Bones Review: Everyone Awake Now?

I’ve been complaining (though not so much recently) that the Bones writers are lazy, that they’ve lost interest in these storylines, and abandoned honest character arcs. Well, things have been improving since the show returned for the second half of it’s 6^th season, but this week the writer’s decided the time had come to shake up our comfortable routine of solving cases, laughing at squinterns, and not talking about Booth and Bones’ feelings for one another.

The night begins in the diner, Brennan (Emily Deschanel) complaining that they haven’t had a murder to solve recently. Booth (David Boreanaz) is obsessed with finding his army nemesis-turned-mercenary Jacob Broadsky (Arnold Vosloo, The Mummy) before he targets another victim. Vincent Nigel-Murray (Ryan Cartwright), the squintern of the week, shows up to discuss a scientific presentation with Dr. Brennan right before Booth receives a call that Broadsky has been spotted leaving flowers on his girlfriend’s grave.

Special Agent Genny Shaw (Tina Majorino, Napoleon Dynamite, Veronica Mars, Big Love) is the one who recognized Broadsky, though she feels guilty for letting him “make” her, allowing him to escape before Booth gets to the scene. Broadsky calls a cell phone left in the flowers, informing Booth in no uncertain terms now that Booth is on “the wrong side” his days are numbered. I’m guessing Genny Shaw is going to be a recurring character from here on out, and an early guess that perhaps she and Sweets will begin a romance down the line.

Broadsky requests a sniper rifle from another old army buddy, who asks for time to think about it. Instead of acquiescing, Broadsky kills the kid and steals the rifle. The team at the Jeffersonian begins to investigate the murder, and in their spare time Hodgins (T.J.Thyne) helps Vincent Nigel-Murray with the science paper he and Dr. Brennan are presenting – which turns out to be a mathematical investigation into whether or not a human could beat a T-Rex in an arm wrestling match.

Yes, really.

If you’re interested, the T-Rex would lose because it couldn’t rotate its shoulder joint far enough to pin the human’s arm. You’re welcome.

Broadsky, up on a crane with the sniper rifle, gets ready to take aim at one of Booth’s friends. Sweets (John Francis Daley), warned Booth in a previous scene that since Broadsky considers Booth on the wrong side, anyone who helps him is in the wrong too, putting everyone at the Jeffersonian at risk. Now, with Broadsky getting ready to shoot, the camera flicks from Angela (Michaela Conlin) and Hodgins, to Cam (Tamara Taylor), to Sweets, to Genny Shaw, over and over again until we know someone’s about to die – but not who.

A call comes into Booth’s cell phone and he has Vincent Nigel-Murray pick up so Booth can trace the call. When Broadsky’s thermal imaging shows who he assumes to be Booth answering his cell phone, he shoots.

Vincent Nigel-Murray dies in a sad, poignant scene that affects Booth and Brennan, who witness the death, as well as everyone else at the Jeffersonian who knew Vincent.

Booth insists Bones spend the night at his apartment because he doesn’t want anyone else he cares about to get hurt. She agrees to sleep on the fold out sofa but goes to Booth in the wee hours of the morning, her guilt over not telling Vincent enough how much she appreciated him bubbling over. Booth comforts her and, in a scene we’ve been waiting on for years, pulls her into bed with him. The two cuddle as he comforts her and they fall asleep. Nothing happens, but something happens – we just don’t know exactly what, yet.

Brennan tells Angela about it the next day, though their conversation is cut off when Hodgins interrupts so we don’t get to know “what happened” for sure. Hodgins discovered a way to track Broadsky, so Booth and Agent Shaw take off to find and hunt him down.

As Booth, armed with a rifle, hunts Broadsky through a shipping yard (in a nicely done, tense scene), Hodgins and Bones call with some last minute information that saves Booth’s life. Broadsky is apprehended alive, leaving the cast nothing to do but say goodbye to Vincent in another scene wrought with an authentic feelings of loss.

So, we’ve lost one of our squinterns, and one that most of us probably had a certain degree of affection for. Booth and Bones have spent the night together, and what will come of that in the finale remains to be seen. Angela is still pregnant.

Next Thursday night is the finale, and after this week they’ll have to come up with something big, something shocking, to top the emotions stirred to the surface by Vincent’s death. While I will miss him and his endless fact spouting, the show’s writers weren’t wrong in thinking the audience needed to be shaken awake.

We’re awake now, and we’re all paying attention.

Now what?

Season 6, Episode 22 “The Hole in the Heart” (original air date May 12, 2011)

Bones airs Thursdays at 9/8c on Fox.

Photos courtesy of Patrick Wymore and FOX