Broken Bones

The first two episodes of this latest season of Bones got it right, focusing almost solely on the dynamic between Booth and Brennan and not wasting time with trivial bits of business involving supporting characters. Alas, last night’s episode faltered a little bit, even though the main story was strong.

As we begin, Booth and Brennan are investigating the remains of a teenage boy found scattered on railroad tracks. They determine that the victim was killed prior to being hit and dragged by the train, so it’s a homicide and they’re in business. Booth has started wearing his loud belt buckle again, and this makes for some fun banter between the two of them. We’re off to a good start but then…

We cut to Camille. She is with her adopted daughter Michelle, who she took charge of briefly last season after her father was murdered. In that episode, we learned that Camille had a long relationship with the single father when he was alive, and she formed a strong bond with Michelle. I’ve written before that I think Bones should focus solely on Booth and Brennan. They are the core of the show, they are the interesting characters. Last season spent too much time developing stories with the supporting characters. I don’t care about Angela and Hodgins. I don’t care about revolving interns. And I sure don’t care about Cam adopting some teenage brat.

I was so happy when it seemed like the writers had learned this lesson and weren’t going to do any of that crap this season. But here they’re doing it. The big subplot of this week’s episode is Cam freaking out over the fact that Michelle might be doing the nasty with her boyfriend. So we get a series of scenes where she asks members of the team for advice and they all talk about their early sexual escapades. I guess this is supposed to be funny. But it’s not. It’s just stupid filler. And I hate to marginalize the other actors on the show, because mostly I like them. But let’s be honest: any scene that Booth and/or Brennan isn’t in is filler. It’s just a way of killing time and allowing David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel to have a break and not have to shoot every single scene. Logistically I get it. But as a viewer, I can’t stand it.

We get too much crap about this teenage sex subplot, we get too much crap concerning the intern-of-the-week Clark. I thought last week it was settled that Wendell was going to be the permanent assistant, since everyone paid for his scholarship. Yes, there should be humor in Bones, but it should come from the dynamic between Booth and Brennan, not from forced, trite sitcom events that transpire between the lightweight supporting characters. What makes this all the more annoying is this week’s murder mystery, which was strong enough to sustain the episode, rendering all of this side crap all the more unnecessary.

Brennan is initially stumped after running tests on the victim that conclude that he had no contact with electricity or chemicals and by all accounts should have grown up several centuries ago. It turns out he was an Amish kid named Levi. So Booth and Brennan have to go into Amish country to investigate. Hey, if Harrison Ford did it in Witness than so can Booth and Brennan (come to think of it, I think the X-Files did it too).

This setup provides a new world for the protagonists to explore and serves as a solid launching ground for more philosophical debate between Booth and Brennan regarding organized religion. This debate has always been at the heart of Bones, as Booth is a devout Catholic and Brennan is an atheist, two facts which sometimes create friction between them. It’s always worthwhile when a plot can facilitate dialectic between two characters that offers further insights into who they are and also takes their relationship to another level.

Levi was away from home on Rumspringa, the ritual where Amish adolescents are encouraged to leave the church and go out and explore the world, so that they can decide if they want to come back and devote their lives to the following or not. And while Levi was out doing this thing, he fell in love with music and discovered that he had a prodigal talent for playing the piano. He even created a practice keyboard out of white and black rocks so that he could assemble the keys and practice and then put the rocks away so that no one knew what he was doing. He was even competing for a prestigious spot in a conservatory.

So then, was he killed by one of his competitors, or by someone from his Amish homeland who thought Levi was betraying the church? Those are the two obvious sources of suspects right? Well yes and no. The answer to the whodunit isn’t as obvious as you might imagine. That’s further testament to the strength of the story. This was an involving murder that set the stage perfectly for Booth and Brennan to evolve. If they had just stuck to that instead of doing this other crap with the supporting characters, it would have been a great episode. As it stands, it’s a good one. Luckily these distractions aren’t quite as time-consuming or cringeworthy as they were last season. But I’m still not happy about it. I hope the writers keep it under control, but so far I still have hopes.

Season 5, Episode 3: The Plain in the Prodigy (originally aired October 1, 2009)

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