Wendell Bray

Wendell Bray is one of the rotating interns introduced in Season 4, first appearing in the episode The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond.
==Personality==
Initially, Wendell appeared as a bit of a hot-head. However, it is revealed slowly that he is an intelligent, sweet young man who just wants to get the job done to the best degree. Others have commented that Wendell is "the brightest graduate", "the one with the most potential" and "the normal one". 
Wendell is also represented as the more "normal" intern since he is capable of 'getting squinty', playing hockey and indulging in relationships at the same time, showing a balance in his life that many of the other 'squints' at the Jeffersonian so conspicuously lack. This quality clearly demarcates him from Dr. Temperance Brennan, with whom, he states in Season 5, it has been his 'dream' to work. 
That said, Wendell can be a little arrogant as seen in The Patriot in Purgatory but that is due to the competitive nature of the situation. Both he and Arastoo are affected the most during the case due to their emotional involvement. 
In "The Corpse at the Convention", when he gets depressed as a friend of his in his clinical trial suddenly had his cancer return and die quickly, Wendell calls upon Booth to talk to, showing his great regard for the man as a friend to confide in. In return, Booth reveals he thinks of Wendell as his brother when trying to convince him not to give up fighting as Wendell seemed on the verge of doing so.
==History==
===Season 4===
Wendell misunderstands Temperance Brennan's attempts to discover why younger men are attracted to older women, thinking that Brennan is hitting on him and worrying that the only way to keep his job would be to sleep with her. Angela Montenegro sets him straight, explaining that Brennan's interest in the subject is purely anthropological. Wendell is relieved, saying that he needs the job, as he owes a significant sum of money. Angela worries that Wendell is in debt to the mob and that this might compromise him on certain cases. When Angela voices her concerns, he explains that his local community collectively paid for his education and he needs to pay them back and that his sense of urgency in repaying them is due to his gratitude. 
In Fire in the Ice it is revealed that Wendell is a member of Booth's ice hockey team, "Fed Cases". Wendell is hurt during the game against the "Firedawgs", inciting Booth to get into a fight with the opposing team's enforcer, Pete Carlson, who later becomes the episode's murder victim. Later, during another game against team "The Fuzz", Wendell and Booth try to make suspect Lou Herrin bleed in order to gain a sample for DNA testing. Wendell collects samples while playing, passing them off to Dr. Brennan in the stands.
While investigating Pete Carlson's fish tank, he inadvertently confesses that "the last time [he] did something like this, [he] ended up in juvie hall for the weekend." Then, in The Cinderella in the Cardboard, he tells Hodgins that he grew up on the streets, stating that it doesn't take long for him to get a "feel" for people.
In the season finale, The End in the Beginning, Wendell played the doorman in The Lab (the nightclub in Booth's dream). He had also claimed to be loyal to Booth and got taken by Jared when he pulled a gun on C-Sync's brother. He was the monotone one of the group.
===Season 5===
In The Bond in the Boot, Cam finds out that Wendell's scholarship has been pulled due to lack of funding. She tells Brennan and Hodgins that his scholarship could be saved if someone would donate the money. When discussing the scholarship with the team, Wendell reveals that his mother calls it "the miracle," and jokingly remarks that she spends more time in church thanking God than the priest does. At the end of the episode, as Bray is saying goodbye to the team, Cam walks in and tells him that money for his scholarship has been donated anonymously. After he leaves the room, she smiles and tells the rest of the team that the donations were three times what was needed.
In Tough Man in the Tender Chicken, Angela asks him for money to help save a piglet. Even though he is a professed meat eater and is deep in debt with student loans, he still contributes $45 to the cause and Angela kisses him in return, sparking a relationship and ending Angela's almost six-month celibacy kick. Their relationship continued throughout the middle portion of Season 5. Angela had a pregnancy scare during The Proof in the Pudding, though a second pregnancy test run by Dr. Saroyan reveals the first to have been a false positive. When Wendell eventually finds out, he tells her that had she actually been pregnant, he would have supported her no matter what she chose regarding the baby because it would be his duty and that he would "do the right thing." Seeing that Wendell views the prospect of raising a family with her as a duty to be carried out on moral and ethical grounds rather than something he actually wants, Angela realizes that while Wendell is a great guy, he is not "[her] guy" and she subsequently ends their relationship. The break-up is amicable.
===Season 6===
After the dissolution of the Jeffersonian's Washington, D.C. forensics unit between seasons 5 and 6 due to Dr. Brennan's departure, Wendell gets a job at a vehicle repair shop in order to make ends meet. Upon her return in the Season 6 premiere, Dr. Brennan hires him out of her own pocket to help her on a case. Since she opts not to return to Maluku after the case is solved, Wendell is able to regain his former position as an intern at the Jeffersonian. However, this still does not provide enough income for him to repay his debts, so he continues to seek additional work. In The Blackout in the Blizzard, Wendell is forced to work a time-sensitive case with no power during a blizzard. In order to charge the victim's cell phone in hopes of finding out who she last called, Wendell creates a potato battery. His idea works and they are able to charge the phone long enough to locate the killer. In The Pinocchio in the Planter, he fails to obtain a job as a bartender but manages to convince Dr. Saroyan to give him more hours at the Jeffersonian. In the same episode, due to Wendell's insistence on being totally honest, Hodgins tells Wendell that while Wendell was dating Angela, he (Hodgins) once planned Wendell's murder in great detail. Wendell is unaffected by this disturbing news and simply enjoys Hodgins' honesty to Hodgins disgust. In the season finale, Wendell is present when Hodgins reveals his newborn son Michael Staccato Vincent Hodgins. He, Hodgins and Angela become closer through this season showing there is no awkwardness or angst between them.
===Season 7===
He is the intern in The Memories in the Shallow Grave, The Crack in the Code and The Past in the Present. He is a little afraid of a pregnant Brennan but they still have a good working relationship, but he does begin to question whether Brennan did kill Ethan Sawyer.
===Season 8===
Wendell is among the five interns Brennan selects to identify lost remains in The Patriot in Purgatory. Initially the five engage in a contest to see who can identify the most. However when Arastoo stumbles across the remains of a possible 9/11 victim, Wendell begins to freak out and after the interns have a heart to heart about their personal experiences on that day, Wendell (the last to speak) reveals that his uncle, a firefighter, died at the World Trade Center in New York. Wendell spent 9/11 and the next few days with his aunt, and it's a very sensitive topic with him.
In The Doll in the Derby, Wendell is about to celebrate his 29th birthday but he seems to be a little sad about it, as he thinks he hasn't achieved anything. However, it was his brother winding Wendell up due to a bet. Wendell won. In the episode he reveals that Angela had painted him naked while they were dating, much to the disgust of Hodgins. Later, Wendell gives the painting to Hodgins and Wendell had painted (badly) over his private areas.
===Season 9===
In Big in the Philippines, he had been diagnosed by Dr. Brennan with Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer. Wendell did not want to seek treatment immediately, having seen his father suffer through chemotherapy that ultimately failed and the fact that his cancer has an 80% mortality rate and less that 10% chance of long-term survival. However, Booth tells him to get the treatment because Wendell has a whole life to live. By the end, Wendell decides to fight the cancer, even if he dies.
He returns to the Jeffersonian in The High in the Low to aid the team in an investigation but is fired by Dr. Saroyan after it is revealed that he is using medicinal cannabis to help with the nausea and the weight loss due to his chemotherapy and to fight the growth of the cancer cells in his body. Booth and Brennan get an exemption from the Department of Justice for Wendell to keep working at the Jeffersonian as a freelance case consultant, but without physical contact with any evidence. He is provided with his own office and paid by an independent contractor.
===Season 10===
He returns to his normal capacity as intern in the episode The Corpse at the Convention after he had no contact with medical cannabis for a month. It was revealed that he is in remission because he got into a clinical trial that Dr. Brennan recommended. During the episode, Wendell gets depressed when one of his friends in the trial dies and calls Booth. The two meet at the Founding Fathers bar where Wendell shows his fears that the same will happen to him as the man had been fine shortly before and his cancer then spread. In response, Booth tells Wendell a story of how he and his men were ambushed by the Taliban in 2002 and he watched twelve men he considered brothers die in front of him. Booth tells Wendell to stop feeling sorry for himself and keep fighting as "I don't need to see another brother die." Wendell is left shocked at this admission but follows Booth's advice. The last day of the clinical trial was in the episode The Mutilation of the Master Manipulator when he discovers that he is in full remission and cancer free. He also starts a relationship with his nurse from the clinical trial named Andie Roberts.
===Season 11===
In The Nightmare in the Nightmare, Brennan begins to have a series of nightmares about the Puppeteer, all featuring Wendell with burned hands bringing her coffee. While trying to figure out the meaning of the dreams, Booth and the lab team realize that, in the dream, Wendell is meant to act as a stand-in for who really did it, someone who used to work at the lab. Booth finally realizes that the Wendell of Brennan's dream symbolizes Zack Addy, former squintern and assistant turned Gormogon apprentice.
===Season 12===
In The Radioactive Panthers in the Party, Wendell struggles to write his dissertation but finds an important clue that Brennan missed, allowing them to solve the case. At the end of the episode, Brennan confronts Wendell, whose heart she's realized is not truly in anthropology. Brennan encourages Wendell to leave anthropology and find something else he loves while he still can. Wendell is surprised but accepts Brennan's words and receives reassurance that he still has a family amongst the Jeffersonian. He attends Camille and Arastoo's wedding in The Day in the Life.
In the aftermath of the explosion in The End in the End, Wendell is called in alongside Clark Edison, Daisy Wick, Arastoo Vaziri and Jessica Warren to examine the remains of Fred Walden in hopes of finding the clue that Brennan spotted but can no longer remember due to her head injury. After an inspiring speech by Hodgins, the intern team is able to put together what Brennan figured out from their previous experiences in solving cases with her. In particular, Wendell remembers a fact that proves vital to locating and stopping Mark Kovac.
== Trivia ==
*Wendell is the only squintern besides Jessica Warren not to hold a PhD, though, unlike Jessica, he is eligible to earn it. 
*His mother went into labor while riding a roller coaster and goes to church more than the priest.
*His father was a heavy smoker who died of lung cancer. Wendell doesn't smoke himself, but when faced with a problem, he sometimes finds it helpful to think about what his father would do, and holding an unlit cigarette in his mouth helps him get in the proper state of mind to do so.
*Wendell witnessed his father waste away during his cancer treatments which ultimately failed, making Wendell reluctant to fight his own cancer and possibly go through the same thing.
*He has a brother who is a night watchman.
*He has an uncle who is a funeral director.
*He had an uncle who was a firefighter who died in New York during 9/11.
*He has a cousin who is a soldier in Iraq.
*He won his school's science fair when he was a kid.
*He dated a woman called Cheryl Cates, who he describes as a "Complete Loon"
*Wendell seems to be quite handy. He worked in a garage between Seasons 5 and 6, and Booth mentions that he and Bones could hire Wendell to remodel their house. He's also quite inventive as seen when he comes up with the idea of using a massive potato battery to power a cell phone in hopes of catching a killer. His idea is proven to work.
*He was briefly a boxer in his youth. He mentioned that he fought Golden Gloves in The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond.
*He was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma (bone cancer) but fought it via chemotherapy, and used cannabis to fight treatment nausea and stimulate his appetite. 
*Brennan once stated that he is the intern with most potential. 
*In total, Wendell appears in 41 episodes, the most out of all the squinterns. 
*He is one of the two interns that investigated the crimes committed by Christopher Pelant. The second intern is Clark Edison 
*Wendell and Clark were the only two interns who actually saw Zack Addy. Wendell saw Zack in The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond and The Hope in the Horror.
*In "The Corpse at the Convention", Booth reveals he sees Wendell as his brother while giving him a pep talk so he won't stop fighting his cancer. Wendell is clearly shocked that Booth thinks of him as a brother but listens to his advice.
*Wendell was one of the interns who attended Cam Saroyan and Arastoo Vaziri's wedding reception.
*He is the intern with the direst financial situation, which he points out to Dr. Saroyan when trying to get extra hours. He listed off how all the others do not struggle with money like he does.
*Wendell is the last intern to be featured as an Intern of the Week. Technically, Jessica Warren is the last person to function as Dr. Brennan's intern, but she is shown in conjunction with Wendell, Clark, Daisy and Arastoo in Day in the Life and The End in the End. 
Category:Characters
Category:Recurring characters
Category:Interns
Category:Jeffersonian Institute employees
Category:Jeffersonian-FBI team members
Category:Season 4 characters
Category:Season 5 characters
Category:Season 6 characters
Category:Season 7 characters
Category:Season 8 characters
Category:Season 9 characters
Category:Season 10 characters
Category:Season 11 characters
Category:Season 12 characters