The team investigates the murder of a DJ, and Bones gets high. The writers must have been on drugs themselves to produce this dud, though.
1.0
"Abysmal"
The dialogue in this one was even worse than usual. Brennan's "anthropological" babble was far overdone, and NO actual anthropologist talks that way. I constantly wonder why the series' writers fail to realize that people who spend their lives researching cultural interactions are never as out-of-touch with how to blend in as Brennan seems to be. At any rate, the evening opens at a hip-hop club, as Angela tries to get Bones to have fun. Emily Deschanel is painful to watch in the scene, and the writing is atrocious. Micheala Conlin (Angela) tries and tries to add life to the scene, but can't overcome Deschanel's woodenness.
After Bones beats a guy into the wall (and really, one of these days she's going to get sued for assault, and I will be happy), they discover a body and get dosed with meth. Angela high is funny, but it's Boreanaz and Eric Milligan (Zach) that really save the scene. It really bothers me that they care even less about procedure in this episode than they usually do. No good FBI agent would allow an investigator to work on a scene while high, much less actually touch the body. What were the writers thinking?
A cut scene with Bones finding footprints is once more enlivened by Zach. The scene that follows, however, is once again heavily-written. The writers apparently don't trust the audience to pick up on 'the victim is a good person' from contextual evidence, so they toss in a scene of the victim's father lecturing Booth that his son was third in his high school class and would have been first except he had a full-time job, medalled in track and field and baseball (Which, BTW, no one has enough time to medal in two sports and hold down a full-time job. It just doesn't happen.), never drank or did drugs, and had a "personal relationship with Jesus". Apparently a palm reader told him that his son would be a good man. Boo-freaking-hoo. This information could have been given much more elegantly through just the use of props and throwaway lines in other scenes. This was just painfully clumsy. Painfully, painfully clumsy.
After the horribly overwrought father, the scene of Bones, Zach and Random FBI Guy climbing through a wall is a relief. They find some evidence: footprints, a blood smear, a belly-button ring. Back in the lab, Jack delivers science-babble with the most flair of any of these actors. The other characters do the exposition thing, and the team starts looking for someone who murdered him, probably connected to the ring.
They interview a suspect DJ, who tells them he gave the ring to a former girlfriend. Bones is impressed by his scars, in a little exchange that is unintentionally funnier than it should be. Booth and Brennan return to Booth's car. Banter banter banter. Booth is going on vacation, Brennan has wierd ideas about vacationing. She also is apparently hung up on hip-hop music now. I'm not sure how that's in character, but whatever. The writers don't care about realism.
Back in the lab, Zach is laying out the now-clean bones, and finds a chip in the victim's skull. There's a nice little character development moment for Zach, who goes to see his family when he vacations, even though they think he's a freak for his job. Why? "They're my family; because they 'love me'." The scare quotes are obvious from his tone, but he's also being truthful. They do love him, just not in the way he wants to be loved. Well played, Eric Milligan.
Booth and Brennan visit a dance studio run by a guy who tries to use dance to keep kids off the streets. The mysterious former girlfriend, Eve, is his sister. She's been disappeared for a while, leaving behind a daughter that the dance-studio-guy cares for like his own. The scene between Booth and the protective father-figure is nicely done, not overwritten like the former scene with the victim's father. Hodgins and Booth have an exchange that's odd, because it's fun to watch the actors, but the dialogue they're trying to sell is rotten. Pure exposition. Blah blah blah.
The next scene has Angela expositing (more exposition!) that the blood smear came from after Eve ripped out her belly-button ring, following the vic into the wall. Eve couldn't have killed him, though, because of their respective positions. Brennan is grossed out by the idea of ripping out a belly-button ring. What the **** She doesn't care about child murders, is okay with making a glove out of someone's mummified skin, and deals with corpses on a regular basis, but this grosses her out? Yeah right, writers. I'll buy that ocean front property in Arizona, too. There's no way that this scene was in character for her. Booth finds out that one of the suspects was an undercover cop. On his tip, Booth and Brennan go to talk to the club owner. Apparently, he's also 100% clean (way to be PC, show. We haven't yet seen a thug-type that wasn't surprisingly clean. *rolls eyes*). The following exchange of dialogue occurs:
Club owner: This is my life now, this and my record label, not crystal meth, not gang banging.
Brennan (with Deschanel's best spaced out look): Yet much of the iconic quality of urban music lies in the percieved or actual rivalry between the principle artists.
Club owner: Where'd you find out that?
Booth (smirking): Museum.
**No one talks this way.**. Not even Aaron Sorkin characters talk this way. Please shut up, Bones, just shut up. Also? Please shoot your writers and hire new ones. Or maybe you can use your magical kung-foo on them. You'd get away with it, because you never get arrested when you assault someone with kung-foo. They bring in a cadaver dog to find Eve, who they figure is dead. Booth complains about the dog's appearance, and doubts its abilities. The dog finds a corpse under Suspect Other DJ's studio, which turns out to be Eve, and who died around the same time as the first victim.
Booth and Tessa are going on vacation. Angela makes it awkward for them. Tessa looks at Booth oddly, then runs away from the wierd people. The Angelator tells them that Eve wasn't killed by the suspect other DJ. Bones ****s up Booth's interrogation of Suspect Other DJ. Booth promises noteriety to Suspect Other DJ, who tells them that Victim DJ was going to jump labels, and that the studio exec built a new studio (under which they found a body) the day after Victim DJ disappeared. Bones does her usual stupid-not-a-people-person thing, and when Booth makes good progress, whines that Booth's extrapolation from motive is "mushy psychological guesswork". Bones keeps whining about Booth's ideas for the case as Zach matches the dent in both victim's skulls. They confront the studio exec and his undercover-cop bodyguard. The exec assaults an FBI officer, so both the exec and the cop/bodyguard get arrested. Bones happily confiscates the exec's cane. It's nice to see an action scene in which Bones manages not to violate any federal laws. I think it's a first for this show.
Zach (wearing a tac vest) and Jack test out the cane as an assault weapon, leading to the following funny little exchange (I think this might be the best dialoge of the episode):
Jack: How many times do you want me to poke Zach?
Brennan: Just once, but as hard as you can.
Zach: As hard as he can? Why can't I hit him as hard as I can?
Jack: Because you have arms like noodles, whereas I am vigorous and burly. Zach: Oof!
At any rate, the strange skull dents on the victims match one made by the cane on Zach's test material. The exec looks guilty.
Booth and Brennan have a conversation in which he's sad that Tessa won't come to Jamaica with him, and Brennan once more reveals that she's an obsessive compulsive workaholic with psychological problems of a magnitude that prevent her from even impersonating a normal person successfully.