This is what I want from a lighter episode of Bones: A fast pace, some fun for everyone, and Booth still wearing a suit. Thank you! So the team attended the wake of 50-year-old Jeffersonian colleague Hank, who died of heart failure from a congenital defect — or so we thought until Brennan attempted to pay her respects (to a fabulous Danny Elfman-esque soundtrack) and realized that he’d been murdered. Booth didn’t want to believe her because he has respect for the dead — unless they owe him $20 from the fantasy football league — but his attempt to silence Brennan failed. ("Drink up, will ya?" "Why?" "’Cause I’m hoping you’re gonna pass out.")

I’m not sure which physical comedy bit I enjoyed more: Booth coaching Brennan to put on a sad face (which she was incapable of because she was happy that a murder investigation had interrupted the mourning) or Brennan using the wrong hand gesture to tell Booth that the undertaker and widow were having sex. I’m thinking the latter. Her enthusiasm won me over. I must have still been giddy because I wasn’t even bothered by the RIDICULOUS sight of Brennan and Booth stealing the body, which Hodgins saw through a window as he gave a toast to Hank. How much had Booth had to drink to go along with that plan? (He was packing a flask.) All I kept thinking was that Angela would not be happy when she found out that they used her car to transport the body back to the Jeffersonian so Cam could find the evidence needed to get an injunction to stop the cremation of the body. 

READ FULL STORY »

This episode could not have come at a better time. Not because it taught us about the rivalry between death metal and black metal bands. (Apparently, it’s over who can use the word "legendary" in the most annoying manner.) But because there’s been mixed feelings on the characters of Brennan and Sweets as of late: Why has she emotionally and socially regressed? Why is he being integrated so heavily into the investigations? Regardless of whether you saw the final scene in Sweets’ office as Brennan’s redemption for her recent blunt blunders or an example of the reasoning and empathy she’s actually capable of, you have to admit it was effing fantastic.

So Gordon Gordon (guest star Stephen Fry) returned to tell Booth that he was retiring and to chat with Sweets, who’d asked him to read the manuscript of the book he’s writing on Booth and Brennan. Being the brilliant, cryptic man that he is, he informed Sweets that his premise was completely wrong: Booth and Brennan are not opposites and they aren’t sublimating the attraction they feel for one another because it would threaten their professional relationship. One of them is acutely aware of it and struggles with it daily. He wouldn’t say which one. Did he mean Booth or Brennan? I say the answer is clearly Booth. Brennan knows that she respects, trusts, and cares for Booth (and that he has sexy symmetrical features) but I don’t think her mind is ready to acknowledge her romantic feelings for him. In order for her to feel Big Love, she has to believe it exists first. That’s what she’s focused on: The idea of it instead of the idea that HE is it. Booth, on the other hand, has been dealing with his feelings since at least "The Baby in the Bough," when he let the "we" and "our" slip. (Probably before. Remember how he reacted when Brennan kissed him on the cheek when he let Russ visit his sick stepdaughter in the hospital before arresting him? That little foot stomp. Swoon. There are so many moments I could point to here…) And let’s talk about that final scene last night (embedded above.) He wouldn’t have revealed that information about his past — if it hadn’t been for his grandfather, he probably would’ve killed himself as a kid (presumably to get away from his violent, alcoholic father) — for anyone but her. And did you see the way he looked down at the pocket over his heart when she put his handkerchief back in it? Yes, her hand might’ve lingered, but he reached his up to touch where hers had been and gave that look that David Boreanaz gives so well. The kind you rewind to see again. He knows how he feels. And he knows he can’t rush her. And that’s the struggle.

READ FULL STORY »

So much to talk about, where do we begin… How many of you had to put down your pasta while watching this episode? Definitely one of the bloodiest we’ve seen. The case was a dead Bridezilla, who’d been run over by an SUV — twice. I’m always a fan of the Angelator, but that recreation of the smushed head — ewwwwwwww. Was it her fiancé or her maid of honor (guest star Mayim Bialik!?, pictured) behind the wheel? No. And I’m sorta disappointed that we didn’t get to see Booth seriously interrogate the latter. I miss that Blossom sass. Was it her ex-fiancé, who was named Joe Fillion (a shoutout to David Boreanaz’s buddy Nathan, who he thinks is doing a hit-and-run on Bones with ABC’s Castle)? No. He just happened to hit a dog the week before, which is why they found a black hair in his tire. (That, and because a guy who broke down talking about the incident wouldn’t have thoroughly washed the memory of it away?) Or was it Owen Smith, the last guy the cheating bride met using a dating service that sends a picture of any potential match within 100 yards to your cell phone and allows you to choose "Date or Hate," and if both parties select "Date," then sends you the other person’s cell number? Sorta. She said "Date" to a composite photograph the creator of the service forged because he’s tired of these women who say they want a "funny, smart, successful guy" not giving him the time of day. (Note: They did not say "honest.") He drove up to meet her in the alley of the Champagne Lounge, and when she flipped him the bird, he snapped and ran her down.

READ FULL STORY »

It’s been a season of tough love for Bones (where I’m concerned), but this episode was a definite return to form. The case was…entirely over my head, but as I’ve said before, I’d rather be hearing words that I don’t understand than seeing Booth and Brennan ride a motorcycle and sidecar. Here’s what it did right:

• Had a meat puzzle that took everyone to solve (except for Angela, who was apparently either too distracted by her celibacy vow or her visiting father’s agenda to kill Hodgins to actually work): The remains of Dr. Diane Sidman, editor-in-chief of the prestigious Journal of the Collar Institute, were found in garbage bags. Gross, yes. But we got to see Hodgins and Nigel-Murray (I refuse to call him Vincent) do TWO experiments. The first involved firing a cannon at a dummy in the Jeffersonian, which earned them a scolding by Cam, who said the two of them could no longer be in a room together without supervision — ha. (Booth pushing Brennan to the wall when they heard the shot felt too forced to be hot — I’m not that easy, people.) The second involved them flash-freezing a turkey and dropping it off the balcony to watch it shatter into pieces like the body of the victim. Only, it didn’t. It bounced, flew into the air, and hit Angela in the face. REALLY? She was hit in the face by a flying turkey? I just pretended that did not happen. And so did the show’s writers — no one mentioned it again. (If I were hit in the face by a frozen turkey, it’s all I’d be talking about. Like the second time I slipped on a banana peel.) Booth and Brennan’s investigation led to some great comedic moments, such as when Brennan found the formerly radioactive spot in the victim’s office ("Testing me in the cancer chair?!" Booth squealed, before saying, "I gotta go to the bathroom" and running out) and the two of them trying to counteract the wavelengths when they were locked in the sonic wavelength chamber thingie (the tortured faces and high-pitched noises they made had to come with some great footage for the DVD blooper reel).

READ FULL STORY »

Full disclosure: I watched this episode of Bones at 1 a.m., after I got home from a Rescue Me party where there’d been an open bar. Maybe I was so…we’ll call it "relaxed," that no storyline would’ve gotten to me. But I expected this one — Cam has to tell the teen daughter of her former fiancé that her dad’s been killed and munched on by a tiger — to hit me harder than it did. I’m a fan of understated actress Tamara Taylor and I want to go deeper into Cam’s backstory, but I think we need to do it in a way that somehow involves Booth and Brennan. Or, at least Booth. (Seriously, I hope David Boreanaz enjoyed his week off. Even though I enjoyed a return to a relatively kitsch-free episode of Bones, I missed him.)

So, we found out that Cam had lived with Dr. Andrew Welton for two years, and helped raise his daughter Michelle. She hadn’t seen either of them in 10 years, until Andrew’s remains were found at a wildlife park after a benefit. She wanted to be the one to break the news to Michelle — who pretended not to remember her. Ouch. Okay, that got me. It turns out that Michelle was just angry at Cam for leaving her — and she never understood why. The answer? Because Daddy was a player, who wasn’t able to commit to any one woman after suffering the loss of his wife, which is why one of the nurses ended up offing him. (I thought Cam explained that to Michelle in the most respectful way possible. Meaning, I was just paraphrasing there.) I’ll admit that I was kind of shocked that it was BRENNAN who suggested to Cam that she take Michelle in. But then again, a parentless teen is the one kind of person Tempe has no problem relating to. Cam and Michelle reuniting their salt ‘n’ pepper shake set was a sweet ending, but I missed our usual B&B moment. I would’ve liked to have seen Booth find Brennan to discuss Cam’s decision — and Brennan’s role in it. I’m sure he would’ve been as pleasantly surprised as me and we would’ve gotten a few meaningful glances. Maybe this is what starts Brennan’s clock ticking? In which case, we’ll definitely be hearing about it in future episodes….

READ FULL STORY »

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.

READ FULL STORY »