I know we all like Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) because he’s charming and goofy, but, honestly, he’s never sexier to me than when he’s talking seriously about what it means to be a man. Last night’s episode was very interesting both in terms of the case at hand — an alleged teen pregnancy pact that resulted with a dead girl in a winter salt truck — and for how it could factor into two upcoming storylines that Michael Ausiello’s already SPOILED (Brennan asks Booth to father her child, Booth has a major illness)…

I’m beginning to wonder if bad jokes are a symptom of whatever medical crisis Booth experiences later this season. Did he really say that he was getting a potato chip craving when they found that girl in the mound of salt? Ewww. Said girl was quickly ID’d as a missing high school volleyball player, and the hormones in her blood revealed that she was pregnant. Her mother (Caroline in the City‘s Amy Pietz, who just guest-starred on TNT’s Trust Me — good for her), refused to believe that her good little girl was sexually active, but dad had seen a pregnancy test and guessed as much. The writers toyed briefly with the usual suspects: The ex-boyfriend (only he’s a good Christian); the pregnant ex-best friend, played by Monique Coleman, who also dated the ex-boyfriend (only they would’ve made up); the father (no incest here); the strict mother (she didn’t know the girl was pregnant, she just knew that she’d tried to forge a $5,000 check from her); and the volleyball coach (he reported the girl’s attempt to extort $5,000 from him). I thought maybe it would’ve been the volleyball team’s alpha female, a girl who’d been the class valedictorian and student body president until she got pregnant — but no, she just allowed half her teammates to think it was a great idea for them to get pregnant, too, so they could buy a house together (in this market? good luck!) and raise their babies together.

I’ve never spent much time thinking about what would motivate a teen pregnancy pact — because it’s just so unthinkable to me — so I can’t speak to how unique the show’s theory was. I guess we’re supposed to believe that like the alpha female, the other girls were under so much pressure from their parents to succeed and follow a certain path that they just wanted their roads to end. You can give up dreams and ambitions if they’re not actually yours. As Brennan said, these girls are being raised in a society that tells you half of all marriages end in divorce, you can’t count on a man. You count on your friends; they’ll never leave you. I like that concept (as a plot device, I mean) more than I would the idea that these girls got themselves pregnant just because the most popular girl in school did. Each of the girls had to come up with $5,000, and the victim was killed when she seduced her chiropractor and threatened him with statutory rape if he didn’t give her the money.

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Finally, an episode of Bones in 2009 that I wouldn’t have been sorry to tell a new viewer to watch. (See not: the circus, the ice rink, and the sinking ship.) Reading the comments each week, I know that some of you agree with me that this series has been missing something as of late (like solid writing in the cases, which I believe enhances the character development when your characters are supposed to be the best at what they do). I also know that some of you disagree with me and love how "character-driven" the series has become. While those folks are wrong — KIDDING, kinda — I do love that we’re having this debate. Not because I’m a masochist who likes someone to tell her that she doesn’t "get" a show that she’s seen every episode of, but because we’ve all earned the right to express our opinions on a show that we’ve invested 73 hours of our lives in. So let’s keep the conversation flowing.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled program… Last night’s episode wouldn’t make my Top 10 list or anything, but people were actually working. Except for Booth. But at least this time his crazytalk had a chemical origin — yay Vicodin! Seeley had reinjured his back by falling asleep on his couch watching "the game," which is an acceptable way for Booth to be portrayed as a man’s man, unlike that Beer Helmet he wore in the bathtub in Season 3. (Oh, I can bring it up every post if I want to.) He answered his door in his shirt, tie, and boxers to show us how comfortable he is around Brennan, and so it’d look even more intimate/ridiculous when he sweet-talked her into fixing his back like she’d done before. She aggravated the injury, and he was put on bedrest (or: have a Pillow Talk/24-style-splitscreen-phone-conversation-with-Brennan rest or crawl-on-the-floor-and-talk-about-the-Smurfs rest, watch a clip below). Cue Agent Perotta (guest star Marisa Couglin), who Bones requested be her sub partner because "the variables involved in breaking in a new person outweigh the benefit of possibly finding a better investigator." (That’s the kind of line I want Tempe to have, not "You’re Greek?" when someone clearly says, "I’m a geek.") Their case: A "booth babe" at the fantasy convention ImagiCon is killed over possession of Excalibur, the prop sword used in the first fantasy film ever made.

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"Aliens in a Spaceship," the Bones episode that first introduced us to the Grave Digger, is one of the series best. Was last night’s resolution to the storyline as satisfying? Not quite. But it was better than another trip to the Big Top.

The show opened with Brennan, Hodgins, and true crime author Thomas Vega (now played by Marco Sanchez), being accused of stealing Grave Digger evidence from the FBI. The former US Attorney working the case had been killed a month prior, and the new one, Heather Taffet (guest star Deirdre Lovejoy) was immediately annoying/prickly. Cut to Booth, wearing his "Cocky" belt buckle even with a rented tux. He’s running late to an event where Brennan will, in his words, be crowned superscientist. (I loved that she insisted he, and only he, show up in time to see her tribute video.) There’s a knock on Booth’s door, and, we’re to assume, the Grave Digger gave Booth a jolt, drugged him, and dragged him out a window. (If there ever was a time to surprise someone at his or her car, which had been the GD’s MO, a 190-pound FBI agent would’ve been it, no? Kinda weird.) Brennan got the call saying she had 21 hours to exchange Booth for the evidence. After we got the site gag of Sweets entering Booth’s apartment first, raising one of Angela’s stilettos as a weapon, Brennan was off to visit Hodgins — who she knew would have the evidence because he’s an anti-establishment conspiracy theorist who’s also apparently the only scientist in Washington who could process the piece of bumper that had been stuck in his leg.

Now, I don’t want to be nitpicky, but on a crime show (even one as character-driven as Bonesis), I think you’re allowed to be. Booth worked his way out of the toyyellow submarine he was buried alive in by using his keychain tounscrew some bolts. I’m pretty sure the Grave Digger would havesearched Booth’s pockets for a cellphone, so why would she let him keephis keychain? After the hockey hallucination we were treated to twoweeks ago, I immediately tensed when Booth began speaking to a soldierwho’d served under him when he was an Army sniper. As the soldierhelped Booth work his way out of what we’d learn was a Navy ship wiredby the government to be sunk, I was all kinds of annoyed. I’m used tothis show answering questions, not making me ask them. Why can TeddyParker (Noel Fisher) touch things? Why can Booth touch him? Why wouldBooth say Teddy might "take it the wrong way" that he named his son,Parker, after him? What would that wrong way be? And do they really letkids decorate sunken ships so the fish will have entertainment?

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When it comes to Bones, which returned last night in a new time slot with its first new episodes since November, absence tends to make my heart grow fonder. So clearly, this blustery New York winter has frozen my ticker, because I thought those two hours kinda blew.To me, they represent the creative conundrum at the center of this show that I love: Can you have too much character in a character-driven procedural? The answer is yes, if the writing of those "character" elements isn’t as sharp as it is for the cases. (Or, should I say was for the cases? Fingers crossed the forthcoming return to the Grave Digger storyline — with Booth being buried alive — is also a return to Brennan wowing us with her forensics and not just her ability to take a rhetorical question literally.)

In last night’s first episode, Booth and Brennan went undercover in a circus after finding the remains of female conjoined twin jugglers on the Oklahoma-Texas border. We learned that Dr. Sweets was adopted and that his birth mother was a psychic on the circus circuit…presumably just so that he could counsel "Buck and Wanda Moosejaw" on how to get in with the notoriously tight-lipped performers and ringmaster (guest star Andy Richter playing straight, except for when he fired a clown gun to stop Booth’s showdown with his paint-faced nemeses and said, "Tumbles, I’m serious"). Were there moments of this episode that I enjoyed? Of course. Booth and Brennan’s actual knife-throwing act (embedded above) was probably the reason this episode got made: Booth’s biceps and Brennan’s boobs on display — always good. Brennan’s childlike enthusiasm as she gave Booth smaller and smaller targets, DOWN TO A CLOWN NOSE — classic. Sweets explaining the "sexual component" to the act ("The knife representing…. Dr. Brennan is showing remarkable trust and willingess") — definitely funnier than the twins’ doctor explaining how much privacy can be achieved by an eye mask and a MP3 player. I just found most of the episode to be as forced as the sight of Booth and Bones riding in a motorcycle and a sidecar. Does the FBI really not plan an undercover mission better than that? In the end, thanks to Brennan’s determination to show us her mad high-wire skills, we discovered that the twins had been trying to save the circus that they loved by taking their act to the tightrope. When they fell into the net, their heads knocked together, and Magnum the strong man buried them. Next!

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