Wednesday 15 October 2008

The Ten Most Ill-Advised TV Couples, Part 4

7: "Hangela" – Angela and Hodgins, Bones



The main annoyance with these two is that their entire relationship seems to have been created with the sole intention of showing the World that even the most slightly odd of all slightly odd people can function in proper relationships. We refer not to Angela, who is easily the most switched-on, proper character the show has yet to give us. Hodgins, a man who used to have a permed afro thing going on and who can’t spend an episode without making at least one illogical reference to a secret society he is scared of/wholeheartedly supports, is the main issue with the relationship. Especially when you take into account the nature of the relationship, and where it developed. Both characters work within forensics, with Hodgins being the slightly odd comedy character of the team who investigates dirt and minerals and decides if they were ever breathed on by a leper (for example) while Angela skips around the outside as the sort-of den mother. Angela is barely involved with the group properly, being sunny in disposition and not happy at the idea of being around all those dead bodies. She does the artistic stuff instead. Like, when the team need a representation of what the victim looks like; that’s when Angela steps up. The rest of her time is spent calling people ‘sweetie’ and trying not to be near the corpses as much as possible. The two of them have nothing in common at all.

And that’s what TV loves – it takes a couple of people who have nothing in common, and it always always always sticks them together, to enable us the bickering, the arguments, the sympathetic ‘awww’ moments when they don’t bicker or argue. TV loves to give us all of these, and that’s why the two characters are together. Bones in general is very much the sort of show which likes to be as clichéd as possible, with every single box in the ‘stereotype’ rulebook ticked – they got us the will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will couple, the bitchy boss figure, the gruff FBI agent and the silly science-types who know nothing of reality. The Angela-Hodgins thing really bugs us the most, though, because Angela is obviously a lot hotter than Hodgins is. And her dad is Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top! She could have the pick of men – for some reason she never went after David ‘BROODING ’ Boreanaz’s character – but for some reason she’s decided that the not very funny, hot, paranoia-spouting, perm-wearing (we hate perms! Alright?) lab assistant is the one for her. It is wrong.




8: "Ellie D" – Elliot and JD, Scrubs

The most well-known illogical couple on TV, even the other characters on the show have realised that JD and Elliot (JD is the guy here, just so you know) aren’t good for each other. The recurring joke on the show was that despite being really bad at relationships, the two would hook up once a year at around the same time, wonder if dating would be a good idea, and then break up and not talk for a while. It went over and over a fair few times, until eventually they gave Elliot a solid boyfriend who was nice enough, suited her, and was due to be married off to. At around the same time, they set up JD with a fellow doctor who suited him well, and both couples worked really well. It was nice. Then the show destroyed it both relationships just so that in the final season it would be able to put JD and Elliot together one last time. JD’s girlfriend got pregnant and promptly pretended she’d miscarried, before running away with the baby. Elliot simply decided she didn’t want to be married, and her husband-to-be vanished and hasn’t been seen or mentioned on the show since. And then, after these two relationships were dumped on, Scrubs went back to teasing will-they with JD and Elliot. Why did they have to do this? In the process of making both characters single, they destroyed Elliot’s likability forever (JD has been unlikable since at least after season 3, once Zach Braff got annoying) and made us want neither character to be happy. Surely it can’t have been too much to ask for that they married the two leads off to other people? Realism, people!

1 comment:

  1. i actually think he looked better with a perm than with his weird hair now...it added to his 'geeky-scientist' persona.

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