Bones: Hookers, Rhubarb and the Civil War

This week on Bones, Brennan works her magic on a skull uncovered during a Civil War reenactment and Booth investigates the case and, more importantly, his brother Jared’s fiancée that he met while motorcycling around in India. The introduction of Booth’s brother last season was one of the better moves by the writers. It gave us a chance to learn a lot more about Booth’s childhood and family life, as well as the sacrifices he kept making for his brother.

Using Jared as a romantic rival for Brennan was effective. It made me mad that she was going for him—a boob—and ignoring Booth, the older and better brother. I love Brennan dearly, so the fact that the Jared thing got me mad at her is telling. It’s the only time in the whole series I’ve ever wanted to smack her…although earlier this season when she went out with Hacker and blabbed secrets about Booth was also hairy.

Having Jared return this week I guess was a good idea but he was barely onscreen before he and Booth started fighting. Over a woman, of all things. Jared’s a loose cannon, a recovering alcoholic who has been abroad for a good spell of time, he comes back unexpectedly and announces that he’s going to marry some woman he just met…of course Booth would be concerned. Of course Booth would run a background check on her…he works at the FBI! That’s what I would do. I know some people would look at it as a breach of trust, but Booth has every right to try to look out for Jared and not trust that he knows what he’s doing. After all, Booth has been doing it for thirty years.

It was nice last season when, after Brennan came to her senses and trashed Jared that he got a chance to redeem himself by helping save Booth from the Gravedigger. But now he comes back and just acts like a whiny brat the whole time. Booth discovers that the fiancée, Padme, used to be a prostitute, and he tries to tell his brother gently. Jared just whines and screams. This exact same setup…and I mean the exact same setup was used in an episode of the final season of Moonlighting. I have heard other people claim that Bones rips off Moonlighting and I’ve always tried to give the writers the benefit of the doubt…but this is pushing it. If they didn’t steal it from Moonlighting, it’s still not worth celebrating. It’s an obvious setup. They could have done better.

But on the bright side, this whole debacle allows Booth and Brennan to have some nice moments. Brennan is surprised that Booth is being so hard on Jared and Padme, because Booth is the hopeless romantic that always tries to see the best in people. Brennan, on the other hand, is trying to defend Padme and Jared. It’s like Booth and Brennan switched brains. But then you hear her tell Booth how much he influenced her when he told her to forgive her father for his criminal past and look toward building a future. “Because of you I have a relationship now with my father,” she tells Booth.

But since Brennan is a stickler for logical consistency, if Booth is sending the opposite message in regards to Jared and Padme, does it mean that Brennan’s relationship with her father is also misguided? Was Booth right then or is he right now? I also think Brennan is secretly worried that Booth is turning his back on his feelings about how love conquers all and how any two people can be together no matter their past…notions that clearly apply to her relationship (both current and hopefully future) with Booth. I liked all of this.

Bones is at its best when the writers give you six ways from Sunday to contemplate B&B’s relationship. Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz are so good in these scenes, every look, every glance they give each other, their cadence, their pauses…it all forms a hidden language that can carry a slew of meanings. We then get to sift through them and decide to believe what we want to believe. This process makes us as viewers active participants in Booth and Brennan’s lives and not just people sitting on couches watching. I like that involvement factor.

The murder investigation is pretty standard, though it does try to touch on issues of homosexuality and prejudice. Cam has a funny moment freaking out over spiders pouring out of the skeleton (it’s encased in clay). I felt close to her there because spiders scare the bejesus out of me. Spiders, snakes and Shirley Temple. The dumb, prattle-prone intern Nigel Murray is back but at least he isn’t Wendell or Clark. Plus he does something cool with rhubarb. Hodgins is Hodgins, and Angela is barely in the episode. She wasn’t greatly missed.

The other part I liked was that towards the end of the show, Brennan realizes that what they thought was the cause of death isn’t the cause of death and she has to go back to square one. Deschanel plays it just right. You see how bothered Brennan is by suddenly not having her incredible knowledge and smarts to rely on. You see how driven she is to go back to the bones and find the truth. There’s an effective little montage with her examining the bones and doing her thing. She’s so comfortable working with the dead remains, rubbing them, caressing them, prodding them, putting her face right into them. It sounds creepy but it was actually quite beautiful. This is Brennan at her most ethereal, her most feminine, her most independent. It’s nice to see her character get forensically challenged for a change.

The resolution is solid, but I’m still waiting for the 100^th episode flashback event to how Booth and Brennan first met.

Season 5, Episode 13: The Dentist in the Ditch (originally aired January 28, 2010)

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Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

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