Returning after a three-week absence due to the World Series, it’s fitting that this newest installment of Bones would reveal one of its characters is, as they say, batting for the other team.
While Grey’s Anatomy makes headlines for suddenly booting a lead Seattle Grace lesbian, Bones is staying true to the storyline of fan favorite Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin). In the latest episode, The Skull in the Sculpture, an old female flame of Angela’s is involved in a murder case and stirs up some shelved feelings.
Two midday drinkers are the finders of this week’s victim (Last episode, it was two stoners.) The boozers sneak into an auto wrecking yard like an intoxicated R2D2 and C3PO. Beer cans in hand, they set out to find a birthday present for a relative. But when one inebriate pulls a side mirror from a compacted crush pile of leftover car innards, he gets a little more than he bargained for: a bloody skeleton.
Another round of PBR please!
Back in the lab, Hodgins (TJ Thyne) and Cam (Tamara Taylor) investigate the scrap metal with the help of returning intern Daisy Wick (Carla Gallo), who last appeared on the show in a flurry of interpersonal faux pas.
FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperence Brennan (David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel) meanwhile discover the block was sent to the yard from an art gallery. They determine the body to be that of artist Geoffrey Thorne, who did a six-sculpture series in auto art. (Booth’s definition of art, he says, is more along the lines of fruit in a bowl or a C.M. Coolidge scene of anthropomorphized dogs.)
He and Brennan talk to gallery runner Helen Bridenbecker, a schmoozy art snob with a snooty attitude and painted-on face like a geisha’s. She and Geoffrey’s assistant, Roxie Lyon, point out that the depressed artist had been contemplating how to make himself part of his work – the “ultimate artistic act.”
“Bravo Geoffrey!” Helen says with flair.
“You are an extremely unlikable woman,” Brennan responds.
Roxie clues Booth and Brennan in to Anton Deluca, an artist rival of Geoffrey’s who, upon questioning, exhibits a celebratory nonchalance at the man’s death. But he does turn the tables and dish a little dirt on Roxie herself: she was in a sexual relationship with Geoffrey and stands to inherit everything he had. When Booth questions her, she says she doesn’t know anything about the will. And oh yeah, one other game changer: She’s never slept with her beneficiary, because she’s gay.
Just as Hodgins is about to pry apart the chunk of junk in the Jeffersonian, the team is stopped with a court order stating the piece is not to be harmed. Carefully, they’ll have to figure some other way to study a body smashed to bits inside the chewed up sedan. One borescope and a bowl of flesh-eating beetles later, they’re little closer to an answer.
Roxie, meanwhile, recognizes Angela in the lab. The ex-lovers reunite, and Angela becomes determined to prove Geoffrey did commit suicide and wasn’t murdered by her pal. Using an oversized scanning machine, she locates all the bones crushed in the metal and tries to account for each break, tying them to when the car was compacted. Lo and behold, there’s one extra injury, proving Geoffrey was murdered and officially lifting the court injunction.
Brennan nails the murder weapon, an ax, which is found in the gallery, and Hodgins discovers via some sweat on the body that whoever killed Geoffrey has cancer. Turns out, unfriendly Helen is sick, and mashed Geoffrey so his art would sell for a higher price so she could pay to get special care in Mexico. Case closed.
Only one problem remains: Daisy.
Throughout the case she managed to break a skull, miserably impersonate Yoda and get on everyone’s last nerve.
“She has a knack for turning reasonable people into flaming gas balls of fury,” says Cam. (If her former coworker Zack Addy was “King of the Lab,” she’s certainly Queen of the One Liners.)
Sweets (John Francis Daley) offers to do the firing for Cam and in doing so reveals he and Daisy are romantically linked.
“It’ll never work. They’re like complete opposites,” Booth says to Brennan, while the two watch shocked as Sweets and Daisy kiss. Brennan points out Daisy is a woman of science, while Sweets is a psychology man. Neither admits they’re watching a reflection of their own partnership.
“There’s no common ground, you need common ground,” Brennan says. “What else is there?”
“Absolutely,” says Booth. And they watch as Sweets and Daisy step off the forensic platform and into the metaphorical sunset.
Jennifer Morris is a journalist and frequent contributor to the What’s Up Arts and Entertainment movie review column The Screening Room.
