Bones Review: No Work, All Play

If any of you are long time readers of my reviews of Bones for this website, you’ll have noticed something off about my recaps and thoughts over the first couple episodes of Season 7 – namely that they have been largely favorable. This coming from a girl who hoped for an announcement that S7 would be their final run, just to get the show off the air before it descended so far into crap no one would even be able to recall that it had, once upon a time, been fantastic. This coming from a girl so angered by the S6 finale that she was ready to ask her editor for a different show to cover this fall, so she could boycott the writers for stealing out Booth/Bones sexytime moment.

After 3 episodes, I’m singing a completely different tune. This week’s installment gives us another solid, interesting, and at times amusing case that is solved by all the members of the lab. The formula that made Bones better than your average cop show in the beginning was the mixture of its strong, likable ensemble cast with the sizzling chemistry between the male and female leads. They wandered down the wrong path when we spent three-fourths of every episode whining about Booth and Bones, but now that their storyline is resolved (for now) the series has found solid footing. I, for one, am falling in love all over again.

The night begins when an executive with a local toy company (ala Mattel) is found murdered in the building’s top secret creative workspace. The injuries to her body are strange, and Angela (Michaela Conlin) sets to work figuring out what kind of weapon could have produced them – in between trying to assemble a toy for her and Hodgins’ baby boy, a task that proves impossible as the writers riff on the instructions that come with our multitude of ‘Made in China’ products. At one point Angela even breaks down and asks Bones (Emily Deschanel) for help, and even our resident genius can’t figure things out. Toward the end of the episode Cam (Tamara Taylor) wanders into the now extremely frustrated Angela, and when Hodgins (T.J.Thyne) shows up, he believes he can help, no problem. I still love the two of them together and would be a fan, almost every week, of spending more time focused on them.

It’s like the show’s producers heard my pleas, because this week also treated us to the return of Daisy Wick (Carla Gallo), still in the rare form that makes me want to both slap her and be her best friend. Sweets (John Francis Daley) is applying for a handgun certification, since he spends time in the field, and Booth (David Boreanaz) is against it from the start. Sweets is offended, assuming Booth doesn’t believe in him, but the latter claims he’s trying to protect their resident psychologist from situations he might not be ready to face. There are some funny moments as Sweets takes on the shooting range, preparing for his test, in which Daisy tries to keep her hands off him while he’s engaged in such a manly task. The two of them picked up where they left off, and are always amusing, albeit typically in some kind of inappropriate fashion.

Sweets does end up with his certification to carry, and from Booth himself, after a rather amusing scene that ends up with Sweets “injured.”

Speaking of inappropriate, a Prince Charmington doll (think Ken) was found with the victim, and Daisy is more upset about the dismembering of her childhood fantasy man than the human woman who died trying to hang on to him. She goes so far as to refer to it as a double homicide and perform an autopsy on the toy, which actually yields some usable results (good thing for her, too). Booth also takes the chatterbox squint into the field while Bones is otherwise occupied, and in true Daisy fashion, she ends up asking all the right questions in all the wrong ways and learns exactly what they need to know.

Suspicion initially falls on the victim’s brother, who admits to stealing rare toys and selling them on the internet, then moves to her secret affair with the “real” Prince Charmington. But when he reveals the victim had planned to leave the company and take her ideas elsewhere, they prove (with the help of Hodgins, and to some extent Cam) the culprit is the victim’s boss.

The case’s theme of toys gets to Bones, who worries she won’t be able to play properly with their daughter since she never actually learned how to play. Angela talks with her about it, then takes her to the toy store, and when Booth arrives home at the end of the night she pops out of the kitchen, pelting him with foam balls from a toy gun and laughing manically. Once Booth gets over the shock, he grabs the second gun and they play together. It’s another – wait for it – adorable scene in a growing collection of adorable scenes featuring what is probably my favorite television couple.

Except Chuck and Blair from Gossip Girl. Let’s not get silly.

Season 7, Episode 3 “The Prince in the Plastic” (original airdate November 17, 2011)

Bones airs Thursday nights at 9/8c on Fox.

Photos Courtesy of Ray Mickshaw and FOX