Poor BDSM Portrayal on Bones

So, I’ve started to watch the crime drama series Bones from the beginning via Netflix, and have been enjoying it so far. The protagonist Temperance Brennan is a strong female character who is both an atheist and has high-functioning autism. She’s great, I love her, and she makes a great role model. And then comes the inevitable episode featuring BDSM. Other crime dramas like CSI and Castle have flawed but reasonably positive portrayals of BDSM, but Bones’ episode “The Girl in the Fridge” goes the negative route with murderous practitioners whose lifestyles are evidence of a crumbling romance.

The episode’s plot has Brennan and Booth investigating the death of a teen girl, Maggie Schilling, after her body is uncovered in a disposed refrigerator. She was kidnapped and held for ransom, but the kidnappers stopped negotiating with the parents, presumably after Maggie died. The investigation leads them to two suspects, Mary and Scott Costello, a wife and husband involved in a BDSM relationship with Mary as the dominant and Scott as the submissive. The couple’s refrigerator history seems consistent with the kidnapping/murder. When Booth questions them about it, Mary just smirks.

“Here’s what I was thinking, female, dominant, strapped for cash meets wealthy teenager on the outs with her parents, convinces her submissive husband to hold her for ransom.”
–Booth

Mary is an evil, implicitly bisexual, dominant whose evilness is always on the outside as she teases the people investigating her in a way conflated with her sexuality. She claims she and her husband took Maggie in, gave her illegal recreational drugs, brought her into their BDSM relationship as another submissive, and then Maggie self-overdosed. Booth and Brennan suspect Mary kidnapped her, held her for ransom, and kept her sedated before accidentally killing her through overdose. In the official FBI interrogation, Booth snarks that it must feel weird for Mary to be the one chained up for a change. Mary shoots back that his reluctance to interrogate her head-on indicates he’s either threatened or turned on by her, which makes him feel uncomfortable. The message that seems to be here is that dominants are naturally abusive. The husband character isn’t treated with the same importance of Mary, making her as the dominant the real perpetrator of the crime here.

The lifestyle itself is discussed between Brennan and Booth in a previous scene, in which the FBI is scouring the Costello house for evidence. Booth describes how they turned the basement into a dungeon, and he presents fuzzy handcuffs as evidence corresponding with signs of restraints used on the victim. Brennan briefly defines BDSM and comments about how the fetish is really old. Booth interjects that it’s only done to spice up a marriage when the passion goes down, and says that when “the sex is good, you don’t need any help”. Brennan, who we’ve seen have sex in an earlier scene, agrees with him.

Okay, it’s fine if they don’t like it, but BDSM is not just some role play to spice up a dull marriage. Some people are just wired to enjoy being dominant/sadistic or submissive/masochistic. As long as that’s consensual, there’s nothing wrong with it. On that note, there’s no mention of safewords or anything like that. No “If Maggie was your submissive, you neglected the safeword” to make it clear that the normal BDSM state of affairs is not abusive.

There is a certain lack of research done on the subject in general. When the gang is inspecting the forensic evidence, Brennan notes that Maggie’s legs were bound. This is a great find, apparently, because it means she couldn’t have been in a sexual relationship. “Looking for a little nookie, the last thing you tie together are the legs,” Booth explains. Well, sure, in a world where vaginal penetration is the only possible form of sex. Obviously that isn’t true. Plus, submissives can be tied up for sexual gratification even without actual sexual contact. Isn’t Mary supposed to be the dominant, anyway? How naïve are these writers?

In conclusion, the overall portrayal of BDSM is negative and seems to have been poorly researched. It’s one of those episodes where the mystery is not the focus, so I can understand minimal focus on the lifestyle, but it should be represented properly. This marks another use of a dominant as a stock psychopath. I like Bones in general so far, but stuff like this annoys me.