The events that went on in this season finale were pretty surprising to me, not all in good ways. I'm very happy that there are shows on TV whose writing can still throw me for a loop, but I found myself really questioning the plausibility of many of the events, which has been happening a lot with me this season. When I can't just suspend my disbelief and I end up sitting there going, "No way, that would never happen" instead of being totally into the story, something gets lost for me.Regarding Booth's "death," it was extremely emotional to see everyone preparing for his funeral, and to see how badly Brennan was handling it. I teared up. This wasn't a scene I ever thought we'd see, even though I knew he couldn't possibly be gone. It was a superb twist that he was still alive, but after hearing the explanation about the top-secret FBI case he was working on, the whole thing just left me kind of deflated and questioning. Why would they choose to get this bad guy now? Why was Booth th...
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I have nothing witty in my repertoire to help me talk about Booth getting shot tonight by a crazed stalker, his life jeopardy, only one episode away from the season finale. It's like I'm worried, even. Logically, I don't believe they could kill off his character and just wash their hands of it, but what if we have to wait until next season to find out how he's doing? Thats what I'm really afraid of.For a show based on a forensic anthropologist who doesn't buy into psychology, tonight's episode certainly waded deep into those Freudian waters. Seeing Sweets and Brennan battle it out in a verbal Debate Of The Smartypantses was strangely educational, and dare I say Brennan seemed to have learned something from Sweets' kind of analysis despite her protestations. This ep was huge on motivations; why we do the things we do, what drives us to irrationality, how our needs come to play in our behavior. And then they put singing, oh yes, at the center of it all. Zack sang us a dirge and didn...
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Sometimes you think you know a show, and then it goes and throws you for a loop. I always thought that if ever I had a reason to type those words about this show, they'd be about the science blowing my mind, and not the humanity of it all. I mean, we all like it when episodes delve a little further into the spark that keeps Brennan going, right? With this episode, I realized that spark was not quite where I thought it was hidden in her. And maybe that makes her even better for it.We all knew it was coming: Brennan's father's (Ryan O'Neal) trial for the murder of deputy FBI director Kirby. It sure took the series long enough (as it happened way back in the middle of Season 2) to get back to this storyline and create a little closure, but I suppose it's closer to reality this way. Though the man claims he was innocent, he is actually innocent only in his own terms -- defending himself and his family against a really evil man. For all intents and purposes, Max is indeed guilty of killi...
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Sometimes, I tell ya, this show acts like it really wants to be a sitcom. It wasn't rocket science that Bones' idea of mothering went from "How about some visual and auditory stimulation?" to "You don't know what they'll do with him there, we can't take him back yet, it's better here!" There’s always the funny mishap, then the true life lesson is learned. I'm not complaining. I love the comedy in this show, even when it borders on cheesy (Brennan shoving the pacifier in Booth’s mouth in the last scene?). It just makes me wonder if this crew really ain't all that different from the likes of the Cosbys. Just with dead bodies and like, science and stuff.The baby came into the picture after it was found, literally, up in the bough of a tree at the site of his mother's fatal car crash. Rock-a-bye lucky baby in the treetop. After fetching the youngster from the treetop, Bones found a mysterious key in the child's diaper bag and clumsily left it out near him and was swallowed by...
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Aw. Hell. No. Did you all watch the same episode I did tonight? And is anyone else wondering how they let this show get away with all the things it does? I’m used to seeing grossly disfigured corpses and perps who have terrible reasons for having killed anyone, but with every detail that came out tonight, I just couldn’t believe the choices that had been made. This ep even somehow bordered on slapstick humor (I'm a scientist, I'm going to dig a rat out of a corpse!) under the premise of working on a serious murder case. Am I being harsh? Let’s discuss the evidence in bold. Bold is fun.RJ Manning was a star college basketball forward, the agreed-upon star player of the league, whose decomposing body was found under his school’s bleachers being used as a rat birthing center. A big gold star goes out to the team who created the grossest dead body I’ve ever seen on TV. All melted guts and indiscernible bone fragments, RJ’s brain was left as jelly and bits t...
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Man, was that writers' strike ever long. Since we'd been deprived of new episodes for a while, I took solace in the Bones repeats that TBS started showing, but it just wasn't the same. Having the show return tonight was like going back home to see family you've been missing, if only your family was a crew of brilliant crime-solving geeks. I missed the pokes and prods, Booth's unintentional ignorances, Brennan's clueless Edith Bunker-isms ("You want to come with us? To the bowling rink?). Sometimes I just want to pinch her cheeks and tell her it's going to be okay, and then I have to remember her IQ is probably still a number equal to the sum of all the IQ's of all the people I know. Squared.Tonight we greeted the melty remains of Tripp Goddard, murdered motorcycle racer supreme, as they were hauled out of a sulfuric hot spring in a secluded foresty area. Suspect #1: Garth Jodrey, wheelchair-bound journalist/former moto-racer hurt after his bike was clipped by Tripp in a race. Now ...
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Episode Recap: "The Santa in the Slush"Well, that kiss was certainly a nice holiday gift for us all, wasn't it? The way Bones gripped Booth's collar, how the two of them blushed, her gum ending up in his mouth… Though when it was over and they got to mumbling about how little it meant to each of them, you'd think you'd just seen two teenagers kiss for the first time in a public game of truth or dare or something. But it was so sweet. I think we all waited a long time to see if something like this would ever happen between them, and I rather enjoyed seeing how innocent it all ended up. As for the dead Santa, he appeared to not quite live up to his good name as the jolly man of myth, despite his milk-and-cookies-swilling dossier. Santa was instead accused of picking pockets and ruining Christmases for folly. I didn't think the episode did a very clear job of connecting Kris Kringle's death to Jeff, the Santa who killed him, or even giving Jeff a motive to commit the crime. The mo...
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I find the Widow's Son serial killer case totally fascinating. Honestly, I don't know how they get so much info into one episode. With storylines like tonight's, which are so embroiled in secrecy and mysticism and intricate clues in code, I end up feeling like I can't even get up to use the bathroom for fear I'll miss something important. Every detail feels that essential. And you just don't get that from TV so often these days.We found out more about Gorgonzola Gormagon tonight than we have yet, most importantly that there are two of them: A master cannibal, and his apprentice (a new apprentice, mind you, since the baby-eater croaked). Why you need to teach someone the proper way to eat human flesh, I do not know. I'm guessing it has more to do with the intricacies of picking one's kill, like making sure your victim's father died when your victim was young, or that his or her profession coincides with the characters on your ancient tapestry, or that his or her home is located along...
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It's true, everyone seems to have belonged to a specific group during high school. Some people spent all their time studying like Bones, some embraced grunge like Hodgins, and some had dashing looks, could throw a perfect spiral, and always had a pretty lady on their arm like Booth (or That Guy as we get to know him). I love episodes in which we find out a little bit more about the history of our characters, the way they were before this chunk of life we're witnessing them go through now. And realizing that Bones didn't know who The Cure were in the 1980s makes me wish she'd put those books down a few more times, though it made for one of the most humorous lines of the night: "The cure? Was he sick?"A 1987 time-capsule unveiling intended to unearth only Rubik's Cubes and acid-washed jeans yielded those exact things... floating with the remains of a decomposed body instead. Good job, Bones producers, at subsequently grossing us out more week after week. The body belonged to a fellow ...
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Gorgonzola. Gormaguy. Goobagon. That Widow's Son serial killer sure racked up a lot of nicknames in tonight's episode. I was really looking forward to finding out more clues about the mystery cannibal, and it was rather a letdown to find out the Silver Skeleton perp didn't end up having anything to do with tonight's case. Perhaps, like the squints, I just really wanted it to be Gormogon (as explained tonight, G-gon refers to a group in the 18th century dedicated to eradicating the Freemasons and the Illuminati) and not the smarty-pants Jeffersonian doc we should otherwise have been able to trust.After maintenance workers found the charred remains of a girl in the Jeffersonian's furnace room, the team set out to figure out who the victim was and how she died. I loved the scene where Angela looked at the skull and already saw the shape of the girl's face forming in her mind before any forensic devices were applied. You have all been dead-on in your commentaries by mentioning that we'v...
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Ahh, nothing like an episode about human fears to celebrate Halloween. I've always admired that when this show hits a nerve in its most important characters, it often hits one in us viewers, too. As the victims' causes of death were discovered in last night's episode, I just kept thinking about their deaths and how much it would suck to be buried alive or stuck in a box full of hungry tarantulas. Thanks, Bones! A happy Halloween to you, too (grumble)! At least I'm not afraid of clowns.This week B&B investigate a killer who's left two mummified corpses in Halloween hot zones: a pumpkin-patch maze and a funhouse. Not a very covert way of disposing of bodies if you ask me, but I guess there's no rule that serial killers can't have a flair for the dramatic. My favorite part of the opening maze scene was where I noticed actor Rider Strong (playing funhouse employee Gregg) hanging out in a grim-reaper costume. I didn't really believe my eyes until I saw him later at the funhouse. But ...
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I really thought tonight’s episode was going to give us some more clues about the season-long serial-killing cannibal hunt. But despite "cooked" bodies and multiple victims popping up, tonight’s supposedly cold-blooded perp turned out to be a young girl in the wrong place with the right reasons — trying to protect her mom’s honor from her cheating pop.Did anyone else totally call it early that the killer was Kat Curtis? I find it’s always easy to jump to conclusions early on in the episode that the killer has to be a calculating menace, some deranged and brilliant mind plotting his/her murders with stealth. So when it ends up being an otherwise innocent person caught in an unfortunate circumstance, I can’t help but feel deflated. That’s similar to what often happens on another favorite show of mine, Law & Order: SVU — when someone tries to do what they think is the right thing but winds up in the completely opposite predicament, it’s ...
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What can I say about last night's pony-play fetish episode? Giddyup. I didn't really expect to see leather and riding crops all over a show on network TV, but Bones has that way of surprising me and tackling oft-taboo topics in an educational way. Kudos to the show — they sure know how to keep things fresh over there.One thing I realized was that the more the team uncovered details about Mr. Ed's death, the more squeamish I got. I thought the maggoty (does anyone else wonder how they later get the bugs off of the body?), decomposed corpse was pretty gruesome, even for this show. Eyeballs poked out? Check. Feet severed? Check. Blunt trauma to the head? Check. But no matter, because I love watching the sleuthing ways the team uncovers clues in the victim's body. Last season when Cam busted into the lab and stopped Zack and Hodgins from setting their Spam-head experiment on fire (they were testing how long it would take skin to melt under specific conditions) I thought in horror t...
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Tonight's episode put me back in that happy Bones place that made me love the show in the first place. Somewhere between solving a murder and using big science-y words like "capillary electrophoresis" is the show's big heart, and I have to say that tonight I sighed more than once.Soccer mom Amy Nash was killed when her car exploded at a soccer field. I can't say how much this scene got me — the explosion churning red while Lou Reed's sunny "Perfect Day" played in the background and little girls screamed in horror from the adjacent field. The three couldn’t have contrasted more, and it was totally beautiful.Back at the lab, the FBI called in Special Agent Frost, a lady with some impressive skills and equally impressive cleavage, a fact not lost on Hodgins. My favorite quote of the night came when Angela, noting the stuttering mess her man Hodge became around Frost, introduced herself to Frost as "Angela Montenegro. I do facial reconstructions. And him." I heart Angela. Unli...
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So you’re cruising down the highway one night with your pals. You’re having a good time, and even though you haven’t been drinking, your eyes tell you a human skull just bounced off the truck in front of you and is hurling at your car, ready to make sloppy seconds of your windshield. Greeeeat.Hooray for Season 3 of Bones! When your plots start out with skulls on highways and end up with cannibals and secret societies, what’s not to love? But we'll get there. To start with:Some Useful Vocabulary We Learned from This Episode• ungual — of, pertaining to, bearing, or shaped like a nail, claw, or hoof• osteoma — a benign tumor composed of bony tissue, often developing on the skull• squeeze ‘n squish — Angela's euphemism for heavy pettingLet me key you up to where we left off in May. Angela and Hodgins skipped their nuptials and went right for the honeymoon after discovering Angela was still married to a guy she met on a trip to Fiji...
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