Seeley Booth - Character History

Character History

Seeley Booth is a former sniper in the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division, 75th Ranger Regiment, and Special Forces. He is also an expert knife thrower. Before leaving the Army, Booth held the rank of master sergeant. He served in the Gulf War, Somalia and Kosovo. While in the military he earned a Bronze Star, National Defense Service Medal and the Army Good Conduct Medal. For a time, he held the record for the longest shot ("Well over a kilometer") made in combat.

Acting as a liaison between the FBI and the Jeffersonian Institute, Booth frequently consults with his professional partner Dr. Brennan and her team, who he refers to as "squints" or "squint squad". Booth's approach to solving crimes is different from that of Brennan and her team; he prefers a more human, interpersonal and intuitive set of methods. While Booth values the information uncovered by Brennan, he often finds their methods convoluted and restrictive. Initially, Booth's presence is met by hostility from some of the team members, especially Jack Hodgins, but these differences are put aside and Booth is accepted as a member of the group.

In the episode "The Beginning in the End", Booth is offered the opportunity to serve his country in Afghanistan. He is offered a promotion to sergeant major and a position as an adviser to the Afghan National Army; Afghan forces are being trained by coalition forces to take an increased role in fighting the Taliban insurgency. According to the unit patch on the shoulder of his uniform shown in the episode "The Mastodon in the Room," he is assigned to a Special Forces group. He is also shown wearing a 101st combat patch, Special Forces and Ranger qualification tabs, and Combat Infantry, HALO, Air Assault and Parachutist badges. His military training is sometimes useful when solving cases involving firearms or terrorists, most notably when he is kidnapped by "The Grave Digger" and has to find his way out of a decommissioned ship rigged with explosives.

Although Booth tries to keep personal and professional lives strictly separate, aspects of his personal life leak through. He is a religious man by nature, having been an altar boy as a child. His beliefs sometimes put him in conflict with Brennan. He knows some Latin and is still a practicing Roman Catholic. He seeks to atone for the lives he took as a sniper and FBI agent. He endured torture during his time as an Army Ranger, leaving him with emotional and physical scars, as revealed in "Two Bodies in the Lab".

Booth has a troubled relationship with his family. Booth's father, a former Air Force pilot and Vietnam War veteran, was a barber and an abusive alcoholic. His mother, Marianne Booth, composed jingles for television advertisements. Booth later reveals that he might have killed himself as a teenager had it not been for his grandfather. He has a brother, Jared, a former lieutenant commander in the Navy who worked as an agent at the Pentagon. Jared Booth is a recurring character in the series, and his arrivals are often met with tension by Booth. Their relationship apparently improved somewhat, especially after Jared sacrifices his naval career to save Booth from "The Grave Digger". He later introduces his fiancee to Seeley and asks him to be his best man at their wedding. Booth has a nine-year-old son named Parker with his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca, who refused to marry him. Rebecca is at first hostile, and denied him visitation out of spite, but relations between them later dramatically improve. Parker Booth is named after a friend of Booth's from the Army Rangers, Corporal Edward "Teddy" Parker, who was slain in battle while spotting for Booth on a sniper mission. Booth is characterized as an excellent father. He is occasionally over protective of Parker; when Parker found a human finger, Booth quickly sends him to Dr. Sweets for a counseling session despite Sweets' insistence that Parker is fine. When Booth's mother Marianne reappears to meet his new family (Bones and Christine) and to ask him to give her away at her wedding to her new boyfriend, his residual anger at her for abandoning him and Jared for decades comes to the fore.. On multiple occasions in the series, characters state that Booth is a direct descendent of infamous assassin John Wilkes Booth; this is historically inaccurate, as the assassin died childless at the age of 26 just days after killing Abraham Lincoln.

Booth is from Philadelphia and is a fan of the Philadelphia Flyers; pictures of the team hang on the back wall of his office. However, he grew up in Pittsburgh. In season 1, episode 13 "The Woman in the Garden" he is seen drinking from a Pittsburgh Steelers coffee mug in his office, suggesting he may also be a fan of the football team; in season 6, episode 16 "The Blackout in the Blizzard" he acquires a row of seats from Veterans Stadium and recounts for Dr. Brennan how he attended game 6 of the 1980 World Series with his father. He is also recovering from a gambling addiction, which possibly arose as a coping mechanism after leaving the military and a stressful, war-time environment.

As the series continues, Booth becomes closer with the Jeffersonian team, particularly Dr. Brennan. At the end of the second season, Booth agrees to be Jack Hodgins's best man in his wedding to Angela Montenegro (albeit as the second choice after Zack Addy turned the position down).

Booth has temperament issues and shoots inanimate objects on repeated occasions. He shoots the clown head on an ice cream truck in season 2 episode "The Girl in the Gator" due to coulrophobia, and a black metal band's guitar amplifier after the guitarist spits on his badge in the season 4 episode "Mayhem on the Cross." After the ice cream truck shooting, Booth's gun is temporarily confiscated and he is ordered to see forensic psychologist Dr Gordon Wyatt (Stephen Fry). Toward the end of season 4, Booth suffers from a brain tumor that leads him to hallucinate conversations with Stewie Griffin. The tumor is successfully removed, but it leaves him with residual memory loss and a lack of confidence in the field.

During the sixth season, while dealing with his complicated relationship with Brennan and his new girlfriend Hannah Burley, Booth faces his old mentor Jacob Broadsky, a former Army sniper who has apparently gone rogue. Broadsky kills the Gravedigger, a serial kidnapper and killer who threatened both Booth and Brennan, destroys identifying evidence, and escapes. Broadsky points out that Booth has no definite proof that would allow him to feel comfortable shooting his old teacher. Booth has avoided shooting Broadsky, and is comforted by the news that Brennan does not see him and Broadsky as identical. In "The Twisted Bones in the Melted Truck", Booth mentions an eccentric aunt of his, who "spent every last dime on old-fashioned cookie jars". At the end of season six, as Bones and Booth leave the hospital where Angela Montenegro has given birth, Brennan confesses to Booth that she is pregnant with his child.

The seventh season deals with Booth and Brennan's preparation for the birth of their child (revealed to be a girl in the second episode of the season), and their struggles to agree on a living situation. It also has Booth being informed by his grandfather Hank Booth that his abusive, estranged father has died (episode 4, "The Male in the Mail"). Booth tries to be indifferent to this fact, but eventually - with Brennan's help - he expresses his feelings about his father, including talking about the good times they had together. As Brennan's pregnancy advances, Booth becomes even more protective of her. He does not like her working so much in the field with him, and he is especially worried when a serial killer named Christopher Pelant takes a special interest in the Jeffersonian Team. In the sixth episode of the seventh season, Booth and Brennan buy a home together and by the seventh episode it is refurbished. The seventh episode ("The Prisoner in the Pipe") also features the birth of Booth and Brennan's daughter, whom Booth delivers himself in a small stable because they did not make it to a hospital. They name her Christine Angela Booth. Brennan and Booth have her baptized in the last episode of the season because of Booth's Catholic faith, just before Brennan takes Christine and goes on the run from Pelant (who is trying to frame her for murder). Booth swears he will do everything he can to get his family back.

Due to his military and FBI training, Booth tends to adhere to protocol rather than be guided by sentiment, sometimes putting him at odds with some of the other team members. When solving cases, Brennan's team handle the scientific and analytical aspect while Booth interrogates suspects, and sometimes goes to great lengths to extract confessions. Although not a "squint", Booth is quick to tie evidence to suspects, which earns him the respect of Brennan. He is also well-known among fellow agents for his precise marksmanship.