Hey, Bones fans! Let’s skip over the disgusting opening where a street sweeper licks blood off his finger from some corpse’s shredded remains, and get right to it, shall we? Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!
Booth wants a TV in the bedroom to watch the game, due to the kids monopolizing the other one, while Brennan points out how couples with a TV in their bedroom have sex half as often. And not only that, but what if the Philadelphia Whosits have a losing season? Booth will be all depressed and not in the mood. Well, Booth has a solution. He’ll be making some “extra” time for them. Parents of newborns everywhere wonder if this means they’ll be shipping off the baby off to Angela’s house.
But I think the biggest impediment to their alone time might be that their bedroom doesn’t look like it has walls or doors.
In the end, Brennan winds up leasing a fifty-six inch television, and while she makes it clear Booth had better keep up with the number of sexytimes of her choosing or the TV goes back, she rejects said sexytimes in favor of her interview about the case, a documentary, and a James Cagney film.
Rick O’Malley, a first-term senator from Virginia. Wonder how he’d feel about his remains getting scavenged by a raccoon and ground up by a street sweeper. Caroline, for reasons obvious reasons, doesn’t want Brennan going along for such a delicate death notification.
Aubrey and Booth talk about O’Malley on the way to the notification. Aubrey seems to revere O’Malley, since he used to be a blue-collar worker. He was the general manager for a coal mining company. Aubrey waxes poetic about how O’Malley wasn’t just a career politician and cared about his constituents. Compares him to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and surprises Booth and the rest of us when he admits he has political aspirations. He says there’s a senate seat opening in 2020 that has his name on it.
Aaaand that notification they were going to make? Not necessary with the large amount of reporters gathered like vultures on the O’Malley front lawn. Booth talks about a leak at the F.B.I. Will this be important later?
I’m immediately suspicious of the little guy opening the door. He’s talking on the phone about no press statements and how he doesn’t care if it’s Diane Sawyer, blah blah blah. After he lets in Booth and Aubrey, he walks away.
Mrs. M. isn’t all that flustered about finding out about her husband from the press. It’s pretty much been her whole life. But she says living their lives in the public eye was worth it. One of the reason Mr. M went into politics was to save local jobs, aka coal mining jobs. Two mentions of coal mines in five minutes. Hmmm…that’s not significant, right?
The little guy is Eric Morales, O’Malley’s Chief of Staff. He calls O’Malley a revelation.
Mrs. M says Mr. M had recently been aloof and receiving calls at all hours from the party’s majority whip, Senator Hayley Winters. As a result, she was suspicious he was having an affair with Hayley. And the night before, they were at a fundraiser together.
I’m no expert, but if they’re having an affair, shouldn’t it be more…secret?
As Caroline says, there’s no way in H-E-double hockey sticks she’s going to let Booth haul the senate majority whip into the F.B.I. without any evidence she was involved in anything, But they catch a break. Aubrey comes to say Hayley called and wants Booth to come to her office, so she can brief him. Caroline is thrilled she doesn’t have to take any antacid. But not so fast! She’ll need the whole bottle, since Hayley, being a former doctor, requested Dr. Brennan’s presence.
On the way to talk to Hayley, Brennan tries to assure Booth she’ll be on her best behavior, but Booth doesn’t want that. As a matter of fact, he wants her to be as Brennan as she can be, including saying stuff that can be misconstrued as offensive. I don’t think there’s any misconstruing where Brennan is concerned. Anyway, Booth wants to get a read on Hayley, so if she’s clutching her pearls as Brennan insults her, so be it.
Caroline tells Aubrey that Justice wants a background check on Squintern Jessica to make sure she’s cleared to work on the body SHE’S ALREADY WORKING ON. Aubrey assures Caroline he knows Jessica and won’t find anything. I don’t know Jessica, and I’m sure he’ll find something, so his blind faith is more than a little naïve.
Sure enough, she was involved in Greenpeace in college. There’s a lovely picture of her in the crowd of a demonstration in front of what looks like an animal research facility. Someone is throwing fake blood on a guy with glasses, while another guy holds up a “SCIENCE GONE MAD” sign and another a “Free the Animals” sign. As if it couldn’t get any worse, a pipe bomb exploded outside of the building five minutes later. But Greenpeace was cleared. Hey, the word peace is right there in the title.
But wait! There’s more! Jessica…went on the road with the band Fish? And at the time she took drugs. Then in a bout of honesty, Jessica tells Aubrey she doesn’t currently do drugs anymore but can’t guarantee she won’t do them again.
Jessica is a lot of things, but she’s not stupid and can see Aubrey’s disappointment written all over his face. He does have a moral decision to make as to whether to report all of the information back to Caroline. Jessica insists she’s not the same person, in the same way Aubrey isn’t the same kid who watched his dad hauled away to prison. Except the difference here is that Aubrey didn’t do anything illegal. But honestly, I expected a lot worse.
All of this is taking place as a friendship has developed between Aubrey and Jessica that appears to be heading toward something more than watching Battlestar Galactica together.
Aubrey does tell Caroline there are some skeletons in Jessica’s closet but nothing to create a mistrial, which is good, because again, it’s probably too late at this point. Aubrey believes Caroline knew what he’d find. And here’s where Caroline goes off the rails a bit for me. It seems more like she made the request. I guess she knows of Aubrey’s aspirations and wanted to make sure he was with “the right kind of woman.” Caroline, you’re one of my favorites, but I hate that you’re making me side with Jessica. This was manipulative of Caroline, and she doesn’t strike me as that kind of character.
Jessica goes to Angela for romantic advice and hints there was the potential for the relationship to go somewhere, so she’s upset by the latest developments.
Hayley, played by Brenda Strong, seems friendly and efficient. She’s also the most famous of the suspects, so I have my eye on her. Hayley’s aides are preparing a bill to increase the debt ceiling, so the government doesn’t shut down again. And Brennan is being extra-Brennan. She’s insulting and belittling at every turn. She also insinuates that possibly Hayley was the killer. No dummy, our Hayley, she decides to make their discussion private.
The first zinger Brennan hits her with is the affair. Hayley is flattered anyone thinks she has the stamina. The fundraiser the night before is brought up, and in typical fashion for all suspects, she’s all, “Nope! Everything is hunky dory!” Then she appears to think a moment, and whenever the suspect says, “Wait, now that I think of it….” you always know what follows is not an incident that would just slip someone’s mind.
Turns out there had been a handful of protesters, and it got O’Malley unnerved. He left shortly after. Yeah. That’s totally not important at all. A man runs out of a fundraiser right after being unnerved by protesters, he’s murdered that night, and it’s an afterthought?
Anyway, surprise, surprise, the protests were there because of an amendment to the debt ceiling bill about reducing coal emissions. Ding ding ding! And though O’Malley’s whole platform was in support of coal miners, he was going to vote in favor of the bill. Booth nails Hayley on being the one to persuade O’Malley, and Hayley talks about how sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the sake of the party.
Some grainy footage is scraped together of a guy accosting O’Malley at the fundraiser. Though for the first time ever, Angela is unable to do facial rec, Caroline has it handled. He’s Frankie Cesari, the unofficial president of the coal mining lobby in Virginia. Caroline has a history with him, since he “disappeared” her witness to Frankie’s embezzling. I’m going with Frankie as a total red herring, so let’s move on.
Aubrey discovers O’Malley is clean except for a monthly withdrawal of $2,000. His last meal was pigeon (EWWW!). After the fundraiser, a cab driver dropped him off at an Indonesian restaurant where he was spotted embracing a young woman, who of course winds up being his biological daughter, Anissa. O’Malley and her mom had a one-night stand, and she was the result. While B&B accost her about that measly two-thousand bucks and how she blackmailed daddy for it, she insists he was just helping her with college, which makes way more sense. I mean, seriously. That’s not a lot of money.
Anyway, O’Malley talked with Anissa about that vote he didn’t want to make. She told him to follow his heart.
A needle mark is found behind O’Malley’s ear. The killer thought they could poison O’Malley and make it look like natural causes, but O’Malley fought back, thus how he wound up beaten to death. The first most natural suspect is the doc, Hayley, but upon closer inspection of the wife’s alibi, it falls apart, and she’s a diabetic with access to needles. I have another theory. We’re told multiple times about how poison is a woman’s method for murdering, so immediately I suspect a dude.
When Booth and Aubrey get to the O’Malley house, there’s even more reporters. Hayley is there, and they’re gearing up for a press conference Mrs. M is about to give, but it’s not about her husband. It’s about the Widow’s Mandate. When a senator dies while in office, the governor must find a replacement for the remainder of the term. The logical choice is the widow, who is most likely to share the spouse’s ideology.
Though Booth told Aubrey to keep quiet once they got to the house due to his political aspirations and it not being a good idea if he rocked the boat, Aubrey does just the opposite. He’s like a male Brennan, so I don’t know why anybody thinks he’s more diplomatic. He’s rude and condescending. He insinuates people are guilty before he checks out alibis. And he makes people shut down rather than creating an environment where they’ll confess.
And Brennan gets a gut feeling I’m sure a week from now she’ll forget she ever had.
A petrified coal statue of the state of Virginia is the murder weapon, and since coal turns organic tissue blue, Booth just has to look for the suspect with a blue cut on their hand.
Would it surprise you to find out Morales is the one with the blue cut on his hand? Not only was he having an affair with Mrs. M., but Mr. M was going to vote against the party, so yay for more coal emissions? And is anyone surprised by this outcome? So, Morales knew about the Widow’s Mandate and they could have made a difference together and she understood about making sacrifices for the good of the party, and blah blah blah…murderer.
It all ends with Aubrey on what looks like a date with Jessica. He’s now jaded about politicians, even though his hero voted his conscience instead of with his party. And ugh, I hate to admit it, but they’re actually kind of cute together, and they make each other more likable.
So, that’s it. What do you think of the Aubrey/Jessica relationship? Do you agree they kind of work as a couple? Do you have a television in your bedroom?