Dysfunctional Relationships in Crime Shows: Obsession in Bones & Major Crimes

I greatly dislike the Pelant story line in Bones, mostly because I greatly dislike the "big bad omniscient tech guy" plot. (See "One Good Computer Mastermind on Television.")

However, Pelant is thematically similar to other Bones' villains, namely, he is obsessed. 

In a less eye-rolling way, a number of Bones episodes tackle the problem of obsession: what happens when someone turns life into being all about...

• Coupons
• Cookie jars
• Beauty pageants

In these episodes, the plot isn't about someone wanting more money or more fame--and therefore committing a crime. It is about someone wanting more out of a thing than is justified, a thing that is ordinarily perfectly fine. The beauty pageant episode has a great scene where one mother contradicts Bones' and Booth's fairly negative attitudes. She sees the pageants as harmless: good fun with the possibility of a scholarship. 

Her attitude towards her daughter points the difference between "it's one possible avenue!" and obsession. To her daughter, at the end of rehearsal, she says, "Good focus!" 

In contrast, the obsessed mother in the episode "encouraged" her pubescent daughter to wear a corset and whiten her teeth. She then blamed her child for the result--a child whose frontal lobe hadn't finished forming. For instance, immediately before the crime, the mother got into an argument with her daughter, the victim, over how to end her piano piece. "It seems very silly now," she says. "Now!?" Bones queries.  

These episodes make an excellent point which is often missed by moralists who want to blame the "thing" rather than the behavior. Obsession over anything can ruin a relationship. Even porn, which moralists from Sylvester Graham on have loved to blame (among other things), is rarely the problem. The problem is usually an underlying issue and the obsessive behavior that accompanies the issue. 

In the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Tuxedo Hill," the husband who can't get off the computer argues, "It isn't porn!" His wife is less than impressed. She wants him off the computer.

As Major Crimes illustrates in the extremely funny episode "Cutting Loose," stalking a celebrity (hilariously acted by the late great Luke Perry) can irritate more people than just the celebrity. (See image above.)

Bones very intelligently pinpoints that Booth's gambling puts his marriage in jeopardy because of the behavior that follows. Obsession that destroys functionality is a problem, no matter what the object of obsession may be.