The Hollywood writers strike may have ended after 14 weeks back in February, but there’s no getting around it: ramifications are still rippling through our favorite returning TV shows like pesky little waves on a normally glassy pond. Case in point is this week’s Bones, which seemed like a topsy-turvy turn from the premiere that aired the Wednesday prior.
But unlike its campy season opener set in London, the follow up episode did get back to the basics of the show; there was plenty of witty banter, a fair amount of It’s-Greek-to-me science and loads of that infamous sexual tension, thicker than air à la Moonlighting.
The forces of said tension, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and his forensic anthropologist partner Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), are called into the field after a thickheaded trucker visits a roadside outhouse to take a simultaneous cigarette and bathroom break, lighting a methane-fueled explosion.
What’s left behind is a seriously Out-of-Service restroom and the discovered remains of what used to be Bill O’Rourke, host of a reality television show that specializes in catching married men mid-affair.
After sifting through suspects (see: a conga line of angry, ousted ex-husbands, a big-wig producer and the tramp stamped assistant with whom Bill was carrying on his own extramarital affair), Brennan and Booth nail the bad guy, a member of the show’s production crew who went a little crazy after discovering Bill’s mistress was a woman he used to date and still, apparently, loves.
The Jeffersonian clue crew sends along their usual assistance, this time with the help of Daisy Wick, an intern replacement supposedly meant to fill the shoes of Zack (beloved, card-carrying Squint Squad member seasons one through three), who as far as we know remains in a mental institution after assisting a serial killing cannibal.
Zack’s whereabouts are just part of a plot that seems more than a little loose-ended; most noticeably missing from the episode was any mention of the split between lab lovebirds Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) and Dr. Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne). The longtime couple called it quits with little warning during the premiere, but no reference has since been made to the sinking of their rather passionate interlude.
The episode did contain one meet cute: Dr. Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley) gives Daisy a call after she’s fired from the lab (Who can blame them? Nobody likes a suck-up… except maybe Sweets.)
But the real interest is between Brennan and the two (count ‘em, two) men she’s revealed to be seeing. One is a well-built deep sea welder who keeps her occupied in the bedroom, the other is a cheek-kissing, Cold Play-listening botanist she enjoys for intellectual conversation. Booth preaches monogamy to Brennan, who sees the morally restrictive confines of dating to be Jurassic in nature, but when things go south after the welder and botanist find out about one another, Booth takes her side, telling her even she can find someone she’s meant to spend the rest of her life with. Boreanaz delivers the line with the soapiest of lovelorn looks, and the writers could be chided for pulling the sentimental chord on this one, but viewers are left – strings successfully plucked – gooey-eyed over the potential Bones romance.
The scene also goes to prove Sweets’ worth: though at the start of the episode he seems out of place, offering up his opinion on human remains despite Brennan’s strict aversion to non-scientific bias, the episode’s end shows his therapy sessions aren’t just for comic relief. Out of his office the show has created the perfect spotlight to illuminate the Booth and Brennan relationship.
And oh, how they catch the light.
Jennifer Morris is a journalist and frequent contributor to the What’s Up Arts and Entertainment movie review column The Screening Room.
