It’s off to Shanghai for Booth and Brennan in Bones’ “The Passenger in the Oven”, where unfortunately for the crime solving duo a mile high murder keeps them from stepping onto Chinese soil.
Forced to solve the mystery before landing and losing jurisdiction, Booth and Brennan must make do with what they’ve got to nab the killer, who left their victim on a slow-roast in the plane’s high-powered microwave.
(Say, Happy Thanksgiving.)
The episode begins with Booth’s humorous attempts at shanghaiing for himself a first class seat – Brennan paid extra and in return got a comfy reclining chair and some cushy pajamas and slippers. Booth, on the other hand, took the working man’s route, squashed between two murder mystery loving grannies in coach.
Or, as he put it, “Gitmo.”
Brennan is on her way to China to help the country’s government identify some ancient discovered remains (Prehistoric anthropological studies are her real passion, she says) and Booth is tagging along to protect the American technology she’ll be using (And now he’s worried she’s tired of working with him: “You’re bored, the spark is gone,” he says.)
Not ready to let his partner retire to the lab, Booth tries his best to escape coach confines and talk it out with Brennan.
“If you get caught up here, does that make me an accessory?” she asks him.
“An accessory to an upgrade,” he replies.
But even his bodyguard excuse isn’t good enough for those tough-as-nails flight attendants, who shuffle Booth back to his old lady sandwich in no time.
When a scream comes from below deck just four hours before the plane is scheduled to land, it’s Brennan and a newly liberated Booth to the rescue, as they discover that scintillating scent of roast pork to be coming from well done human remains (or long pig, as they‘d say on Supernatural).
This is where The Passenger in the Oven’s comedy really gets cooking: Booth’s blue hair club buddies are old hat at solving those grocery store shelf murders, and they’re quick to offer solutions of their own.
“I didn’t hear a gun shot, so it must’ve been a knifer,” says one. “This is the best flight I’ve ever been on.”
Thanks to a high-tech live video feed Hodgins, Cam and Angela can provide support from the lab. With their help, the team discovers the victim to be Elizabeth Jones, a travel writer sitting in seat 3B.
Oh, and they also discover she was alive when put in the cooker. Ouch.
It turns out, Elizabeth was working on an article centering around pilots with DUI convictions, and the plane’s pilot just so happened to be one of those with a bad flying record. Denying his involvement, the pilot decides to give Booth and Brennan a little extra air time to find the real killer before landing and being taken in Chinese custody.
Putting improvisation to the test, Booth and Bones use what they’ve got to find that ever elusive justice, including: denture cream and baby powder to make a mold of a wound, the movie projector’s blue light and a pair of tinted glasses to make a blood-revealing luminescent, and a laughable set of super-strength cat-eye glasses to magnify (Enter Booth’s sexy librarian crack here).
One “I did not have sex with that woman” line later, and they’ve got it solved: a man in first class flying with his 16-year-old son and sick wife was having an affair with Elizabeth. The son knew about it and decided his best option was to X-nay his mother’s competition.
Just before touchdown – literally, seconds – Booth is able to make the arrest.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law because this is the United States of America!” he proudly shouts.
Back in the continental US, Angela gets a taste of her own noncommittal medicine. After clarifying for Hodgins that she is bisexual (meaning, sadly for him, she broke up with him because of their relationship, and not the simple fact he wasn’t a woman), Angela asks Roxie to move in with her. This time, though, it’s Roxie who says no, and the two are left sitting in uncomfortable silence.
Back on the plane, Booth and Brennan both enjoy a first-class trip home to the States. Brennan calms Booth’s fears that she’s done with solving murders. She wants to be in the field, she says. But, after a cross continental trip during which many assumed Booth and Brennan were a couple, she has just one question remaining. And perhaps it’s one only a non-genius can answer.
“Why do people always think we’re going to make out?”
Gee Brennan, I’m no expert, but I think that one’s called chemistry.
Jennifer Morris is a journalist and frequent contributor to the What’s Up Arts and Entertainment movie review column The Screening Room.
