't see that coming". Yeah, Cam, I hear you.

Bones went and stood beside Zack and he knew they found evidence linking him to G. Apparently the mandible did not have fake teeth. Zack had taken the canine teeth from sculls in limbo (limbo is the nickname for the area of the Jeffersonian where skeletons that need to be identified are kept), and put them in the mandible. He knew the teeth weren't fake, but he wanted to do the experiment so that the explosion would cause a diversion and G could get the skeleton (originally a silver skeleton that G was slowly replacing with the parts of people he'd killed) out of the vault where it was being kept. So, it turned out that Zack was the apprentice. He was manipulated and brain washed to believe that killing a few corrupt people in the government was the right and logical thing to do to save the other people in the country, that it was logical to sacrifice the one to save the many, so to speak, and that no one life was worth more than the lives of the overall collective. However, this logic was faulty, because Zack has always regarded his friends and family as more important and worth more than the lives of others. He wouldn't sacrifice his friends for the overall good, which of course was not actually the overall good, Zack was just led to believe that it was.

Zack knew that the chemicals he put in the container would cause an explosion. He knew that his hands would be severely damaged and he would be in great pain. He could have let Hodgins mix the chemicals, but he didn't. He sacrificed himself to save Hodgins. Bones pointed this out to him and when she did he had this look of revelation on his face and a tear rolled down his cheek. God, just thinking about it is making me cry! He realized she was right and that he shouldn't have done what he did.

Zack told Booth where G lived and Booth shot G (go Booth!)

Later, Caroline said that Zack would go to a mental hospital, rather than a prison. Thank god, because Zack could not be in a prison. God, if he wasn't screwed up enough with all this stuff! People were questioning how he could have been swayed so easily, but the writers were going to address what he had been through and they never got the time, what with the strike. My understanding is that it was about some things that happened to him in Iraq. He should never have gone and I feel so bad that he had to go through anything traumatic. Hart was saying that Zack may make another appearance, and if he does, I hope they address some of those issues. Why am saying this so casually? If he can't be a regular, he better make an appearance, several appearances!

Back to the ep, Caroline also said that he stabbed the lobbyist in the heart. God, it is so hard to believe that Zack did something like that, but I know that he was not really in his right mind. He might not actually be crazy, but his logic was scewed and Zack, a good, but naive person, was screwed up by an evil person.

I still love Zack, just as much as I did before this. He is still a wonderful person. He did a very bad thing, but for what he was led to believe was a good reason. He also showed that he is human and still has compassion, by sacrificing himself for Hodgins.

He needs to be on the show again, even if just for a few eps, but I also think that the other people need to talk about him and not just in one ep. Every once in a while, they need to talk about him and mention that they went to visit him, or something like that. They all love him so much and he is like the younger brother figure to all of them, the one who needs to be protected. They will always look out for him.

I am going to continue to watch the show because I love the other characters and I want to see what happens with them and course I am also hoping that we will eventually see Zack again. I really hope this story gets fleshed out more, because we need to see and understand what happened for Zack to get to the point where he would actually accept what G said to him and for Zack to do what he did. The writers say we can use our imaginations, but the problem is everyone's imagination is different, so there's no concrete story that we can agree or focus on when discussing why this happened.

Oh, apparently Eric didn't know about this until 2 months ago (right after the writer's strike). Then in an interview someone asked if he was Gormogon and he said no, but he said nothing about the apprentice. Everyone was thinking so much about G, and not considering the apprentice and I think it threw a lot of people off. Obviously I understand why Eric could not be completely straight with us. There was stuff that TPTB wouldn't let him give away. I am frustrated to know that it was not Eric's decision to leave. That is another reason why I am really hoping we see Zack again, I want Eric to be able to spend more time with the people he's worked with for the past 3 seasons.

I watched Superhero in the Alley today at 10. I love that episode. I wondered if it would be weird seeing Zack in an older ep. I didn't feel like it would be, because I didn't see him differently in pictures or fan vids, but I wasn't sure. However, it was not weird, in fact it was very nice seeing him where he is supposed to be and the way he is in his element. I will always watch re runs of Bones.

One more thing, near the end of Pain in the Heart, everyone was looking at a box of Zack's things. Everything in the box was something that had been given to him by the other people. There was a trophy that said "King of the Lab" that Came gave to him, a Karma Sutra book that Hodgins gave him , so he would stop asking him sex questions and a harmonica that Booth gave him before Zack went to Iraq. Bones was upset because she never gave him a gift, but then Booth showed her a paper that Zack had put in the box. It was the acceptance letter that Bones had given Zack, saying that she was glad to accept him as her student in Forensic Anthropology at the Jeffersonian. That is what she gave Zack and that was as important to him as any gift. It was a really nice moment in the ep. Everyone was talking about what happened and what could have been done and Cam said something like "It's his own fault, he's an adult..." or something to that effect. Sweets said that she didn't really mean it and you could tell she didn't.