Smart People Are Creepy

Last week I had a realization. I read a lot of TV blogs (really, really a lot) and I have at least one site for each show that I watch. I don’t know why I enjoy combing the internet for recaps and reviews, but it probably has something to do with the fact that I’m kind of OCD and also I like reading other people’s opinions as long as they’re the same as mine. Kidding — sort of. A lot of my non-internet friends — and some of my internet ones — do not understand the appeal of the recap, and to those people, I really have nothing to say. I fucking love recaps. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, so this realization I had. It just came to me all of a sudden that the only TV show I watch that has almost no presence on the internet is Bones. I love Bones. I think it’s actually the show on TV right now that I enjoy the most, now that BSG is gone, although I’m not sure why. Frankly, I don’t understand my life. As Liz Lemon would say, “What the what?”

Why does no one write about Bones? I mean, TWOP thinks it’s the best procedural on TV, and yet, they don’t even cover it on their site! Huh? They wrote five piddly little recaps back in 2005 when the show was still getting on its feet. FIVE! Sepinwall doesn’t write about Bones, Myles McNutt doesn’t write about Bones, The AV Club doesn’t even have the show on it’s radar, and while Mo Ryan will sometimes give a couple of hints like every thousand years or so, the only reliable source of Bones info on the internet seems to be at spoiler sites and fan-sites (and we all know how I feel about fangirls). I find this completely unacceptable**, and I am here to rectify the situation. Please pass the word along to the rest of the internet. I’m gonna be famous.*

(SPOILERS!)
“Don’t worry about that. I figured out a long time ago how stupid you are.”
Temperance Brennan

The episode opens, disgusting as usual, with a photoshoot in a dumpster. There’s this weird photographer guy taking pictures of an ugly and awkward model, like telling her to be a bird and fly away and shit. Honestly, it made me uncomfortable, but that’s probably because photographers and models freak me out. Whatever, photo dude makes model slut walk over to take pictures with crows that are everywhere, the idiot ( I mean, seriously, doesn’t he know that crows are scavengers? It’s obviously a dead body. I belong on TV). And when the model slut sees a severed human ear on the ground, I laugh really hard. But also, gross.

So, it turns out that there are two trash bags full of human remains that our intrepid duo, Agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, keep referring to as “chili con carne.” Firstly, SICK. Secondly, AWESOME. Which brings me to:

Things in the Episode That Made Me Wish I Wasn’t Eating:

• Bags full of human remains being referred to as “chili con carne.”
• Bags full of human remains on display in the Jeffersonian.
• Bags full of human remains being referred to as “chili con carne” while on display in the Jeffersonian while I was eating beans with chili powder.

Huh, there’s usually more than that, at least five things an episode is the normal level of grossness. But, moving on. It turns out that the body belongs to a physicist who worked in the Collar Institute, which they determined by the piece of meteorite that was found in her ear. They only know she’s a she after visiting the Institute and meeting its genius, blind owner who also wears echolocating sunglasses (not joking), who tells them she was his fiance and that he’d had the meteorite formed into a stone and put into her engagement ring. He doesn’t seem to broken up by her death because he is dead inside. Also, he’s kind of terrifying. Sidenote — Does anyone actually know if those bat sunglasses are a real thing? I’m very curious.

So anyway at the Collard Green Institute for Oversexed Nerds, Booth and Brennan learn that because all the people who work there are so smart, they are able to have sex with one another all over the fucking place and not even care. Blind Bat Dude doesn’t even seem to care that his fiance was doing this other smart dude that is much better looking, because the deal was that she would stop when they got married. What? This, of course, outrages Booth. Brennan’s response? “Completely rational.” Except the look on her face makes it hysterical. Emily Deschanel is really good at line readings.

Back at the Jeffersonian, the Squints determine that our victim was first stabbed, then frozen with liquid nitrogen and them somehow shattered into tiny formerly human pieces. BUT! They don’t figure this out until after Hodgins has blown up a portion of the lab (because he thought it would be fun to shoot a cannon at a frozen dummy in order to find out if the victim was shattered by a meteorite) and bounced a liquid nitrogen frozen turkey a hundred feet into the air and into Angela’s face (to see if the victim was dropped from someplace high, causing her to be shattered). This is my favorite version of Hodgins, the one who does stupid experiments that could be figured out in theory just because he thinks they’re cool. But this version also makes me sad. Hodgins misses Zack, and while he seems to have developed a rapport with Mr. Nigel-Murray (the intern of the week), being King of the Lab just isn’t the same anymore. Which reminds me:

Weekly Rotato

• The Intern of the Week will now officially be called The Rotato, because I say so. If we’re going to keep seeing this rotating group of nerds (and all indications from the creators say that we are), then they most definitely need a cool name.
• Mr. Vincent Nigel-Murray is my favorite Rotato, coincidentally, because he is smart but impaired, just like Brennan and Zack, and he shoots off really fuckin’ random pieces of information when he can’t figure things out. (“The rods in the human eye are sensitive enough to detect the light emitted by a struck match from as much as a mile away on a clear night.”)
• Plus also, he’s British and has blue eyes.

After some more antics at The Collar Sex House for Scientists, first Booth and Brennan are really fucking cute together for awhile, and then after figuring out that creepy sex-emo guy was the killer (but not before he locks them in a scary room and tries to kill them) because of some glowing pond scum, all is once again well with the world.

I’m glad I chose this episode to start recapping because it’s a perfect example of Bones at its best. Wacky lab antics, creepy mystery, disgusting dead bodies, and really excellent character growth. That last one is why I love this show so much. Brennan and Booth as people, and their relationship, have evolved over the course of four seasons. Things change all the time on this show; it isn’t your standard procedural. Back in the first season, before she and Booth were such close friends and before he’d had a chance to work his humanly magic on the rest of the Squint Squad, Brennan said “I don’t know what that means” at least once an episode. I don’t even remember once this season that she’s uttered those words. Two of my favorite episodes involved her getting into altercations with people like midgets and priests (she tells the former that he takes advantage of his shortness and the altercation with the latter lead to one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on  TV, a fight with Booth about God and religion: “Jesus was not a zombie!”)

But as time has passed, she has shown a willingness to learn from him. She may be a genius, but she acknowledges that some things, the things that Booth is good at, are well out of her range. At the end of the episode when she points out the intelligence level of her friends (Hodgins, Mr. Nigel-Murray, and herself: Intelligent; Sweets: Intelligent, but useless; Angela: “Not so much, but she’s talented;” and Booth: who she acknowledges knows how to use intelligence, which means a lot coming from her), she is showing major growth. The Brennan of four years ago would never have admitted that anything could be more important than intelligence. Likewise, not one, but two of the main cast acknowledged to Brennan in this episode that they have learned from her. Hodgins tells her that he learned the importance of looking not just to the future, but in all directions from her, which touches her, and Booth tells her that he’s picked up a lot over the years, which basically means that he sees the Squints as human beings now. This episode provided a nice vehicle for the characters to reflect on who they’ve become and how they’ve affected each other’s lives.

All of the scientists at the Collar Quackhouse are like extreme versions of Brennan before she knew Booth. They are cold and unemotional, basing all of their decisions — including murder — on rationalizations. They are “creepy.” This of course leads Brennan to think that Booth finds her creepy, as well. At the end of the episode when Booth confesses to Brennan that he doesn’t want them hanging out with smart people anymore because she’s going to find out how stupid he is, it’s a really nice moment seeing inside Booth’s insecurities. It’s even nicer to see how Brennan makes him feel better. Which brings me to:

The Booth/Brennan Sex Watch ’09

This is probably the most important part of this recap. If you haven’t read any spoilers for what’s coming up in the season, you might want to skip this part. These two are hitting the sheets, and they’re doing it soon.

• When Hodgins sets off the cannon in the lab, Booth throws Bones up against the wall to protect her from the explosion and it is HOT.
• Brennan calls Booth a prude and this initiates one of those glorious conversations about sex they like to have, in which Booth acts like a woman. This time they talk about the marks that people leave on each other, but not the fingernail kind, just metaphorical.
• Booth is very protective in pointing out that Dr. Collar is going to hit on Brennan.
• Booth: “You’re the only smart person I like.”
• Brennan making Booth feel better by listing off all of her friends’ intelligence points is really kind of sweet of her, and she tells him exactly what he needs to hear.

Some quick, final thoughts:

• Hodgins’s brand new “Angie Forever” tattoo is the best thing I’ve seen on TV all week.
• The victim, Diane, was a physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider Project, and, like one of tonight’s suspect, I too will probably sleep better knowing that she is dead. That thing scares the bejeesus out of me.
• “Don’t look at each other like that! I bet neither one of you knows how to make your own beer.”
  
• I almost died of laughter when partially deaf Booth and Brennan kept yelling at each other after Collar saves them from the Blue Vibrating Room of Death.
• Angela’s father scares me a lot.
• “You know what creeps me out? The way that English people say ‘lovah.’”
• I love when Cam yells at the Squints like they’re her children. It feels so maternal, and is funny. This show ain’t rocket science. It’s all about the simple pleasures.
• “Hello? Dr. Earthquake?”
• I have probably typed about six sentences in this recap that are inexplicable in any other context.

*I think that I am allowed to call myself famous if I want.
**Okay, so apparently EW has a Bones recapper, and some other people on occasion also, but a) they don’t do good enough for me, and b) honestly, I think I just wanted an excuse*** to recap another show. I miss BSG :(
***Oh, and I’m a melodramatic attention whore.