Throughout the course of the series, Brennan is portrayed as a straightforward, brilliant anthropologist, who lacks social skills. Her social ineptitude is especially apparent when it comes to sarcasm, metaphors which she often interprets literally, and pop culture jokes and is often the source of comedy in the show. An example of this is when she mistakes Colin Farrell for Will Ferrell. In earlier seasons, she was characterized as straightforward and unable to detect social cues – she states that Booth once told her that she "stinks at non-verbal communication" – and was well-known within the FBI for being extremely difficult to work with. She began to acknowledge her lack of sensitivity after Booth told her outright that she was "bad with people" in "A Boy in a Tree". Her lack of "political savvy" and social skills was also a reason why she was passed over for Dr. Camille Saroyan as head of