Bones, season 6

Everyone comes home changed except the geometry. Booth returns from Afghanistan with Hannah Burley, a war correspondent he loves in the uncomplicated way he never managed with Brennan - and the season's first movement is Brennan realising, case by case, what she declined. Her confession comes at the worst hour, in a car in the rain mid-investigation, and Booth's answer is the honest one: he is not a consolation prize. When Hannah later declines his proposal, the wreckage is complete - three people, all telling the truth, all worse off for it.

The exterior threat is Jacob Broadsky, a sniper from Booth's own world with a vigilante's ledger, killing criminals the system freed - the Gravedigger among them, shot mid-transfer on the courthouse steps. The duel runs the back half of the season, and the bullet that ends it goes through Vincent Nigel-Murray, the gentlest of the interns, dead on the lab floor mid-fact.

Grief does what six seasons of talking could not. The night of Vincent's death, Brennan comes to Booth's bed; the show holds its breath for the finale - and at the season's last beat, outside a wedding, Brennan tells him she is pregnant, and Booth's face does the rest.