Bones In The Burbs

Booth and Brennan enter a hostile and unfamiliar territory to solve a heinous murder: the suburbs. The depravity and underbelly of the suburbs is an obvious setup that every show from Desperate Housewives to Chuck has employed, but it’s actually fun in this case and provides good opportunities for Brennan to make funny anthropological comments.

As we open, everything is picturesque and lovely. The lawns are perfectly mowed, the people are nice and multicultural and festive. In fact, they’re having a luau! Hey, I lived in the suburbs for quite a spell in my life and we never had a luau. Then again, we weren’t on TV. Everyone is gabbing and smiling and waiting for the roasted pig to cook in the luau pit…but popping noises begin to blare from the ground. The pig is hoisted to reveal a burned human skull with aviator glasses. Everyone loses their appetite, but that pig sure looked good to me. I would’ve still eaten it.

After Booth and Brennan arrive on the scene, it doesn’t take them long to identify the body. Brennan determines that the victim was a male between 30 and 35. That, coupled with the fact that he was wearing aviator glasses, helps the neighbors identify him as Kurt Bissette, who lived across the street from where he was killed. Booth looks over at his house and sees his wife (now widow) watching them through the window. She slams the blinds shut. A little creepy.

Booth investigates and learns that Kurt wasn’t well-liked by his neighbors, which makes sense, because obviously one of them killed him. Apparently Kurt was one of those green fanatics that built a windmill and put up a solar panel, both of which didn’t gel with the rest of the neighborhood’s visage. Kurt also had a little vendetta with the gay neighbors’ dog.

Meanwhile, Hodgins proves his value this week by uncovering a fatal amount of blood and a .44 caliber bullet buried in the rocks around Kurt’s windmill. But Kurt wasn’t just shot; his bones were sawed. And he was being poisoned with blood thinning drugs. Yikes. Someone really didn’t like this guy. So from here, the team has to determine which bad thing was the true cause of death and who is responsible. Interviewing all of the neighbors reveals all kinds of torrid and tawdry affairs, sex romps, sex toy garage businesses, double crosses, betrayal, all that good stuff. It’s a pretty tangled web the team has to navigate.

The real conflict for Booth this week though comes courtesy of his son Parker. He had to bring Parker to work with him because his ex and her loser companion went out of town unexpectedly. Or something like that. Parker of course wants to see the barbecued body, but Booth drops him off with Angela. Angela paints his face and shows off her art skills, but Parker reveals that he is concerned because his dad doesn’t have a girlfriend. Of course Parker is only concerned that his dad doesn’t have a girlfriend because a school friend of his has a dad with a new girlfriend who has a pool. So Parker wants a similar deal. Hey, what would you expect from a ten-year-old? But it’s entertaining to watch Parker go from Angela to Cam and finally to Brennan and asking them if they can be his dad’s girlfriend.

I always like when we get a chance to see Booth as parent. David Boreanaz always nails those scenes, and I really like that aspect of his character. We haven’t seen Parker in a while, so this was a nice and fun way to bring him back and facilitate some romantic conflict at the same time. There’s also a big fallout that comes about when Cam discovers that Arastoo, the intern of the week, has been faking his thick Middle Eastern accent.

I still don’t quite understand why the writers are really committed to having revolving interns instead of picking one and giving him a chance to grow as a character and become a permanent member of the team. Maybe they like having a different flavor, a different personality every week. I guess it doesn’t bother me anymore, we’ve already got enough interesting characters on the show. A couple of readers commented on my last review that I should give the supporting characters more credit and try to be vested in them as I am in Booth and Brennan. If these characters are close to Booth and Brennan and are a permanent fixture of their world, then yes, that’s a fair point. I guess my wish is that, specifically with Cam, the writers would make their character development more consistent. I mean Cam adopted a teenage girl last season, but we’ve only seen her twice. She only seems to be trotted out when it is convenient, and when she isn’t on the show, Cam acts exactly as she always has. We should see how being a new parent has affected her more consistently.

But these are minor points. This season is still going rather well, an improvement from last, and I’m looking forward to new episodes every week. I read the other day that the set was shut down due to a possible swine flu outbreak. I hope it wasn’t serious and that they’re back shooting, because with so few good shows on tv right now, I really need my Bones hit every week.

Season 5, Episode 4: The Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (originally aired October 8, 2009)

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