Hey, Bones fans! Okay, some of the Bones cold opens have been really gross, but a bunch of rats feasting on a corpse was not the best after-dinner vision. Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!

Parker Exists!
Well, sort of. It’s the middle of the night for B&B, and they Skype with Parker in London, It seems Booth has planned an adventure for the two of them hiking the Appalachian trail. As they start to talk about it, Parker says his ride is there early to take him to school. So much for family bonding time. Parker also manages to look super uncomfortable even with only ten seconds of conversation.
The cause for all of the awkwardness is discovered in Parker’s Skype call to Brennan. Goodness but she’s suddenly the go-to sensitive and understanding one. Anyway, he got into this awesome creative writing program at Oxford, and he doesn’t know how to tell Dad he’d rather do that. He enlists Brennan for help. It’s kind of cute how he consistently calls her Bones.
She does tell Booth who seems to not understand why Parker would throw away a summer of fun to do work. But Booth does come around when he sees a sample of Parker’s writing and declares it better than Brennan’s, who of course disagrees. He also says life is to be enjoyed. When Brennan asks if he’s worried Parker will turn out like her, he says if that happens, he’ll be the proudest dad ever. Awww…

New Squintern Sammy Mills?
Things do not go well from the start. She seems star-struck and only parrots back what Brennan says by rephrasing it in simpler terms. I must say Brennan is hugely patient and does try to draw her out in ways that don’t insult her but basically tells Mills to get a mind of her own.

The situation is further complicated when Mills jumps to a conclusion. Rut roh. Hodgins tries to warn her, but Mills announces proudly “I found cause of death!” as she waves around the bone. Brennan is going to lose it on her soon. And sure enough when all she does is kiss butt, Brennan again has to remind her to have an original thought.

When she does get one, she calls Cam to tell her. Sammy hasn’t even seen the worst of Brennan. And maybe she never will. Brennan points out a number of mistakes she made, said it delayed the progress of the investigation, and she’s fired.

Surprisingly, Brennan’s not horribly cruel about it and when Mills cries, puts an arm around her and says There, there” even if it is stilted and awkward. Hodgins and Angela try to go to bat for Sammy, since she cleaned up around the lab during her work-study program and they considered her a friend, but it’s no use. I’m with Brennan on this one. I don’t even know how they would put Sammy in a lab with Brennan, since I probably could have done a better job, and she’s not known to suffer fools gladly. Bye, Sammy!

Corpse of the Week
He’s Scott Hill, a sophomore.

Cam is pretty excited to be at the Lynwood University bio lab, and since it doesn’t have to do with food or video games, Aubrey has his serious face on to remind Cam they’re on the job. And, ew! I guess the rats ate themselves to bursting while feasting on Scott. Is there an eating disorder program for the poor critters?

But the answer might lie in that they were being starved for Pavlovian conditioning, so the killer thought it would be a good body dump location. This is getting grosser by the minute. And after Cam makes a crack about how the sound of a bell can make rats do pretty much anything due to their tiny little brains, all of the teams’ phones go off, and they hurriedly grab them to take a look. WAH WAH. At least they seem to understand the irony.

When Booth and Aubrey visit Scott’s roomie, McKay, and he’s told Scott’s dead, his “That’s awful” doesn’t even have the emotion you’d summon for describing a bad meal. But he has finals, you know, so he has more important things on his mind. Apparently they didn’t get in each other’s way, since Scott spent all of his time with The Whippersnaps, which Aubrey identifies as an a cappella group.

When Aubrey shows off his research skills regarding The Whippersnaps, for some reason Booth turns into a luddite who announces the Internet is for social idiots, while the art of bowling is for people on a higher plane…because Aubrey looked up facts about the case they’re working on. So…what’s your point, Booth?

Anyway, A&B enter the Whipperspace where the group is practicing a lovely rendition of “After Midnight.” But when they’re done the leader, Jake, goes on a power trip, while others point out he needs to get his diva hand under control. Ummm…simmer down, guys.

Booth breaks up the slamfest with his shiny shield. Seems Jakey took Scott’s place, and once Scott’s name is mentioned, the two guys Jake was screaming at, Ted and Julian, both immediately accuse Jake of murder.

So, poor Scott can’t get any love, as the guys in his group promptly forgot about him five minutes after he was gone, what with the National Collegiate A Cappella Competition coming up, they don’t have time for this murder stuff. Why is nobody at least concerned for their own safety amid all of this self-centeredness?
By the way, Aubrey is fanboying all over the place, so we can add a cappella singing to his list of stuff he loses his mind over, and maybe he can stop looking down on Cam.

Jake also didn’t have time to report Scott missing and just stepped in to take his place. Plus, Scott dying is a real inconvenience, since they lost a tenor right before nationals.

Was Scott a horrible person, or was it everyone he surrounded himself with?

Jake turns A&B onto Ian Johnson, Scott’s ex-best friend and member of the Whippersnaps until Scott kicked him out. Ian was a legacy, I guess, since his dad was not only a part of the Whippersnaps but a former director. He’s now a lawyer and insists on being present for the interrogation of Ian.

Ian says Scott kicked him out of the group, because he wasn’t cutting it, but after hearing Ian’s voice, I can say Scott was either tone deaf or had some nefarious shenanigans going on. Aubrey agrees. Ian goes on to say that Scott was keeping secrets.

If you might have guessed, Aubrey knows more about this singing stuff than just looking it up on the internet. He whisper-confesses to Angela he used to sing a cappella in college in a way others might admit to something much more embarrassing they did during their college years. But, you know, he has a manly rep to protect. Anyway, as a result of his musical knowledge, he’s able to identify the arrangements Scott was doing were original and amazing and not at all having to do with the Whippersnaps’ current arrangements. He convinces Angela that whatever Scott was going through, will show up in his music.

Sure enough, they find a For Liz playlist and capture footage of Scott and Liz going into a closet together. A&B go to visit Liz, and aaaand…suddenly I’m in the movie Pitch Perfect with a female group, The Ginger Snaps, singing a cappella, only with gyrations. Also, that closet action wasn’t as sexy as it sounds. Aubrey realizes those arrangements were for Liz. Scott wanted her to join their group, which is why he kicked out Ian. Seems she could hit a note Ian couldn’t. Scott wanted more press at nationals and figured the novelty of the first girl to join the Whippersnaps would get them attention.

So, this meant they were both screwing over their respective groups. Not only that, but a month previously, Scott and five other members of the Whippersnaps came down with an unidentifiable strep-like infection that was created in the lab at the university.

A member of the Gingersnaps, Esther, is a research fellow at the lab. She apparently added a secret disease ingredient to her lip gloss and set about kissing multiple members of the Whippersnaps but knew nothing of Liz’s defection. She just wanted the awesome gigs they were getting. She goes on to say that even if Scott wanted to have Liz join the group, the bylaws prohibit it. When Aubrey points out that as director Scott would have been able to change them, he’s corrected. Ian’s father, the head of the Whippersnap Alumni Foundation, is the only one who could do that.

Anyway, Esther used her best “negotiation tactics” on Mr. Johnson, because she wanted to become a Whippersnap, and by that I’m sure she means she used everything in her seduction arsenal. But Mr. Johnson wasn’t having it.

Mr. J does admit to manhandling Scott, because he threatened to change the name of the group to the WHIPPERSNAPPERS if Mr. J didn’t make Liz part of their group. Oh, the horror! But that’s as far as it went. Sooo…Mr. J directs them back to Julian and Ted. You remember them, right? Anyway, they were more qualified to become director, but Scott blackmailed them about buying term papers.

The arrest of Julian and Ted brings on Julian’s lament that he cried at the end of Legally Blonde 2, so no way could he be a murderer. The interrogation includes blubbering and babbling, and how awesome Scott was as a director, so it worked out for the best. Hey, Scott even shared his anti-anxiety meds with Julian! Anyway, the ladder in the Whipperspace practice room doesn’t match the marks on Scott, so they get to sing another day.

Solving the Case
Hodgins finds traces of meteorite in Scott’s skull. As it turns out, Scott’s “distraught” roomie, McKay, is an astrophysics major with a focus on geology. It’s always the quiet ones, right? So, McKay was the one on the anti-anxiety meds. He had a presentation to give for the astronomy fellowship and needed his meds, but since Scott had stolen them, he had a full-on panic attack and lost the fellowship. He threw the meteorite at Scott’s head, Scott stumbled, grabbed bookcase, and it fell on him and killed him. But instead of calling the police, McKay made the guy rat food.

Cranky Hodgins is Back
Oh boy. Seems Hodgins secretly contacted a surgeon, Emil Hoffman, who is doing experimental surgery for nerve regeneration. If you were expecting Angela to jump for joy over this news, you’d be wrong. And it’s unfortunate we get a glimpse of the belligerent, jerky Hodgins we’ve been seeing for the past few weeks. He’s upset Angela isn’t happy for him and announces it’s his decision alone to make.

Angela finds out that one of Dr. Hoffman’s patients died in surgery. During this whole time, Hodgins has been bottle feeding and taking amazing care of the surviving rats, even giving them a luxurious condo. Angela points out that he cares more for the rats than himself, and the other ones all died because they were poked and prodded, so does he want to do the same to himself? Hodgins does come to his senses and agrees with her, so it took him a shorter time to go back to his old self. WHEW.

In the end, Booth gathers everyone to his house. He has a video tape? of Aubrey at the 2001 National Collegiate A Cappella Championship, courtesy of Mr. Johnson. I guess since Booth is old school he might own a VCR (look it up, kids). Any self-respecting luddite would. Aubrey has hair up to the ceiling and a really nice bowtie. They all rib him good-naturedly.

And so closes another Bones chapter. See you next episode!

Hey, Bones fans! When last we left our gang, they found out there was a serial killer on the loose, but they don’t seem all that worried about it and are instead focused on the fallout from Brennan punching out the meninist who told Booth to put a muzzle on her. Let’s get on with the Bones Top Five Moments!?

What? Me worry?
Brennan is about to be deposed but seems unaffected, so it’s great that Booth is carrying around enough worry and anxiety for the both off them. He stresses the bureau’s love of accountability and remorse, but Brennan is quite pleased with herself over the altercation and cannot be swayed, until…well, there’s a “thing” the hero of her latest novel does on page 214, and Booth promises to do it if she complies. It sounds athletic.

But Squintern Jessica’s “What could they possibly do to her?” seems like a jinx. Let’s go into the hearing and find out…

And it seems even though Booth participated in page 214, Brennan states she’s dang proud of her actions. And indeed the smug look on her face confirms it, until she’s told that if Booth’s testimony goes as well as hers did, she won’t be allowed to work with the bureau anymore. Rut roh.

In the end, with Booth by her side, Brennan does take accountability for her actions. However, Honest Booth, when asked to confirm if Brennan will never hit someone again, is hesitant to make that declaration but insists she deserves a second chance. It’s then decided that Brennan will go on six months’ probation, overseen by Booth. Essentially, she screws up, he gets punished. Brennan is not on board with this, but Booth just wants to agree and not make any waves. They squabble over this until the fade to black…

Awkward moments
Aubrey and Jessica are a thing? Well, almost a thing. If they can have their first kiss without one of them ending up with a bloody nose. And being interrupted by murder and a car going through a ten-feet-deep puddle. Moment spoiled.

In the end they decide not to rush the kiss, but when Jessica almost gets hit by a car, Aubrey pulls her out of the way, and they wind up lying on the pavement together, kissing like it’s their job. Congrats, guys.

Sebastian meets with Angela at the Jeffersonian about her latest work, only she totally forgets that he and Cam broke up five minutes ago and doesn’t warn Cam not to walk into her office. Not awkward at all.

Hodgins Has a Breakthrough
Hodgins is pushing Angela away and shrugging off every touch. She’s an abused wife at this point. It doesn’t seem like her to continue to take it.

As Angela says, “You do you, and I’ll do me” is no way to have a marriage. Angela, just go to Sebastian’s studio. At this point, you should be living there.

And to make matters worse, Angela is having sex dreams about Sebastian, because of course when your husband is verbally abusing you on a daily basis, and you have a charming, hot, sweet man who appreciates you and your work, this is inevitable. The bad news is, Angela fell asleep at her desk while having the dream, and Hodgins heard her say his name.

Even Brennan tries to talk sense into him, but they get into a circular surviving/living argument. Suffice it to say that Hodgins has given up all hope.

There’s an excellent Angela/Brennan bonding moment where Angela spills it all, and Brennan points out he can operate normally. So they could have a sex life, if Hodgins stops verbally abusing Angela for five minutes. The hug at the end was perfect. I love these two as friends.

In the end, Hodgins tries to give Angela all of his earthly possessions as he sails of into the sunset, alone. Angela doesn’t want any of that. She wants him and needs him to fight. At first he seems unmoved, but he does come home to Angela crying in bed and holds her hand. It’s a beautiful moment to see these two connect again. I’m just glad that’s over with, and next week it looks like we’re back to the real Hodgins. I’ve missed him.

Corpse of the Week
Lola Marshall, thirty two, recent resident of the local penitentiary for dealing crack. She was considered a fugitive, because two weeks ago she failed to show up at her halfway house where she was staying after being paroled. I guess we know why.

The owner/operator of the halfway house is Thomas Hemingway, and I’m immediately suspicious of him. It could just be that I recognize the actor. Anyway, he says Lola was doing well with group therapy and learning how to cope in mock interviews, because she got hired by a donut shop right away.

Her roommate at the halfway house, Jasmine, says Lola got beaten up really bad while in prison. She was laid up for months and bored, so she wound up getting her GED and turned her life around.

Anyway, a guy named Kenny was mad at Lola. He was her old supplier, and she turned state’s evidence against him. Coincidentally, Booth met Kenny while he was in prison. As he and Aubrey go to meet up with Kenny, Aubrey reads off Kenny’s file, which isn’t too promising, but since Kenny had Booth’s back during his time in the joint, he won’t hear of it.

They go to the cleanest mechanic shop I’ve ever seen, where Kenny is happy to see Booth, but not so much Aubrey, who appears to be in full jerk mode. Booth shuts down the questioning rather quickly, and Aubrey wonders if Booth’s gut and loyalty to the guy who got knifed for him is getting in the way of treating Kenny as a suspect.

Lola had a daughter, Kalani, when she was really, really young, and that daughter is now almost eighteen and having a baby of her own. She’s aging out of the system and would have a baby to support, so she went to look up mom for the first time. Lola was happy to see her. Said she wanted to support them and break the cycle. If you guessed Kenny was the daddy, you’d be right, but Lola didn’t tell him about the daughter until recently. And even though Lola wanted a big, happy family, Kenny didn’t think he was fit to be a dad, so he refused to meet Kalani.

It seems Wiley Monkey is behind what’s going on. And no, Aubrey, it has nothing to do with the Roadrunner and anvils. It’s a drug that contains cocaine, heroin, and…household cleaning products? They find a batch of it in Lola’s room in a lamp that may have been the murder weapon, and they bring in Jasmine for questioning. She’s terrified, because either they’ll put her in prison for the drugs, or “he’ll” kill her, but she won’t say who “he” is.

I have a pretty good idea…

Solving the Case
And it looks like I’m right. Hemmingway beat the crap out of Lola, stuffed her in his trunk thinking she was dead, but she wasn’t and tried to claw her way out. Then he shot her. Wow.

Jasmine was selling drugs for him, and Lola found out and threatened to turn him in. Hemmingway puts on a brave face for three seconds, until B&B tell him they have physical evidence from his car. Then, without an attorney present, he admits to the killing and justifies his actions about getting something for himself for a change. He follows this up by saying they can’t send him to prison, because he’ll be killed. Uh, maybe you should have thought about that before you confessed and then justified it.

But the good news is that Kenny is ready to step up to the Daddy plate. Booth gets them together. They hug, and now Kenny has another reason to stay on the good path.

So, that’s it! Are you glad Hodgins is himself again? What about Booth being responsible for Brennan? Do you think she won’t deck anyone for six months?
See you next week!

Hey, Bones fans! When last we left our lovely gang, Hodgins was alienating everyone around him. Let’s see what we have in store this week. Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!

Christine and the Monster in the Closet
So, Christine has reached that age when there’s a monster in the closet. While Booth tries to comfort his daughter about how he already scared away the monster, Brennan, ever helpful, reminds them that monsters aren’t real, and therefore whatever Booth did was ineffectual. Even Aubrey weighs in. He says the key is for Christine to go up to her closet and tell the monster to go bye-bye, or her dad is “going to put a cap in his ass.”

In the end, Booth does kind of take Aubrey’s advice, though probably not the cap in the ass part, and she figures out there are no monsters…or are there?

Hodgins is Worse
Well, okay then. Hodgins is still being rude to everyone. Brennan, who can be quite rude to the living herself, demands he have respect for the dead. Angela points out that respect is no longer a part of Hodgins’ vocabulary. But apparently work Hodgins is Happy Hodgins. Again, show, I don’t understand why you’re doing this.

Corpse of the Week
Allison Monroe, 42. Disappeared a week before their tenth anniversary. Yeesh.

Ew, gross. Yuck. Taxidermy was performed on her, and the killer stuck a wire through her skeleton in order to pose her. This is a killer with dedication and work ethic. And he lived with the body for at least six months. But then like all dead bodies do, she mouthed off in some way that made him angry, and he killed her again. Is it Hodgins? Because he’s so angry at everyone right now.

Anyway, she was wearing old-fashioned clothes, and in her purse was an old-fashioned cassette tape with old-fashioned music on it. There’s also a small Bible, with marked passages that have to do with punishment for the wicked. The whole thing is really creepy.

All of this means another visit from Karen the profiler. I think last time she didn’t really profile so well, so I’m hoping there’s an improvement.

Hubby is not at all the grieving widow. He said Allison never went missing, so two hours after she was gone, he knew. Whatever, dude. Sometimes knowing something in theory isn’t the same as receiving confirmation. You’re like the poster boy for stoicism. Anyway, Allison was a social worker who took on the most difficult cases.

Hubby suggests they talk to Neal, her supervisor, since Allison got all kinds of threats from people whose kids are taken away from them, as well as prospective foster parents Allison deemed unfit.

Arastoo is back, and awkwardness ensues. This one is Brennan’s fault. But he’s there, and Cam looks really happy about it. Not.

However, when she gets alone with Angela, who admits she’s plotting to kill her husband, Cam says it’s “really, really great” that he’s there. Ugh. And he turned down the job in Berlin, so this does not look good for Sebastian. Color me unhappy.

But he is useful, in that he realized this isn’t the first time he’s seen someone killed this way. And hilariously, the reason Brennan didn’t know about the other body, is because the bones were cataloged at a time when she and Booth quit their jobs. I won’t go into how the second Brennan returned she would have gone over each cataloging to make sure everything was done correctly. Let’s just go with it.

There’s a serial killer on the loose
So, the other victim is an unidentified dude. Scavengers ate his face, so even Angela’s magical toys couldn’t do a facial reconstruction. Arastoo also did all of the tests he could to figure out who the guy was, but to no avail. Brennan, in her efforts to always not respect the living, tells Arastoo he did all he could and therefore should not feel guilty the killer is still on the loose.

His conscience is clear, but it appears Brennan is feeling all of it for herself, since she wasn’t there.

Karen the profiler has profiled the killer, and no surprise, he’s super-intelligent, because they all are on these shows. He also may have schizophrenia and is “totally cray-cray.” Yeah, if you were the FBI, wouldn’t you have total confidence in this woman? It turns out she’s only using that term because she’s been reading over Sweets’ old notes, and it said Booth would get annoyed by overly complex and officious-sounding language. Look, smarty-pants, there’s a vast chasm between complex language and condescending language that makes it sound like you’re talking to a three year old. “He’s crazy” would have been more than efficient and not made you sound like, as Aubrey says, a thirteen year old.

And if she’s the profiler, why doesn’t she try and read Booth as opposed to looking at Sweets’ notes? Karen, you’re going to need to step up your game.

Allison served as a mother figure. The killer wanted to be punished, which is why he marked up the Bible that way. Allison, in life, fit the bill for what he needed. A strong, but kind, maternal figure. But then his urge grew stronger, so he double-killed her, in order to be free to go out and murder again.

As for the unidentified dude, they’re going to look through missing persons for a guy who was a pillar of the community. Got that? Me, neither.

Aubrey goes to see Allison’s boss, Neal, who gives up all of her files immediately. Then based on Karen’s recommendation that the killer gave Allison tons of positive attention, Aubrey concentrates on Neal and asks about their relationship. I guess we’re forgetting another guy was murdered the same way. Turns out Neal had strong stalker tendencies, but he’s no killer.

Booth and Brennan head to the home of George Gibbons. Since the picture in the file is Jim Beaver of Supernatural fame (RIP Bobby!), I’m going with him being Mr. Cray-Cray.

He was turned down for being a foster parent due to that pesky kidnapping charge, but though he knew he’d be rejected, he kept going back again for another try, because Allison’s siren song was too beautiful to ignore.

They pull up to a house Criminal Minds would be proud of. Remote location. Broken windows. The smell of possible fetid remains means Booth has probable cause to enter without permission. Cats are everywhere, and it looks like the horror movie version of Hoarders. Brennan finds a necklace belonging to Allison, so I think they’ve wrapped this one up.

There’s a noise that Booth goes upstairs to inspect, and if you didn’t expect a cat scare in a house full of cats, you’d be wrong. But then! A knife to the throat. “Don’t move,” George says. And I think he means it.

Booth takes out his gun and is about to shoot George in the gut, when Brennan comes upstairs. There’s a click, and she tells George it’s a Colt 45 aimed at his head. Only not so much. It’s just a gun noise phone app. WAH WAH.

In and amongst the cockroaches and dirt, Cam finds a high-end watch, which probably belonged to unidentified dude. Angela also finds a video camera.

Only George is not Mr. Cray-Cray, despite his confession. Karen, the worst profiler ever, notices in George’s rambling diary entries that he keeps mentioning blood. She’s confused and wants to know why he had the knife to Booth’s throat and didn’t do the deed. Then she looks at more of his ramblings and deems he has vasovagal syncope. Translation? He faints at the sight of blood. To prove it, Karen SLICES INTO HER PALM. Like, not just a little, tiny cut. But oozing, dripping blood. Seriously. This is a profiler. George promptly faints. So would I, and I don’t have VS. Booth is impressed?

The watch has the initials G.H.S., which stands for Gainesborough High School, where the victim worked as a principal. His name is Douglas Burkhart. His wife is also really calm. She thought he ran off with a student, which, really? Wouldn’t there be some evidence of that? A likely student he ran off with? Fine. He didn’t know George or Allison. But she tells Booth she wants to help.

Angela realizes that the video camera was still transmitting while they were all at the house, so as Angela points out, this “sick individual” knows who they are, and I’m already getting hives, because I smell another Pel*** on the horizon.

Aubrey and Karen put their heads together and figure George is the perfect patsy, and they should ask him who the killer is. Except the killer is holding Charlie hostage. Charlie is, of course, his favorite cat. It seems the real Mr. Cray-Cray has done this before. Like when George brought him the mother figure he asked for, only it wasn’t supposed to trace back to George. And, well, George didn’t follow instructions.

George is afraid to talk, because Cray-Cray, no surprise, is smarter than everybody and will know he talked. Looks like we have another genius, omniscient killer on our hands. More bad news, just as the best lil profiler figures out a way to get the info from him, Aubrey lets her know George hung himself.

Not Solving the Case
Brennan is obsessed. She tells Booth she has to get into the killer’s mind, because they’re very much alike. Booth freaks, but she points out that the dude lived with Allison for six months and didn’t see her as a skeleton. He saw her as a person he could interact with, just as she does. Also no surprise is Brennan’s guilt over Allison’s death and her insistence that, given their track record, she and Booth would have solved Douglas’ murder.

In a scene that’s both horrifying and beautiful, Booth realizes the holes drilled into the skeleton were so he could put screws in there and use string to haul her up and make her into a macabre marionette. He reenacts it, including the bone crunching sounds as they tighten the screws. In a show about dead bodies, this one is particularly weird and unsettling.

In the end, it’s bad news and more bad news. Cam is scared to go home, what with the killer having seen her, and she asks Arastoo to drive her home, right before she admits to breaking up with Sebastian.

And the killer? Once again is nameless and faceless. And Cam has nothing to worry about. He’s focused in on Brennan. Mommy? Is that you?

It’s all coming to a head. See you next episode!

Hey, Bones fans! When we last left off, Hodgins received some bad news from the worst doctor ever that he probably would never walk again, and he lied to Angela about it. I’m sure only good results will come from this, as lying to your spouse about major issues is always a good idea. Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!

Brennan the Jinx
Booth has finally gotten Brennan to watch Flyers games with him. The only problem is that since she’s been watching, they’ve been on a losing streak. He deems her bad luck, but as Brennan points out, there is no such thing as luck. Also, it seems that Brennan, the smartest woman in the universe who pays attention to all of the fine details, still can’t get the term “hat trick.” Look! Smart people can’t understand simple concepts!

Aubrey doesn’t help when he confirms jinxes are real.

Booth even offers to take Brennan out to a romantic dinner to get her to not watch the game, but she’s insistent upon watching it.

Hodgins the Terrible
Let’s call him Cranky Hodgins. He’s stopped all of his physical therapy ever since the doctor gave him her chipper no hope speech. And Angela, probably suspicious of Hodgins’ new and improved gung-ho behavior, talked to the doctor directly and found out he has no neural connectivity. Hodgins admits he does have feelings. In addition to Cranky, we can add the rest of the dwarves, Anger, Rage, and Biting Sarcasm.

The Royal Diner isn’t helping matters, with people bumping into his wheelchair and spilling Booth’s coffee. Even Brennan tries to say they should go somewhere else, but Hodgins isn’t having it. He can sense coddling when he hears it and rejects Booth’s offer to watch the game, “Just the guys.” Maybe if he knew Brennan was a jinx…

And his face when he realizes he has to use the new special wheelchair lift…not pretty.

His verbal abuse of Angela is noticed by everyone, even Brennan, so you know it’s bad. Squintern Fuentes also gives it to him with both barrels, and though Hodgins claims he doesn’t want coddling, he does pull the paraplegic card to justify his horrible behavior.

Cam tries to get him involved in an experiment involving pig parts, but it’s a no go, and even though Hodgins tells her it’s going to explode, she immediately opens the door to the glass chamber, and Hodgins gets pelted, thus furthering his humiliation.

In the end, Angela discovers he’s joined a support group for people with spinal cord injuries, but rather than it helping to mellow him out, it’s ramping his anger up to eleven, and after verbally abusing her, he challenges Angela to leave him.

Why, show? WHY?

The Corpse of the Week!
Male burn victim of a supposed car crash. They’ve brought his clunker car into the lab, where…rut roh…Hodgins has to get the serial number off the new carburetor and can’t reach it. I think we just got all of the dwarves in one fell swoop.

His name is Emil Bradford, and it will surprise nobody that he didn’t die by auto accident.

So, it seems Emil was involved in domestic violence, perpetrated by his ex-wife, Gail. Booth and Aubrey, in their usual subtle way, come right out and accuse her of it. At this point she and Hodgins should get together, because she’s the female version of every stereotypical male abuser you’ve ever seen. Though she complains about having to put up with her sad sack husband who never held down a job, he was paying her ten grand a month in alimony from his family money, so it’s unclear why she’s so upset. Also, he started a men’s rights club called Men Now. This oughtta be good…

Angela braves the menosphere and digs through the ravings of middle-aged white men whining about how oppressed they are. They call themselves meninists, and Emil has a lovely video about how feminists are “lez-banese men haters” and their real plot is…wait for it… getting rid of the male species.

Booth and Brennan head over to the Men Now offices, where they’re greeted by…Karen? She’s a lovely woman married to Paul, a piece of work who talks to a bunch of potential members about the abolishment of r*pe shield laws. When he gets to the part about it being okay to r*pe women who dress provocatively, Booth is ready to punch him.

The reason Emil, and the other knuckle draggers, drove junkers is because, according to Karen, feminazis were shattering their car windows left and right. Paul suggests Leah Marino of Women for Change might have killed Emil, and Brennan announces she’s been a member since college. Booth is surprised by this. I’m surprised he’s surprised. Karen is also surprised and announces her displeasure by saying it figures a sexist like Brennan would be a member.

So, Leah stages protests at their offices, mean tweets about Emil, and the “b*tch” even hacked their website. Sigh. After Leah assumes the hotel where she’s protesting sent THE FBI to arrest her, Booth winds up having to take her in to get their questions answered.

It seems Leah was only fighting back, because Emil would show up at her home and work, yelling at her through a bullhorn. She was about to get a restraining order, when it stopped a couple of weeks earlier.

The reason why he stopped bothering her? Men Now decided to target Pamela Gould, who performs circumcisions, and they were building a class action lawsuit against her. Turns out she did bash up Emil’s car with her tire iron but didn’t do the same to his head. In addition, she and Emil had a nice talk, and he apologized to her. He said she made him see the error of his ways, and he would disband Men Now. Well, she is the first non-annoying suspect.

It turns out that not only was Emil with Karen the night of his death, but she wrote that stuff about turning over a new leaf, to help members lie in order to not get their face bashed in. During her interrogation, Paul comes barging in with lawyers and tells Karen to keep her damn mouth shut. Up until this point, Brennan was saying Men Now had brought up some valid issues. But when Brennan tells Karen she shouldn’t let her husband speak to her that way, Paul says Booth should put a muzzle on her, because, “All b*tches need to be muzzled some time.”

As Booth gets ready to make good on his threat of hitting Paul, Brennan warns him he could lose his job, so she decks Paul. But she does it in front of lawyers, who immediately bring up filing charges against her for assault. Because yeah, slugging people is still against the law, even if you’re a brilliant scientist.

Solving the Case
It turns out Emil and Karen weren’t having an affair. She worked at a home security company and helped Emil break into his ex-wife’s house.

You see, Gail was having some renovation work done on her house, and Emil was there to find proof she was shacking up with the contractor, so he wouldn’t have to pay alimony. Said contractor comes out of hiding and says he wants to tell them the truth, but Gail suddenly turns into the helpless female and says it was all Mr. Contractor’s fault, and she went along, because she thought he would kill her. Yeah, see, you should have gone with timid from the get-go. Also, the contractor says she hits him, because of course.

Reversing the Jinx
This is love. Brennan prepares snacks all beginning with the letter F and wears a rally hat. She also tells Booth to reverse his shirt and his pants. Booth does none of that, but they do argue as to which F snack he should eat first and Brennan’s level of enthusiasm furthering the jinx.

That’s it! I hope this Hodgins situation doesn’t drag on for much longer, but I have a feeling it will get worse before it gets better, and that he’ll be more reckless and make his situation worse. Next week it looks like they’re introducing another Big Bad. I hope he’s not another Pel—NOPE! Not gonna say it.

Hola, Bones fans! When last we left the gang, a bunch of highly trained doctors forgot to tell Hodgins not to take aspirin in case he had a spinal cord injury after a body exploded all over him, which he did, so he thinned out his blood, got a hematoma, and he’s now paralyzed.

Also, Arastoo came back and told Cam he realized he was in love with her, just as she was getting on with her life with the awesome and handsome Sebastian Kohl.

Let’s get on with it. Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!

Hodgins and his new accessory, a wheelchair.
So, Hodgins is still Hodgins, in that he’s always upbeat, even as he’s being lowered into a wheelchair, ready to leave the hospital. His doc says she will keep an eye on his lumbar nerves for signs of regeneration, and Hodgins swears he felt the tinglies in his feet just that morning.

He’s also told to take it slow, meaning no work, as the hematoma crushed, but did not sever, the nerves in his lower spine, which means that he could cause further damage, like, oh, not being able to move above the waist or breathe on his own.

Of course, Booth is on board with Hodgins going home and how things are getting back to normal, while Brennan is all Debbie Downer, WAH WAH, and predicts it’s likely Hodgins will never walk again. Booth has some experience with this kind of thing, what with his experience with wounded soldiers, and says the emotional recovery is almost as difficult as the physical, so Hodgins needs to have hope.

And even though Aubrey essentially saved Hodgins, he seems to feel guilty, but Caroline puts him in his place. When they have her just be Caroline like that, all mothery and not taking any crap, it warms my heart. And Aubrey’s.

Hodgins manages to get himself a newfangled electronic bike device that moves his legs for him. He’s thrilled that he can work and do physical therapy at the same time, while Cam reminds him her liability doesn’t cover that. And with all of his newfangled contraptions, I’m surprised his wheelchair is manual.

The Corpse of the Week!
Oh, thanks Bones show for bringing Wendell in for this episode. And he has a beard! I can still see your baby face, dude. Sorry.

I’m so glad he’s been studying blow flies, because, ugh, gross. I guess they needed another bug expert with Hodgins in recovery mode. No matter, though, because Hodgins literally rides in to save the day and correct Wendell about time of death.

And so much for recovery, because he’s working the case. Yeah, if anybody thought Hodgins was going to chill at home, you haven’t been watching Bones.

It seems Tropical Storm Bertha has played havoc not only with the time of death determination but has also washed away some of the bones they’ll be needing, and with Hodgins an expert in forensics and earth sciences, it looks like he’s needed on the case. I guess breathing on his own isn’t too important, anyway.

The corpse is Andrea (Drea) Torres, who was an attorney with the public defender’s office.

RE: Hodgins. Here’s how it’s going to go:

Everyone: Hodgins, you’re pushing yourself too much, you need to go home.

Hodgins: Just one more thing…

Everyone: No. Okay.

He can’t get his wheelchair where he says the bones wound up, so Wendell goes to the bones and straps a camera to his hat, while Hodgins remains safely at the lab. Hodgins helps him find the bones, and Wendell says, “King of the Lab” which seems to stab Hodgins right in the gut. Oopsie.

As for the public defender’s office, we’re introduced to Tim Watkins, intern/IT support/investigator, who takes them to Alex Pollack, Senior Public Defender. Booth sees a picture that makes him hint Pollack and Drea may have been closer than employer/employee.

When they find cocaine in Drea’s system, Hodgins sees this as all systems go, until Cam finally tells him he’s off the case. I’m sure Hodgins won’t be affected by that at all. When Angela skypes him while he’s at home with all of his fancy physical therapy equipment and talks about the case, that really doesn’t help, either, if his kicked puppy expression is any indication.

Drea’s boss, Pollack, was totally cool with the cocaine issue. And after some threatening from Aubrey, he admits he knows Drea got the drugs from a DJ.

Instead of cocaine up Drea’s nose, they found part of the scale of a Woma Python. Ew. Conveniently , there’s a DJ Woma, so, ya know, way to make it easy for the investigators. He’s all, “Who?” for three seconds before he admits he knows her. He got pushy, so she sucker punched him, and he said, “Hey, you gotta go.” So, not the he-man sort, this DJ Woma. She walked home in a bad neighborhood where Alex Pollack also lives.

During lunch with Cam, once again Booth and Brennan have an argument over Hodgins having hope versus a misguided sense of optimism, with Booth clearly making the case that it should be Hodgins’ choice as to whether he works or not.

Oh, hey, remember Tim? One of his jobs was IT. And it turns out, Drea had spyware on her computer. She must have suspected her computer wasn’t safe, but rather than getting a program to check for the spyware and remove it, she chose to instead never access social media on it. I suppose those bank account passwords weren’t important. Tim says he did it to protect her, but that’s all he says, because I guess working in a law office taught him something, and he asks for a lawyer.

Whoopsie. They found blood in the dumpster directly under Pollack’s balcony that matches Drea’s. And Pollack told Tim to put that spyware on Drea’s computer. Alex is a lawyer, so he double and triple talks Booth to death.

It also turns out that Wendell has been sneakily skyping with Hodgins, which is how he got the python info. Angela comes home to put the kibosh on that, but all Hodgins has to do is get her to remember why she loves him, which all ties to his work at the lab, so she folds like a cheap card table.

Solving the Case
Pollack tried really hard to stop them, but Booth and Brennan finally make it into his apartment to find he painted the railing. Fortunately, he didn’t paint the nail embedded in there, and that’s where Brennan finds Drea’s blood

Though he’s a lawyer, and he’s been able to block them at every turn, the second Booth turns his steely gaze on Pollack, he’s immediately a five year old caught stealing candy. He cops to telling Drea he loved her, and she didn’t take it too well, what with the boss/employee relationship they had. There was a struggle, there was a wine glass to the head, and over the railing she went.

It’s Good and Bad News for Hodgins
So, Cam goes to see Hodgins and admits she sent him home more for herself than him. Seems she feels guilty for letting Hodgins work immediately after the explosion, even though she knew he was hurt. She feels that if she’d sent him home, he wouldn’t have wound up in the wheelchair. Booth’s talk about choices has paid off, though, as she okays Hodgins to come back.
The bad news? It seems Hodgins is not getting better. The doctor tells him he probably won’t recover, but he totally lies to Angela about it and says she told him everything was great.

This is so not good.

Love and Faith
Brennan once again learns some lessons about love and faith. Her “I’m going to hug you now” to Angela, was pretty great, because she picked up that Angela was hurting and wanted to comfort her. I love remembering how these guys are besties, despite their radically different personalities.

Also, she and Booth find a picture Christine drew of a skeleton that has a definite Jack Skellington feel to it. Brennan says she wants Christine to grow up to have faith, which is nice, but Brennan is still Brennan, and she wants to make the picture anatomically accurate before Booth displays it at work.

Hey, Bones fans. Get ready for a two-hour extravaganza!

It’s anybody’s guess when Bones will be back, but here is your fall finale.

The show doesn’t start off in the B&B homestead but with Cam and Sebastain Kohl. He’s wearing her robe, if you know what I mean.

With this being the two hour fall finale, I’m going to break with the formula and just give the show the breathing room it deserves.

Now, on with my recap!

Cam and Sebastian
It does not bode well for Cam and her fears, when Sebastian says he wants to see her later, and she looks like he told her he ran over her cat. And even more so, when Sebastian leaves some stuff on Angela’s doorstep, and Angela figures out that “in the area” meant “Cam’s area” and Cam is quick to point out IT MEANS NOTHING.
Oh, Cam. You’re not a teenager. The man is gorgeous, successful, sweet, kind, and has an English accent. Seriously, get with the program.

Sigh, but no. I’m still unclear what her problem is. This charming man wants to take her for a walk around a reflecting pool, and she looks like he just asked her for one of her kidneys. Apparently “a walk” is not under the label “fun” and more under “I’m in a relationship with a kind, generous, wonderful man” so who wants THAT, am I right?

Daisy, of all people, overheard their conversation and offers a little advice about how to deal after a “loss” which…okay. Anyway, the advice is good, and that’s basically if Cam doesn’t open up soon, she’ll shrink a little inside. I’m just glad someone had the guts to tell her what a fickle teenager she’s being.
And in the end she takes that walk with him, so YAY DAISY!

Booth and the Motorcycle
As Booth drives Brennan to the body site, she discovers brochures for a motorcycle. Hmmm…someone is having a certain kind of crisis that used to involve Corvettes. His cries of, “Helmet” do not go over well with the lady who is an expert on bones and how they can be broken.

Angela suggests to Brennan that Booth’s jet ski and motorcycle brochures might have something to do with him needing excitement, what with nobody shooting at him right this second.

And in the end Brennan gets him a bicycle with a helmet. It’s no surprise Booth is disappointed, and it winds up being a gift for Brennan herself.

The Corpse of the Week
Stanley Belridge. He’s an accountant, but everything about him screams Cowboy.

So, Stanley was at a place called Frontier Games, which is a weekend-long role-playing old-west style shooting competition. Too bad Ichabod isn’t there to weigh in on this. The grounds where it takes place is owned by Francine and Luke Nichols. “Slow Burn” Stanley won, and it’s a ten-thousand dollar prize. Makes you want to learn how to shoot vintage guns. Anyway, Stanley died at the LAST competition, which takes place monthly, and as good luck would have it, guess what’s taking place the very next weekend? Yep. And faster than you can say, “Undercover assignment,” Booth wants to go with Wanda and put on their best cowboy/girl gear. Aubrey wants to “hit the trails” with B&B, and he’s got the guitar skills to prove it, but he’s turned down flat.

Brennan can’t go, so Booth volunteers to mosey over there on his own and play cowboy. After hearing about the motorcycle, Angela suggests Brennan go, since they can both use a little fun.

You can refer to Booth from here on out as Big River Buck. He’s surprised to see Brennan shows up and tips her hat to him. Marshal Glen Gold Dust takes time out of his busy day to introduce himself to Brennan’s chest. Or I should say, Wild Card Wanda, fastest draw in all of Bony Ridge.

While Brennan is thrilled with herself for being spontaneous and exciting, Big River Buck is not pleased with them being supposed strangers. They’re introduced to Sweet Rose Sadie, Railroad Heiress, and Kentucky Loco Beau, Red Herring number one, who we immediately find out got to see his kids this month after managing to put a little money together to pay off the child support he owed.

After seeing what a crack shot Wanda is, Marshal asks her to accompany him to the barbeque right in front of Booth.

Stanley’s car is found near the bus stop with all of his guns and stuff inside, including that big check, so no robbery motive. B&B find the murder site and manage to catch Francine skittering away looking all kinds of guilty.

But, surprise, surprise, Francine was just running off to sneak a smoke with Beau, and Booth says they’re innocent. Also, Stanley had been smoking like a chimney while he was there, because he had something stressing him out.

After Stanley was killed, a bunch of documents were deleted from his hard drive by his boss. Turns out they were his boss’s files, because the boss was finishing a book, and Stanley was doing his work for him in exchange for being recommended for a promotion. The files were for Clementine Construction, but the person who owns it doesn’t exist, which means it’s a front. And who is their one client? Frontier Games. Aubrey finds an excuse to go there…wearing a poncho.

But before he can arrive, Wanda and Buck solve the case. Whoever punched Stanley had turpentine on his hands, and Luke painted all of the paintings at FG. Also, his favorite song is My Darling Clementine. But before they can go and arrest him, Marshal punches Booth when he sees Wanda kissing Buck, and if that little doughy guy thinks he can take Buck, he’s in for a rude awakening. Buck slings Marshall across the bar, and this gets everyone involved. Before you know it, it’s a full-on bar brawl. Then Aubrey and his poncho show up to help out, but before it can really get going, Luke tries to break it up and disqualify Buck and Marshal. Only Booth comes out with his badge and arrests Luke. Also, Marshal is dismayed to find out Brennan is the mother of Booth’s children.

But it’s totally not him, right? Of course, not. Was he embezzling? Yes. But he’s not a murderer. Brennan figured out that Stanley was swung over the back of a horse, and the impact of the stirrup on his skull gave him a bunch of repetitive fractures. The horse is Francine’s, but she has a hip injury, so guess who the horse rider was? Sadie. She tied Stanley to the saddle and rode his body out to the park after she’d shot and killed him. She was having an affair with Luke, and the money he embezzled was to give Sadie the money for a ranch and a horse of her own. She killed Stanley because he knew.

Hodgins and Angela
When Angela tells Hodgins they have Hank and Christine for the weekend, Hodgins seems a little worried that Hank doesn’t sleep through the night, and Angela kind of hints he might need practice. Then because Daisy is working through the weekend, they’re also watching Lance, Jr. Angela looks thrilled, while Hodgins looks like he wants to throw up.

Angela is all “Big family” and Hodgins is all “EEP!” He’s not ready. Maybe it’s because Christine found Michael Vincent’s stash of face paint and used it on them.

PART TWO:

Delayed Reaction
While Booth, Brennan, and Angela enjoy date night at the B&B homestead, Aubrey, Hodgins, and Cam go out to the dead body. Angela is still talking about how Hodgins doesn’t want any more kids, and is worried Michael Vincent will be lonely. Hey, you guys! Being an only child is awesome! I should know.

So, I was wondering over this contrivance until a phone rings from the dead man’s pocket, and even I can tell it’s some sort of explosive device, while Hodgins just crouches there holding the wire like, “Well, this is strange.” At least Aubrey is on the ball and tells everyone to clear. But even then, it doesn’t look like Hodgins moves. Dude, what are you smoking that your reflexes are that slow?

Anyway, Aubrey, in an extreme act of bravery, jumps on top of Hodgins to protect him. And there they lay, motionless. This is a nice way to begin the possibly final episode. Because of Aubrey, Hodgins got out of it with a limp, but Aubrey is rushed to surgery. Also, four cops died.

And Brennan somehow finds a way to bring this back to Booth and his gambling addiction. Like, oh no, if Aubrey dies, he might react like he did when Sweets died and start gambling again. Ooookay? So, Booth reassures her that he doesn’t blame himself for this one. As Brennan kind of hints at, we’ll see how long that lasts. Booth has a tendency to blame himself for everything.

But if you think they’re going to kill Surly Sweets so soon after Sweets, original recipe, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Of course he doesn’t die, and he awakes to find Hodgins and Caroline standing over him watching him sleep. They inform him Jessica was also there watching him sleep and that seven pieces of shrapnel were pulled from his back. YIKES.

Arastoo Returns
Are you KIDDING me with this? Seriously? I don’t even know what to say. But he’s there for all the right reasons and wants to help out. Cam is all, “Yeah, I’m fine. Buh bye!” But Brennan never called in an intern, and Arastoo is more than happy to be her consultant.

Sorry, Cam.

He immediately finds the victim had an artificial knee, and that convenient serial number should help identify him. This has never been done before on any show, ever.

And why Hodgins thought it was a good idea to point out the obvious awkwardness directly to Cam, will remain a mystery to me. She has MYOB on speed dial.

Brennan talks with Arastoo, and he informs her he has no new job and things have been tough for him since he left. She offers to find him a job, but he declines. Hmmm…

Also, Hodgins, who is the blabbiest blabber to ever blab, winds up spilling to him about Sebastian. That’s just the kind of thing that makes Cam really happy.

It should surprise nobody that Arastoo was lying about having no job prospects. A Berlin facility has been courting him. But he hasn’t taken it because…damn you, Arastoo!…he says he loves Cam and he should have never left.

Yes, but you did, and she met a great guy, so no take backsies! She just got over you!

Corpse of the Week
It’s a cop named Thomas Gallo. So, yeah, an exploding cop used to kill other cops. Caroline to the rescue! As long as she’s not pulling that stuff she did last episode, I’m happy to see her.

She all of a sudden knows a new charac—I mean, a behavioral analyst at the BRIU who specializes in just this kind of case. Too bad she wasn’t around when a certain omniscient nemesis was floating around, whose name will not be mentioned!

So, flying in the face of every behavioral analysts cliché, Leslie Green (Sara Rue) is a breath of fresh air in this downer episode. She’s quirky and flighty. But she’s mighty proud of herself to share the knowledge that the killer has done this before, since killing a cop isn’t easy, and that Gallo was targeted for a specific reason. Booth is unimpressed and dismissive, since he already knew this.

Gallo’s boss thinks it’s a gang. It’s not a gang. But Booth is pissed to find out they’ve been investigating Gallo’s disappearance without notifying anyone and steps on the boss’s toes a bit. And by “a bit” I mean slams his foot down really hard.

Of course, it was an unsophisticated pipe bomb in the dude’s chest, not consistent with something this gang would have done. Surprise!

Leslie barges in to an interrogation Booth is having with the Red Herring, a creepazoid with a police scanner who shows up to film dead bodies and sell the pics to news organizations. He drives an orange Mustang, spotted at the site of the actual murder and the dump site. Way to be unobtrusive with that car, dude. He claims he was at both, because he heard about the shooting and of the body being found, which is true, of course.

Aubrey calls Leslie Clarice Starling, except she’s totally not. And if they’re trying to show she’s competent at her job, they’re failing miserably. They come to her with two suspects, both of whom she thinks are viable options, even though they both aren’t the killer. She just seems to parrot what she’s told.

But once she tells Booth and Aubrey about how it’s not cops but authority figures the killer has a problem with, Booth steps up to go on TV and paint himself as the authority on the case, because like I said earlier, he gets a little antsy when there’s nobody shooting at him.. But good news! As Caroline says, Aubrey does something “severely shaded in stupid” when he beats Booth to the punch. There’s Aubrey, on the TV, talking…like himself during an interrogation and brags that a little bit of shrapnel isn’t going to stop him, and he’s the authority.

Oy.

Then Booth hilariously reads Aubrey the riot act and says, “That’s not how we do things around here.”

But Aubrey isn’t given a chance to be a target. They’ve figured out Gallo was hit with a skateboard, and the kids who “found” him were skateboarders.

One of the kids is named Alex, and his mom wins mother of the year, because he and his friend are making a pipe bomb in his room when Booth and the gang arrives. Alex tries to go for the gun underneath his pillow, but at least this episode isn’t so dark, they had Booth kill a kid.

Leslie diagnoses little Alex as psychopathic. His dad was a cop, and he took out his job frustrations on Alex. Caroline will make sure the kids don’t get the notoriety they so desperately want. Good luck with that, Caroline. Not in this day and age.

Hodgins and Angela, Part Two
Okay, between Angela foreshadowing early in the show how she and Hodgins are “always the lucky ones,” Hodgins pounding aspirin for his aching back, and him coming to Angela to say he’s ready to have more kids, I’m waiting for that shoe to drop. This is the downer episode, after all.

And, yeah…just as Arastoo is pressuring Cam to make a decision about their relationship, there’s a thud, and Angela screams. When they get there, Hodgins is lying on the floor looking catatonic. So, to break it down, the doctor at the hospital informs them that Hodgins suffered localized trauma during the blast, but the swelling around his spinal cord didn’t peak until twenty-four to forty-eight hours later. Since no doctors from the hospital or any of the doctors he works with, said not to take aspirin just in case he had a spinal cord injury, he’d been popping them like candy. This made his blood thin, which resulted in an epidural hematoma that’s compressing his spine. Bottom line: Hodgins is paralyzed.

That’s it! I need to go watch something upbeat now. No way this show is at its end with that many cliffhangers. Here’s hoping I see you next year

Hello, Bones fans! Fall is in the air, and Brennan is a bad liar. Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!

No turkey on Thanksgiving?
Brennan tries to distract Booth from the telephone call she just finished that clearly involved a surprise for Booth, by telling him they will not have turkey on Thanksgiving. First she tries to humanize the bird, and then she tries for the waste of food option, all to no avail. Booth will invite Aubrey, which admittedly is a good option for the wasted food argument, along with Angela, Hodgins, and the whole dang neighborhood if he has to, as long as he gets to eat himself into a coma and watch the game. Of course, he has to cook the dead bird.

Meanwhile, Booth is convinced the surprise is a jet ski, so he’ll be in his footie pajamas on Christmas day, waiting for his new toy.

Corpse of the Week!
Vivian Prince. Per Hodgins, front page, left column of the DC Sentinel and the finest political reporter in the country. She broke an NSA snooping story. Apparently she out-Snowdened, Snowden.

In the car, Booth and Aubrey have an argument about freedom of the press, and afterward it seemed like David looked directly into the camera. Weird.

At the Sentinel offices, they meet with David Pyne, Vivian’s boss, who is sure that an NSA hit squad, Greystream Solutions, got to her. He says he doesn’t know who gave Vivian the documents, a source known only known as “The American.” Then he just loses it and yells, “Kolfax, get in here!” But it turns out he’s all worried he’s going to lose his job if he’s not the first with the story about Vivian getting killed. How compassionate of him. Kate Kolfax is just as upset, in that not at all. I guess Vivian was real popular. And unless Booth has something quotable to tell her, she’ll be off to do her Vivian is Dead story.

Aubrey makes a crack about how Vivian had to get tons of plastic surgery to compete with the younger, prettier, perkier Kolfax. Pyne makes no apologies about putting that pretty face on the front page and video blogs. Booth is dismayed that the news is no longer about telling the story. Because I guess he’s been living under a rock.

A Mr. Gill from the NSA comes into Cam’s office to tell her that he’ll be heading up the Vivian Prince investigation. Cam tells him to go away. She doesn’t want to hand over information to the very agency that may have killed Vivian. She doesn’t work for him, she doesn’t answer to him, and unless Mr. NSA can come up with a court order, she’s not handing over anything. And by the way, she can get security to escort his ass out of there.

B&B have it out about if Greystream is right or wrong on the way there. It’s like a live version of my Facebook feed. Where is the mute button?

The Greystream guy, Cooper Blackthorn, is all “blah blah blah…above your clearance level,” so Brennan figures as long as they’re stonewalling, she might as well cut to the chase and asks if they killed Vivian. To which Blackthorn answers, “Yes, of course we did! I’ll just go get the dudes who did it and be right back.” Or not. What he really does is give them a hypothetical that goes something like, “I’m not saying we killed her, but if we were this totally awesome hit squad she said we were, you wouldn’t have found her.” And then he makes some reference to the evidence that Booth thinks points to a professional, that he considers to be the work of an amateur, even though no evidence was presented to him. So they may or may not have listened in on conversations pertaining to the case. Well, that was productive. And not a little bit scary. If Blackthorn was trying to paint Greystream as this benign organization, I’d say they need another mascot.

And when Hodgins finds out the NSA guy, Gill, came calling, he’s convinced it was all just for show, and he just placed bugs all over the place. Hodgins is worried the NSA is trying to use the Jeffersonian to find The American, so he collects everyone’s phones and basically says all communication will be done by carrier pigeon from here on out.

When B & B get to Vivian’s, they find a glucometer. There’s no laptop, but Booth does find out Vivian was going to cut off alimony payments to her loser ex. He’s a sports writer named Sal Raymond, but he’s not quite as successful as his wife, since he has the high school sports beat. Yikes. But loser ex insists everything was amicable, and that no more payments was his idea.

Then the guy who is NOT an FBI agent makes the logical argument that the NSA couldn’t have killed Vivian, because it just makes them look worse and points them toward Kate Kolfax, our perky and ambitious reporter. Vivian had promised her the front page, until The American stories came out, and she decided she wasn’t going anywhere.

Gill shows up at the F.B.I. right after Aubrey gets done questioning the ex, creepily knows he’s going to interview Kolfax, and says to ask her about the encryption key that decodes the emails between Vivian and The American. He also insists there are some people at the NSA who want them to be better and knows things need to change. He says if somebody “on their side of the fence” killed Vivian, they want this person found, and now I’m beginning to get a clearer picture of Mr. Gill and what he’s about.

Aubrey goes to Kolfax as an interviewee. Then he tells her they got fingerprints on whoever broke into Vivian’s, they know this person is using an encryption key to try and read the emails, and that person is about to be arrested for murder. Kolfax, being a reporter, picks up right away that the interview was a ruse, and I’m trying to figure out why Aubrey took that tack at all, since he didn’t even try. She hands over the laptop and the encryption key: George Orwell. So she just thought it was a passphrase, tried it, and it didn’t work, and that’s what she spent three hours doing? If she didn’t try “1984” she needs to be fired like yesterday.

But okay, if I have this straight, the glucometer they found at Vivian’s is a dual access system. Essentially you need an access code plus the biometric encryption in order to read the files. The verification code was drawn from her blood. Vivian’s blood has her genetic markers. Without her blood, they can’t read the encryption. And though you can’t draw blood from a stone, you can from a bone, and voila, an email from The American about meeting at the Riverbanks Inn, room 43.

But the Riverbanks Inn can’t provide any records, because they cater to Washington insiders who want to conduct their affairs off the grid. No security footage. No TV. No phone. No wifi. Jammers on the property. Not a hotel I’d wanna stay at, that’s for sure. Then the front desk dude mentions their “associate,” and Booth busts down the door, gun drawn, to find the lovely Mr. Gill already snooping.

Brennan finds blood all over the curtains and conveniently catches the room service guy and his sterling silver plate covers with a nice spike on top, and identifies it as the murder weapon. Room service guy is extra helpful and says Vivian stayed there six months ago, was cheating on her ex, and the ex nearly killed her. The ex still insists they were totally fine, mentions the guy she was cheating with wore Ferragamo shoes, and says he had an interview at another paper in Tallahassee the night Vivian was killed. Though how this guy would know Ferragamo shoes from Payless will remain a mystery.

When Hodgins does a fingerprint analysis on the room, he discovers Gill pretty much touched every available surface and comes to the accurate conclusion that an NSA guy wouldn’t be that stupid and had to touch everything on purpose to cover up that he’d been there before wearing his Ferragamo shoes. Then he says something I figured out when Gill talked with Aubrey. He is The American. Essentially Vivian lied to hubby about having an affair. She ruined her marriage to protect her source.

Hodgins, Booth, and Brennan talk at the Royal. Hodgins wants to protect Gill’s identity, while Booth is all for exposing him. He tells Hodgins off, and for good measure his wife as well for her secrets, even though he’d deduced that secret had to do with a jet ski, but whatever.

Parker Returns!
Parker, Booth’s son who we haven’t seen in…forever, shows up from London. And of course, he looks a hell of a lot older. When he said, “Hey, Dad,” it actually took me a moment to remember Booth had a son. That was the secret Brennan had been keeping. And she got them tickets for the Flyers/Predators game. Booth does not apologize for throwing a tantrum.

Vivian’s No-good, Very Bad Day!
It turns out Vivian was tortured. Lucky for everyone, the squintern this week is Rodolfo, who is familiar with torture. He not only knows it’s called palmatoria, he also happens to know the exact region of West Africa it comes from And remember creepy Cooper Blackthorne, the head of Greystream? He was stationed in West Africa for five years.

Solving the Case!
I guess Parker and some Flyers tickets softened up Booth, because he meets with Gill at the Riverbank and manages not to scream at him.

After Booth spells out to Gill what he did wrong, like he doesn’t know, he tells Booth the drive he gave Vivian had thousands of documents. The first story was only the tip of the iceberg. She was going to keep hammering at Greystream. And I guess the sweep for bugs at the Jeffersonian wasn’t effective, because he knows they figured out Blackthorn was the one who tortured Vivian.

Now that Booth knows they’re going to take Blackthorn in for the murder of Vivian, he wrongly figures Gill’s life is no longer in danger, and he arrests Gill for treason. I guess he skipped the part about proving Blackthorn did it and putting him away first. But it’s too late now. Gill is on the front page already.

The NSA has thrown Blackthorn to the wolves, so he’s cooperating. Apparently he was operating on their orders to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Vivian to retrieve the documents. But Vivian took the torture and kept on ticking, so he just walked away. He tortured, but didn’t kill, Vivian.

And guess what? Vivian was actually killed with a metal detector. And who did we see with one of those? Gill. It seems he didn’t like the way Vivian ran the story about Greystream to where she put innocent lives in danger. Dude, she’s a reporter. Anyway, he just wanted his jump drive back. He figured out she was just using the documents to keep her job because of Kolfax. How naïve could this guy be? So, he was using the wand to find the drive, they scuffled, he hit her, and she fell into the room service cart.

He never found the drive, but when Hodgins takes a late-night snoop in Vivian’s office, he finds it in a pen holder with a quote from Orwell at the bottom of it. Instead of broadcasting everything that’s on it, he gives it to Booth who still doesn’t apologize for his tantrum. Ah, well.

That’s it! It ends at the B&B house for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, with Angela thinking of having another kid. We won’t be seeing our Bones crew for three weeks, and it looks like that may be the season, if not series, finale. Stay tuned!

Hey, Bones fans! Today’s episode theme is, do you believe in magic? Let’s get into the Bones Top Five Moments!

Sebastian is back!
Do you remember that Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Sebastian Kohl who purchased one of Angela’s pictures? Well, here he is again, and they look quite chummy. Did I mention he’s handsome and dashing? With an awesome English accent? Anyway, he’s supposed to be Angela’s mentor, but Cam and I both think he’s interested in more than just Angela’s pictures.

Cam and I are both wrong. He has the hots for Cam. Girlfriend, whatever perfume you’re buying, please clue me in. Arastoo and Sebastian? Those are some serious pheromones. But she turns him down, because of her recent breakup. Oh, don’t let this gorgeous ship pass you by, Cam. She does go to Angela and come clean. She also admits she’s not over Arastoo and is worried she won’t get back what she had with him. Angela says she might not, but she definitely won’t if she doesn’t try.

Yes, Cam. TRY! LOOK AT HIM!

Somehow Brennan found out about Cam and says she’d want Booth to move on if anything happened with them. Her listing things that could go wrong does not help anyone. Of course, Booth does not want Brennan to move on.

In the end, Cam does come to her senses and calls him. So, yay! More Sebastian to come!

Corpse of the Week!
Klarissa Mott, age twenty seven. She’s a bit of a question mark. She has clear signs of abuse but no restraining orders or domestic violence calls. Nobody has filed a missing person report on her, and she has no relatives in the DC area.

Booth and Aubrey go to see her roommate, Anna. They do that thing where they take an entire ride over in the car and don’t speak about the case until they get all the way to their destination and are just about to knock on the door. It happens again later.

Anyway, Anna is there with her boyfriend, Victor, and they’re just started a catering business. Also, Aubrey and food. Get your head in the game, dude, and stop eyeing the truffle oil. I’m sure the big deal they’re making over that won’t be important later.

So, the reason Anna didn’t report Klarissa missing is because they didn’t really know each other. Klarissa kept to herself and was into “some weird stuff.” You might ask what that weird stuff is. Well, in her bedroom she has straitjackets and handcuffs, and while my mind went in a different direction, Aubrey guesses Magician. But Anna says that according to Klarissa, the correct term is Escape Artist. She did shows at the Magic Palace. Her stage name was Klarissa Bilbao.

I’m going to try to ignore the blatant car commercial as Bones and Booth head to the Magic Palace. My eyes rolled by themselves.

Lenny Jay is there, played by Jay Thomas. He says he gave Klarissa her start when he saw her doing street magic in the National Mall. He says her act was ground breaking. She took more risks than most Escapologists. She’d just been given the Friday night main stage, replacing Big Phil, who’s not very big at all. He plays with fire, and they found second-degree burns on Klarissa. It turns out he played a prank on her all of the time, where she opens a box, and a flame comes out. She usually catches it but has been distracted lately. This makes no sense to me, playing the same trick over and over again, but I’m no Escapologist.

A physical therapist who illegally sold prescription drugs, and she paid in cash for flexibility training, is a dead end. Though she was getting a bunch of emails threatening her because she poached tricks

It turns out Lenny Jay Jr. is the one who sent the emails to Klarissa. Lenny Sr. had given her his best trick, The Drunken Monkey, an escapist move where he’s locked in a vat of scotch. Junior was not at all happy with this, since daddy promised to hand that trick down to him. Junior found this out by following Klarissa around and as a result of the stalking saw her dropped off by some guy who kissed her.

Aaaaand, guess what? Klarissa is allergic to fungus. And you know what truffles are. Oh, Victor, you have some ‘splaining to do…except you totally know it wasn’t him, right? Sure, they were smooching and some of the oil got onto her neck, but he didn’t kill her. He dropped her off at the Palace and was supposed to meet up with her later that night, but she never showed up.

Someone sent Klarissa flowers, but it wasn’t Victor. Anna, his girlfriend, did snoop through his phone, but her awesome boyfriend is “careful about this stuff” and left no incriminating evidence. What a prize this Victor is, huh? Anna did know about the affair, but she stayed quiet for the sake of the business. She seems to feel Victor is not worth killing over.

Solving the Case!
Turns out the flowers were sent by the Golden Pearl Casino in Vegas. Guess who got a new job? And guess which Escapologist who just gave Klarissa his best trick over his own son, wouldn’t be happy about that?

Klarissa had the key in her mouth to unlock the padlock for the Drunken Monkey trick. Unfortunately for Lenny, he strangled her, and the key went down her throat, so he couldn’t clean out the inside of the padlock. Brennan gives him some mumbo jumbo story about the stuff inside matching the frequency of luminescence in order to make Lenny confess, which he does. Broken promises. They could kill you.

The Magical Mr. Edison!
After Clark expresses a love of magic, in a show of humanity Brennan asks him why he has such an interest in it. He explains it got him through a rough patch in middle school and makes the HUGE error of showing Brennan a trick, which she figures out and belittles him with it. So much for the brief show of humanity. His second magic trick doesn’t fare any better, even when Hodgins supplied him with a disappearing spoon.

Their attempt at showing her the awesome history of magic stored at the Jeffersonian brings about another bout of condescension. Seriously, I get whiplash whenever they do this with Brennan. One minute she’s aware of how she can be and the next she isn’t.

The Tooth Fairy is a Fraud!
It should surprise nobody that when Christine loses a tooth, Mr. Booth is all for the Tooth Fairy making an appearance, while Brennan thinks it’s a pastiche of minor myths that lack thought or substance. And contrary to Booth’s belief that it’s tradition and can’t hurt anyone, Brennan says she doesn’t want her daughter to think it’s okay to have someone break into her room and steal discarded body parts. Wow, that’s…wow. And Brennan’s idea to simply explain to Christine about the scientific reasons behind tooth loss doesn’t sound near as good as money under the pillow.

Besides, Hodgins has been leaving tons of cash for Michael Vincent, and surprisingly the six year old isn’t mad at his parents for perpetrating a fraud.

However, after Brennan fooled Lenny, she realizes deception can sometimes be a good thing, so she came home and slipped the cash under Christine’s pillow.

Then Booth does a magic trick with her paperwork Brennan doesn’t understand how he accomplished. At last. A Trick she can’t figure out.

That’s it! So, what do you guys think of Cam’s new love interest, Sebastian? Was the Tooth Fairy good to you when you were a kid?

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!

A Television in the bedroom?
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.

Corpse of the Week!
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.

Squintern Jessica and the Background Check!
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.

Rounding up the Suspects!
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.

Virginia is the Murder Weapon!
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?

Hello, Bones fans! It’s Halloween at the B&B house, and Booth is prepared with fifteen pounds of candy, no matter how bad it is for a child’s endocrine system. And it’s Sleepy Hollow crossover time! It’s a good thing your recapper watches both shows. Here are your Bones Top Five Moments!

Halloween Fun!
Brennan fires the first shot, when she makes Booth think he’s eating real brain.

Of course, there’s Hodgins’s demon eyes. He only has one pair of contact lenses, as all contact lens wearers do. Michael Vincent flushed them down the toilet, so all he had were the demon eye ones. Yes, he took the time to make sure those were on hand but not an extra pair of regular ones. Happens all of the time.

Booth does get Brennan back when he pretends to be a reanimated corpse.

The Corpse of the Week with a Halloween Twist!
Next to the corpse the gang finds a mortsafe, or an iron safe that was used to prevent grave robbing. I don’t know how effective it was, since somebody has already opened it. I guess they didn’t get the memo about not opening up old coffins with a weird symbol on it. Bad juju. Baaaaaaad juju. And look! Inside is an eighteenth century soldier in full Redcoat regalia! And he has no head! I wonder how that fits into the whole Sleepy Hollow thing…and you know what kind of episode this is going to be when a carved pumpkin rolls into the coffin and lines up nicely with where Redcoat guy’s head should have been. Cam: “Happy Halloween.” WAH WAH. Never mind that it’s a corpse from the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY and maybe you would want to get that pumpkin out of there, no?

Back to the more current COTW, she’s Sarah Lippman, a third-year medical student. She’s usually all magenta-haired and pierced goth girl, but she was found with Mary Sunshine’s pink dress, pink shoes, and blonde hair. Her boss, Chief Resident John Cruz, explains she was trying to look the part of a doctor and points out her boyfriend, Joel Brown, in the anatomy lab. A bearded guy who was standing next to Joel and digging through a dead body with him, seems overly interested in what’s going on and watches the door longingly after Joel leaves with Booth and Aubrey.

Joel insists that even though people thought they were an odd couple, because he’s a good Catholic boy, they were good together, and she was happier than she’d ever been. The new appearance, he insists, is because he’d rubbed off on her. But inside Sarah’s locker, there’s an old witchcraft book with the same weird symbol on the cover that was on the mortsafe.

Abbie and Ichabod!
The Redcoat COTW was a high-ranking British officer, so it’s odd that he was buried under a church in the middle of nowhere.

Just as Hodgins says there’s something otherworldly going on with the corpse and the symbol, etc., Abbie Mills and Ichabod Crane show up. I don’t care how ridiculous it is that they’re standing in the middle of the lab. I’m just happy to see them.

Ichabod explains he’s from the historical society, and he helps F.B.I. agent Mills. Brennan’s not about to give up the bones, and Abbie says she’s not leaving without them, so this forces Abbie and Ichie to stick around the lab.

Hodgins immediately mancrushes hard, when after he makes fun of Crane’s garb, Crane goes off on one of his famous rants. And a guy names Seeley takes it a little personal when Aubrey makes fun of Ichabod’s name.

Anyway, Crane and Abbie believe that the Redcoat COTW is Abraham Van Brunt, aka Mr. Headless Horseman, born in 1749 and decapitated on the battlefield in 1781. Angela is immediately charmed by Crane. Because she’s human. She’s also done facial reconstruction on the faceless dude and begins the facial recognition process.

While they wait for the results and Crane’s big head blocks the screen, Brennan says she finds Crane’s and Abbie’s persistence both irritating and impressive. Crane says, “We are a partnership of opposites, yet our affinity for one another bears the ripest of fruit.”

Brennan rightly assumes they’re sexual partners. Crane, of course, is highly offended by this accusation and insists they’re not. Brennan says, “Then I would suggest you consider it” and talks about how rewarding it was to take her relaysh with Booth into the personal realm. For once, Crane is speechless. That’s quite a feat.

If around this time you heard great, heaving gasps and squealing, that would be Ichabbie shippers everywhere.

Anyway, I guess they’re saved by the facial reconstruction, and the result is surprising and ominous for Crane. It’s not Abraham but General William Howe, Commander of the British Forces during the War for Independence. Dude was a cruel bastard, apparently. Crane throws around phrases like “mystery of the highest magnitude,” and he will not rest until it’s solved. Brennan gives him a look like, “Whatever, you intense weirdo.”

And it’s kind of cool, because Booth and Abbie have teamed up to scour Sarah’s apartment. Booth finds a note that reads, Last night was insane. XX. and we all guess it wasn’t written by her good, Catholic boyfriend.

Anyway, they find a hammer next to a fine-tooth saw with some red threads in it, so this must be the way he became Headless Howe.

Crane identifies the book found in Sarah’s locker to be Librum Sub Umbras, which Brennan translates to Treatise on the Subject of Shadows. It’s filled with Alchemical recipes, blood rituals, druid rites, and necromancy. Then Brennan makes the humongous error of calling it a book of nonsense. Crane tries not to go on a rant while he explains it’s a book of spells, and the key to unlock it is a mystery to all but the most learned scholars. They’re replicas of an illuminated manuscript first painted by Bavarian monastic scholars.

The word “illuminated” sparks an idea in Hodgins. He says they need to illuminate the text with candlelight, and I kid you not… Angela puts a burning candle onto the Angelatron. And y’all? It totally works. This episode is insane in the best way. Crane reads the hidden text. It says the text is the guide by which the Witness will procure the skull and give him the power to raise the dead.

Rut roh. I guess Sarah missed the part about the Witness. Which she isn’t, but Abbie and Crane totally are, in the biblical sense.

Crane gives shifty eyes as he says he wishes he had the resources to delve a little deeper. HINT, HINT. Brennan gives him free rein of the Jeffersonian archives. That’s like Disneyland for Crane.

To add to all of the strangeness, it appears Sarah’s brain neurons had been dead for two weeks, which would have made her clinically dead two weeks before she died. Wendell helpfully explains that maybe the person Sarah brought back from the dead was herself. DUN DUN DUN!

Aubrey figures out that Sarah died and was resuscitated two weeks ago, but according to her insurance, there’s no record of it. Aubrey also discovers Sarah went to a bar and spent $250 on a bottle of champagne. And, ew. She was beaten to death with Howe’s skull.

Would it surprise you to find out that Booth knew Corbin, Abbie’s mentor? Corbin said Abbie was a lot like Booth back in the day, and I laugh when Booth chastises Abbie for wanting to save the world overnight. Pot, meet kettle.

I was right to suspect bearded guy, since he was the one sharing that expensive bottle of champagne with Sarah. He wrote the “insane” note. However, he’s gay, so there goes that theory. He tells Aubrey he and Sarah became friends, because they both were close to death. He was really sick as a kid, and Sarah had a sister who died young. Not exactly the same thing. Sarah became obsessed with finding out what happens after you die.

And oh my goodness, we’re now dropped into the movie Flatliners, where he induced Sarah’s heart to stop and brought her back. Sarah said it was transforming. I wonder if she was visited by people she’d harmed in her past…Well, I guess not. She saw her sister, who told her to let go of all of her fear. That’s what they were celebrating.

After swabbing Sarah’s injury, Hodgins comes up with stuff you spray on the underside of morgue tables, so off they go to the anatomy lab to sift through the corpses and find some recent blood spatter. It’s on the ceiling. `

In the archives, Crane finds an edict from George Washington that says not to bury Howe in England but in the colonies. Crane pushes it further and says he meant preferably in Sleepy Hollow. Brennan notices the signature is off from the handwriting, and Crane can’t hold back his pride when he says the letter was dictated to a trusted captain. But Brennan being Brennan, she’s wants to wait for proof the letter is authentic, which must be aggravating to the guy who wrote it. So, the bones are still hers.

Angela analyzes the note, and she states what we all know. That the handwriting in the letter is Crane’s. But when confronted, Crane has an easy explanation. His ancestor, also named Ichabod, wrote it. Brennan accepts this explanation but still won’t give up the bones until the case is solved.

Solving the Case!
Howe’s skull is found in the medical waste from the anatomy lab, along with two empty vials. The prescriptions were filled the night Sarah died by the Chief Resident of her program, Dr. John Cruz, who we met for two minutes at the beginning of the show.

Anyway, long story short, John not only knew about the experiments, but he supplied her with the drugs to do it. After his wife left him, he drank too much, and Sarah smelled it on his breath. Rather than report John, she blackmailed him for the drugs.

Howe’s canine tooth is missing, and when Brennan finds out from Crane it was porcelain, she realizes it must have injured the killer’s hand as he was, you know, using the skull to bash Sarah. The tooth was found in and among some coffee cup debris, and voila, skin cells. Who do they belong to?

The boyfriend, Joel. He admits to touching the skull, as he was there when Sarah dug up Howe. This is a fact that if he wasn’t guilty, he probably should have copped to earlier. Sarah’s new goody-two-shoes persona wasn’t so much a result of him rubbing off on her, but her Flatliners experience. She wanted Joel to experience as well. The couple that dies together…

Except Joel, the guy with all of the faith, saw nothing when he went to the other side. Sarah took his faith away. So when he came to and saw her holding the skull, he snapped and killed her with it.

Fondled in the Forest!
Anyway, case solved, B & B and Crane and Abbie head to The Founding Fathers for a drink. Except Brennan and Booth bead a hasty retreat, in order to give Abbie and Crane some alone time. Maybe after Crane finishes his Sex on the Beach, or as he says Benjamin Franklin referred to it, Fondled in the Forest, he’ll be in the mood.

That’s it, folks! How did you like the crossover? As a fan of both shows, I have to say, I didn’t know how they’d pull it together, but I think because they went for fun and lighthearted, it worked. Did you watch the continuation on Sleepy Hollow?