Kind of a nothing episode last night forensics fans, but it’s always great to have Ryan O’Neal back in the house as Brennan’s dad. Our murder du jour was a former Marine paratrooper-turned-manny for Mandarin-speaking brats who was blasted with a shotgun, burned, and then blown (courtesy of a Nor’easter) into a tree because he had too many middle-class values. Remind me to avoid rich people, at least on TV.

But the heart of the matter this evening was the relationship between Bones and Max, which has always been testy—thanks to his life as a fugitive bank robber and killer—and hasn’t gotten any easier despite the fact that Tempe spent most of last season trying to get the guy acquitted. When Cam hired him on as a kiddie science teacher (um, the Jeffersonian has a junior varsity?), Bones got all riled up and immediately demanded he be fired. According to Sweets, this had to do with abandonment issues. According to Max, that was crap. According to me, it was just an excuse for unnecessary bickering.

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What I want you to do is take off your glasses, shake out your hair, and say, "Mr. Booth, do you know what the penalty is for an overdue book?"

All together now…

Why?

It was another instant classic episode of Bones last night, a forensic adventure in the sky as Brennan and Booth had to MacGyver (MacGruber?) their way through a murder investigation involving a dead mistress cooked like roast pork in the oven of a flight to China, and they had to solve the case before the plane touched down. All Brennan really wanted to do was go look at 40,000-year-old bones in a cave, but the poor thing just can’t stop getting herself into the murder mystery biz—much to the delight of at least one old lady back in coach who helped out by donating the contents of her purse to the cause. (Special thanks to the guy with the denture cream.)

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An exploding meth lab with a dead body inside. An appearance from King of the Interns, Clark Edison. A tense standoff-shootout with very human stakes. And some sexual tension bolstered by painful emotional history. Now that, my friends, was a great episode of Bones.

After spending much of the last couple seasons plumbing the wacko depths of Brennan’s crime-riddled family, last night finally gave us that long-awaited glimpse into Booth and how he got that way. (So nice to see Boreanaz playing something deeper than "goofball" for a change.) It doesn’t take Sweets to see the connection between Seeley’s choice to become a sniper and the way he keeps his metaphorical head down with his family, letting his Navy commander brother, Jared, do all the shiny strutting. Given Seeley’s demonstrated commitment to being the best father he can be to his own son, the revelation that Daddy Booth was an abusive alcoholic rang true; so, too, did Seeley’s decision to give up the glory of the RICO case to keep Jared’s reputation intact. My goodness, he was even willing to (briefly) give up Brennan so his baby brother could be happy– and that is some crazy, fascinating martyrdom.

What did you think, Jeffersonian fans? Did you buy Booth’s back story? Do you agree that "we do whatever we can for family"? Was Brennan (as Angela put it) just looking for "a creepy way to have sex with a Booth without having sex with the real Booth"? Who else wants a garbage sorter? And how many times have you wanted to finish an argument by clocking someone off a bar stool?

Aside from being rather clunkily written, last night’s episode of everyone’s favorite forensics dramedy was quite welcome after a too-long baseball break, wouldn’t you agree? It wasn’t a particularly intricate case — artist found dead inside one of his own smushed-car sculptures — but there was still lots to chew on: Hey, that’s NewsRadio‘s Vicki Lewis, sporting four eyebrows and pancake foundation Michael Jackson would die for! Wow, Angela’s much-hyped ex-lover Roxie–played by Nichole Hiltz, so great on In Plain Sight this summer– is indeed a woman, and a hot woman at that! By god, Sweets and the diarrhea-mouthed, skull-crushing grad student are getting it on! Plus, now I can’t stop wondering if I missed something by not watching The Real Housewives of Orange County!

What did you think, Bones fans? Was the whole suicide Macguffin a waste of time or a necessary platform to launch the Roxie subplot (which promises to take the Angela/Hodgins relationship to all-new levels of awkward)? Did you see the murderer coming from a mile away, mostly because no one wearing that much makeup is ever to be trusted? Does the fact that Sweets and that annoying girl are dating mean we’re not rid of her, and if so, is there any way that we might be rid of her? Talk about it in the comments as you get psyched for what looks to be a real doozy of a ‘shipper ep next week…and check out Angela’s big reveal below.

Lots of sticky wickets in last night’s episode — which featured the murder of a hell-and-brimstone male televangelist turned post-op transsexual female pastor of a tiny congregation that welcomed all kinds — so where would we like to begin, Bones fans? The hour was rather lacking in any substantive Brennan-Booth ‘shipper moments (except perhaps finding out that while Booth would like Brennan better as a man, Brennan would probably find Booth too pretty as a woman), which leaves us with only the issues. Anyone got anything profound to say about sexual orientation or religion? What about boating accidents and/or the importance of swimming with a buddy? On our newly developed Zack Replacement Scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a brain in a jar and 10 being George Clooney, where would you put tonight’s random-fact-filled but ultimately disposable intern, Mr. Nigel "Vino Delectable" Murray? And how much longer can the Murphy Brown-style rotating employee schtick stay fun?