It’s workplace romance and Cubicle Farm country taken on in this week’s Bones, as Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel) search out the killer of a beloved office manager from amongst her coworkers. The episode plays out like a game of Clue: Was it the slacker with the joint in the machine room? The ex-employee with the grudge on the 16th floor? The boss with the shady alibi in the copy room?
And as far as victim discoveries go, Bones often trolls down Icky Lane, but this one takes a turn straight onto the Oh-that’s-nasty Super Highway. The woman’s body (or what’s left of it) is found in, on and throughout an elevator shaft. It’s a multi-floor mess: after she was killed, she was dumped into the hoistway and gradually ground by the lift’s up-and-down trips until finally it threw the mechanism off kilter. On the Grossness Richter Scale, this one registers loud and clear (see: Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) actually calling for a spatula. Blech.).
Speaking of dark and twisty images, meet this week’s Zack replacement (one in a string of single-episode characters filling in for the season one through three regular who now occupies a cell in a mental institution). His name is Fisher (Joel Moore), and he’s a None-of-us-are-getting-out-of-life-alive type fellow. Real cheery, that one.
He does, however, provide ample opportunity for Cam to deliver some good one-liners. If the show isn’t going to give her a storyline outside the lab, at least they’re filling her comedic quota. She deadpans with the best of them. (Cam had the best line of the night: “I don’t know how this happened, I run a safe building,” the property manager says. “Right,” she responds, tossing out the words as if flicking off a cigarette, “except for the mangled dead woman.”)
As it turns out, the victim wasn’t as beloved as some seemed to believe. In fact, she was a world-class tattletale. When she caught two coworkers in an R-rated rendezvous and threatened to turn them in, one lobbed a stapler at her head, which struck and in turn ruptured a dormant aneurysm, effectively rendering her murdered.
Like last week’s episode, this one continues to shine of Bones‘ former, pre-writer’s strike glory. Buckle up, I do believe this show has shifted back into full gear.
And with that, Brennan’s socially inept worldview continues to charm: throughout episode five she comments on the drone-like state of mid-level workers in corporate America. Nearly as funny as her observations are Booth’s reactions to them. But the couple that really stole the show was, as they were once known, Hodgela. Dr. Jack Hodgins (TJ Thyne) and Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) finally hold their post-breakup talk. As she tries to explain to Sweets (John Frances Daley) and he tries to explain to Cam, things between them have gone from intense to just plain tense, which doesn’t bode well in the workplace. But what starts as two former lovers facing off in a battle of stuttering takes a surprisingly pleasant turn.
“I’m not going to hide anymore and I’m not going to walk on eggshells,” Angela says to a happily relieved Hodgins. “I’m just going to accept that this whole damn mess happened, and pain or not, I’m glad it did.”
So are we, Angela, so are we.
Jennifer Morris is a journalist and frequent contributor to the What’s Up Arts and Entertainment movie review column The Screening Room.
