Camille Saroyan - Brief Character History

Brief Character History

Previously Dr. Saroyan worked in New York, performing autopsies in difficult and sometimes unsanitary conditions, and admits to Booth she took the job because of the facilities. In "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole", it is revealed that Cam, who had briefly met Brennan at a conference on decapitation, advised Booth to seek her advice on a murder investigation, which became Booth and Brennan's first case together.

She is a 'hard line' woman who takes charge of her Division and defends them if necessary, as long as she believes they are in the right (though she does at time crack jokes, but no one gets her humor). In the beginning of Season 2, Saroyan butts heads with Dr. Brennan and the other team members, but she eventually accepts their quirks and develops relationships with them. At one point early in Season 2, she considers removing Dr. Brennan from her position at the Jeffersonian, until both Angela and Booth make it abundantly clear if Brennan goes, the entire team will leave.

In the episode "The Man in the Cell", Camille is almost killed by a neurotoxin (methyl bromide) to which she is exposed by serial killer Howard Epps. Epps' attack on Dr. Saroyan has an extreme emotional effect on both Brennan and Booth. Luckily, Hodgins manages to find out what the toxin is and alerts the hospital in time to save Cam. Originally, Saroyan was supposed to die in the episode, ending her character run; but the cast and the producers thought Camille Saroyan was a good addition to the storyline and decided to keep her. Like all the other "squints", she is interested in Booth and Brennan's relationship. She often overhears their telephone exchanges or overly intimate conversations and smiles or shakes her head at their apparent obliquity and insistence their relationship is strictly platonic and professional.

In the Season 2 episode "The Headless Witch in the Woods", Cam reveals her mother, who died when she was 23, came to her the day after she died and led her to find a necklace in a drawer. Cam still wears the necklace.

In the season 3 episode, "The Baby in the Bough", Saroyan mentions having once had a dog, called "Andy". In "The Pain in the Heart", it is revealed Dr. Saroyan was a police officer for 10 years prior to obtaining her position in the Jeffersonian.

Cam has a poor relationship with her younger sister, Felicia. Their father had his 60th birthday during the episode "The Intern In The Incinerator".

In the season 5 episode, "The Dentist in the Ditch", it is revealed that Cam has arachnophobia. In the season 7 episode, "The Hot Dog in the Competition", she is shown to be also ophidiophobic.

When asked by Angela if she would ever like to have children, she says that all the inconvenience and additional chores that having a baby entails would not be worth losing her physical shape.

In Season 4, Saroyan became concerned when Jared Booth, Seeley Booth's younger brother, went out on a date with Brennan and was relieved to hear the two did not have sex. While Cam was not comfortable expressing why she felt this way, Angela was: "It would have been a creepy way to have sex with Booth, without having sex with the real Booth." Later in the season, in the episode "The Doctor in the Den", Cam's ex-fiancé dies, and Cam meets his daughter, Michelle, again after ten years. At the end of the episode, Cam offers to move in with her and Michelle accepts. The episode ends with the two of them hugging.

It has also been hinted many times she is an occasional smoker. However, Cam vows to stop smoking when Michelle starts to smoke to rebel against her.

Cam enjoys reading trashy romance novels as a way to unwind after a day on the job. In the Season 2 episode, "The Bodies in the Book", she reveals that she has not read Brennan's books because she does not like to deal with murder on her off-hours.

In Season 6, Cam is shown in a relationship with a doctor named Paul.

In Season 8, Cam is shown in a secret relationship with intern Arastoo Vaziri, the graduate student intern who writes love poetry in Persian. It is revealed that his secular poetry was what got him kicked out of the country during college, but it is unclear how he has no accent in English if he grew up in Iran and speaks it well enough to be writing poetry with it. His Persian is also slightly accented. Cam receives a copy of his new book and notices her name in one of the poems. Cam asks Arastoo to say the poem to her. As Arastoo obliges, Hodgins walks into the office and immediately understands that the two have been having a secret affair. Hodgins, at Arastoo's imploring, keeps it a secret, but Angela sees Cam and Arastoo having an intimate moment in the garden. Arastoo and Cam guess that the secret will leak from Hodgins to Angela and from Angela to Bones, but will stop there unless Booth asks outright about them.