'Bones' recap: Game time

I know the show is based on finding icky corpses, but last night’s grates-and-bleacher-smooshed basketball player was one for the books. Add to that the family of rats nestled in the clothing and we entered a whole new level of disturbing. Thankfully, the case of who killed the star college forward was a nicely intricate one that held together as we went from suspecting the sleazy booster who befriended the player and supplied him with steroids, to the player who would benefit the most from his death, to the basketball-player-turned security guard who ultimately confessed to the murder out of love for his daughter, who’d been getting it on with the STD-carrying player under the bleachers. (BTW: Almost as disturbing as the decomposed body was the amount of sexual…nonchalance (?) exhibited by the girls in the episode when it came to these athletes. I know that it’s a stereotype that’s long been out there, but let’s hope that in the real world it’s more fiction than fact….Right. I’ll stop kidding myself now.)

It was yet another chance to go into the world of the jock, a world that Booth calls home but in which Brennan is completely out of her element. Heck, even Zack and Hodgins knew the name and the stats of the college b-ball star — and were impressed. But Brennan remained dismissive of sports, calling them "childish games," and those who watch them "juvenile." I don’t remember Booth ever getting as offended by her statements as he did last night, since "he’s all about sports."

Cam was having a particularly tough day: First she had raw turkeybits splattered on her. Then Hodgins pureed maggots in her personalblender in his search to find toxins in the player’s system. But that’snot to say she didn’t have some fun, like when she got to disclose thevideo of Angela and Hodgins having sex in the storage room. It was justlike Cam to prove her point about work/personal life distinction byfirst making Angela self-righteously articulate it in reference tosomething Cam did, then whipping out the video. (I have to note,though, that Angela’s entrance with the file was a bit out of leftfield since we hadn’t seen her given it.) I maintain my appreciationfor Cam as a character, and can’t wait for more scenes that add insightto her cool-as-a-cucumber demeanor.

Now, can we just talk about the look that passed between Brennan andBooth when she told him he was "definitely a fully developed man"? Wow.Is there any doubt that they both get their mutual attraction?No way. That very acknowledgment has got to make us love them evenmore. They are two grownups who understand that it would be a bad ideato give in to that attraction for many reasons, not the least of whichis that it could ruin their working partnership. And even though theyappreciate so many things about each another, they are so fundamentallydifferent that an intimate, sexual relationship would likely be a longshot. And the level of intimacy they share right now is such thatmany people only dream of. Why screw that up?

Am I wrong, people? And do you think that next week’s baby-centricepisode might blow the dust off of Brennan’s biological clock?