Bones: Exorcising Demons

This week, Booth and Brennan find themselves working a case that seems almost designed to bring them into conflict with one another. The crime scene: a church. The victim: A charred and extra crispy body with horns protruding from its skull, set ablaze near the altar. Booth jitters around and says a prayer for himself and Brennan. Brennan is unfazed but fascinated. Noting the placement of the body, Brennan tells Booth and the priest that she understands that it would “have great meaning to your superstitious followers.” Trying to shut her up, Booth offers: “What do you say we get Hellboy wrapped up and back to the Jeffersonian.” And so it begins.

Intern-of-the-week Arastoo determines that the victim was a white male in his early twenties and that in addition to the horns, he had a legitimate vestigial tail. Hodgins follows up by discovering that the accelerant was your garden-variety motor oil and that the horns were partly made out of coral and, therefore, were fake. Booth can now relax knowing that their victim is human and not a demon. Bones too can relax with the knowledge that her scientific and clinical world is still intact, not that she was worried for even a second. They do however still have to solve the murder and exercise the romantic tension between them. Angela actually pulls her weight this week with the former.

She identifies the victim as Neil Lowery, whose last known residence was the Looney Bin. So now, by definition, Booth and Brennan’s investigation involves the quintessential religious site and the quintessential psychological site. In other words, Brennan will be swimming in interpersonal conflict with Booth and Sweets, who Booth brings along to help liaise with the Looney Bin staff and patients.

I thought Neil might have been one of those…um…special…performance art people, but it seems that he was born with the tail, had an abusive childhood, became schizophrenic, went out and got the horns so he could make himself into the Satan spawn image he thought everyone else already saw and expected of him. Or something like that. The kid had problems, for sure.

At the sanitarium, Booth, Bones and Sweets meet Dr. Copeland (Joshua Malina), the head honcho. He gives them the guided tour and introduces them to a patient named Neviah, who believes she is an angel and painted a picture of Neil being crucified and wounded in the exact same place that the actual body was. She tells them that God told her to kill Neil. This is about as good a confession as you could get, but Booth is too good of an investigator to close the case there.

At the Jeffersonian, Angela analyzes the painting, noting the similarities in style and content to the work of Hieronymus Bosch (not to be confused with the Los Angeles detective protagonist of Michael Connelly’s books, who shares the painter’s namesake). She also uncovers another painting underneath it that potentially implicates one of the sanitarium nurses. This is a great scene that really showed Angela’s value to the team. This is what I wish the writers would do more often: focus on Angela’s talents and professionalism. Of course she should have a personal life, but more often than not, her personal problems are overemphasized to the point where the character comes off as inferior waste of oxygen. Her artistic skills are interesting and unique. They should be focused on more. We should see her coming up with new and innovative ways to use and improve her simulator. I want the character to be given the same level of respect that Brennan gets.

And on this same note, let’s talk about Cam. Her big issue this week involves Arastoo. During an exchange with him about how he reconciles his Muslim faith and his devotion to science, she got the mistaken impression that, when he talked about having to look into the eyes of the devil every day, that he was talking about Americans. For the rest of the episode, she dithered and worried about confronting him. Finally, it was Arastoo that had to confront her and explain that he wasn’t talking about Americans and that he loves the country. He then told an affecting story about his time spent working as a translator in Iraq. This is not the Cam that came aboard in season two. When she took over the Jeffersonian, she was New York tough and authoritative. She challenged Brennan consistently and was even ready to fire her at one point. I’m not saying I loved her for that (if she fired Brennan I’d teleport into the TV and beat her with a rubber hose), but it was a lot more interesting.

How are we supposed to take her seriously as the leader of this important and prestigious forensic team if she can’t even confront interns about interpersonal issues? Either give Cam her authority back or bring back Dr. Goodman from the first season. I don’t think Cam or Angela are being given enough respect as characters. I wouldn’t take it this far, but I could even understand some people referring to their characterizations as slightly sexist and maybe even misogynistic.

Beyond those quibbles, this is a good episode with an interesting murder mystery that gives Booth and Brennan a lot to play with. Even the supporting cast is good. There is a scene where Dr. Copeland confronts Brennan and puts her in her place for consistently belittling psychiatry and his life’s work. I was impressed that the writers put in a scene that paints Brennan in such an ugly light and I admire Emily Deschanel for willingly allowing her character to come off as conceited and momentarily unlikable. Not every star would do that.

The other thing the episode does well is engage the series’ continuing exploration of the dichotomy between faith and science. Brennan comes to the reluctant realization that she looks to and finds the same level of comfort from logic, order and science that Booth gets from Catholicism. Other highlights include Hodgins painfully conducting an experiment with nun-chuks, Brennan finally getting to drive and Brennan flirting with a self-effacing psychiatrist at the sanitarium and then finding out that he is actually a patient…and being not horrified but disappointed because they seemed to have a lot in common. It was really funny. Deschanel is hilarious in scenes like this precisely because she doesn’t try to be funny. She’s always completely immersed in her character and plays it straight and truthfully.

I’m sad to report that this is the last episode of Bones until April 1^st.

Season 5, Episode 14: The Devil in the Details (originally aired February 4, 2010)

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Thursdays at 8/7c on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro