Lance Sweets - Character History

Character History

Sweets, like Seeley Booth, was abused as a child until he was adopted at six years old; he still has whip scars on his back. This is contrary to Booth's first impression of Sweets, conjecturing that, based on his youth, the worst thing that had ever happened to him was that he "lost at Mortal Kombat". His loving, but elderly, adoptive parents died shortly before Dr. Sweets began working with Booth and Brennan, leaving him without a family. Sweets' relationship with his adoptive parents, however, left him with the belief that broken people can be saved by people with good hearts, inspiring him to become a psychologist. Most of this was uncovered by Dr. (now Chef) Gordon Wyatt in reading Sweets' manuscript on Booth and Brennan's working relationship, stating that works like his often reveal more about the writer than the subject matter. He deduces that Sweets was adopted at "about 4" (Sweets was adopted at 6).

Details about Sweets' life as a teenager are few; but "Mayhem on a Cross" reveals that he had been a fan of death metal as a teenager, which he still listens to after a bad day. He is highly educated despite his youth, holding two doctorates despite only being 22 years old when he first meets Booth and Brennan. To have reached this level of education, Sweets must have begun attending the University of Toronto as an undergraduate at age 14 or 15, attending for three years before obtaining his Masters degree in Abnormal Psychology from Temple University (roughly one or two years) and two doctorates (Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Analysis) from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania within three years. This has led some members of the team to doubt his degrees' validity, and Sweets has admitted to Brennan that he earned money for graduate school by teaching psychological techniques to car salesmen—a fact that he is not proud of. In "Double Trouble In The Panhandle", Dr. Sweets reveals that his birth mother was a psychic working in a circus in South Florida; upon reaching the age of maturity he attempted to track her down, but could gain no information from the insular circus community..

Sweets began seeing Brennan and Booth in "The Secret in the Soil". Through Fox Online Special Features, it is implied Booth and Brennan continue to see Dr. Wyatt through "The Soccer Mom and the Mini-Van" before seeing Sweets solely. Initially, the pair do not regard Sweets seriously, Booth for his youth and Brennan for his profession. Over time, however, they recognize his skill in profiling and even develop a friendship with him, comforting him after his girlfriend April breaks up with him and later recognizing that Sweets wishes to continue studying them because he likes them. The relationship of Booth and Bones with Sweets continued to grow, and he developed a father/son relationship with Booth. He becomes closer to Booth and Brennan after a moment during "Mayhem on a Cross" when they share their abusive past, eventually becoming a surrogate family and hiding their emotional bond with banter. Sweets has also started appearing more frequently in the field; notably, undercover as Angela's aspiring-fireman-husband-with-a-bad-back, to gain information on a suspect without a warrant.

During his study of Booth and Brennan, Sweets began to write a book about them. In the episode "Mayhem on a Cross", Dr. Sweets received a review by Dr. Gordon Wyatt of his book on the relationship between Booth and Brennan. Dr. Wyatt explained that he felt Sweets had misinterpreted the relationship between Booth and Brennan by looking on a somewhat superficial level. The work primarily focused how Booth and Brennan are opposites and that their sexual attraction is limited because their primary responsibility is to their careers. Dr. Wyatt explains he feels Booth and Brennan are much more similar than Sweets understands and that one of the two is, in fact, aware of the underlying sexual tension between them and struggles with it daily. He also tells Brennan and Booth that Sweets is using his book as a way of finding his place in the world and that he has created his emotional connection with them as a way of finding a family, something Brennan compares to "imprinting" like a baby duck. It is revealed in "The Dwarf in the Dirt" that Sweets has not published his book, because he fears how Booth and Brennan would respond to the book's conclusion that they are in love with each other. He asks Wyatt, now a chef, if he has the right to publish his book when Booth and Brennan can't even admit to themselves that they're in love, but Wyatt tells him he left psychiatry so he wouldn't have to deal with a dilemma like that.

In 'The Prince in the Plastic', Sweets' character was granted a permit to carry a firearm. His qualification test was conducted by Seeley Booth himself, in order to truly determine whether or not he would prove an asset for Booth in the field. By the episode's end, Sweets had successfully passed the test.

In 'The Bones That Weren't', Sweets interviews a witness named Tyler Milton (John Fleck) painted as a living statue of William Shakespeare but has difficulty getting a response. Sweets examining Milton believes the only way to communicate with Milton is to use lines from Shakespeare's works which does prove useful in helping to solve the crime.