'Bones': It takes two...

This week's episode of Bones was stuffed full of more information than your Thanksgiving turkey. No. Really.

Spoilers and seriously, a whole lot of information...

The Intro: Camille arrives at the scene instead of Bones because they found an actual body. There are bite marks on the face and other places, the chest has a stab wound and the abdomen has been cut open. And, his kneecaps are missing. She also finds some type of gem stone in the wound. Back at the lab, Bones and Zack examine the body as Hodgins enters and announces the gem as jade. Camille gives him a vile of "grit" found in the wounds as Zack notices the kneecaps aren't just missing, they've been removed. Brennan says he's right and he declares himself "King of the Lab." Afterward, Brennan gets home and puts down her mail. Before she can go through it, there's a knock on the door - it's Amy Hollister, her brother's girlfriend. Russ is missing and Amy is freaked out because the younger of her two girls has cystic fibrosis and is getting worse. She keeps asking for Russ but Bones doesn't know where he is.  As Bones gives Amy the name for a great specialist, she notices a package in the mail has begun to bleed. She quickly sends Amy away with the address and carefully opens the package. It's two parchments with symbol on the top sheet...and the victim's missing knees sandwiched between.

The Investigation: So, clearly, Gormogon has returned. A lot happened so, bear with me.
1. The victim ended up being Father Douglas Cooper who was stabbed with a knife exactly like the one in the vault. While revisiting its contents...

2. Angela says the tapestry in the vault is off somehow. She identifies Barabbas, a symbol to the Gormogon of all things "backwards, upside down or inside out" - meaning whatever it's on should be reinterpreted in one of those fashions. This leads to assigning certain symbols to a map of Washington, DC and finding that it points to a few key locations: the bank where they found the vault; the place where they found Father Cooper's body; the overpass where the skull was thrown in the first episode; a mansion that's now an "old folks home"; and a mausoleum in a cemetery. Hodgins and Booth go to check it out. They bust it open to find...

3. Another skeleton like the silver one, except this one's entirely made of bone (which we later find out is comprised of at least 30 victims). Upon examination, Zack discovers one of the bones is over 50-years-old and that there's a different set of teeth marks on them. The guy who completed this skeleton is at least 70. Hodgins then enters and announces his discovery - the dirt and jade found on the victim are both only found in Turkey at the site where the Garden of Eden was. He also found a jar of dirt from the vault, also from the region. Angela also made a discover. She found the symbol mailed to Brennan on a tapestry that had essentially tarot card representations on them: the architect, the martyr, the orator, the musician, the bishop, the corrupter...Booth stops her. Gormogon's victim are being killed in order of this images. Enter Dr. Sweets whom Booth pulled in to help. He says the corrupter represents a heretic, a pretender to the throne. He also says that they're looking for a duo - each master must complete a skeleton, then train an apprentice and retire. Sweets further states that the master would have access to at-risk children and that it must be killing the current Gormogon that they have his "statue." They may be able to use that against him.

4. Taking all this in consideration, Booth gets a phone call saying Father Cooper and the violinist from the first episode were both on a trip to the Garden of Eden in Turkey arranged by a lobbyist, Mr. Porter who also happens to be a member of the Knights of Columbus and a Widow's Son. Booth and Brennan try to warn him but, um...he doesn't believe them. Which he'll later regret.

5. Back at the vault at the Smithsonian, Zack notices a bunch of mirrors of various sizes all over the places. While everyone else thought they were placed randomly, Zack saw a pattern so he set up an infrared laser and aimed it at the first mirror at the front of the vault. He shows Booth and Brennan where it ends - the eye of a mask that happens to have a camera in it. Gormogon's been watching them this entire time. They decide to set a trap. Brennan puts the kneecaps on it (much to her dismay) and she and Booth discuss their plan to move it so they can take an MRI of it, though Bones is doing a terrible acting job. They set off and follow the truck that has the skeleton in a cab with both of them sitting up front. Suddenly...

6. A dude on a motorcycle zooms past them and drops a backpack in the street. Booth comes to a screeching halt and backs away quickly...but not quick enough. BOOM! And the car flips over and back onto its tires. Booth and Brennan are banged up but they're both okay. Except for the tooth partially lodged in Bones' arm. Gormogon wasn't trying to get the skeleton back, he was trying to kill them. He escaped though and Booth realizes he's gone off to kill Porter the Lobbyist. Booth gets there in the knick of time to find Porter alive and tied in the position of the skeleton. Gormogon comes back into the house, sees Booth and takes of running. Booth gives chase and would've caught him and/or shot him except for the whole "use a kid as a human shield" thing. Not only was the kid a human shield, Gormogon (motorcycle helmet still on, mind you) dives into a pool with him and holds him down, forcing Booth to save the child while he escapes.

7. In the lab, Sweets and Hodgins have a conversation. Through this, it dawns on Sweets that the guy who tried to blow up Bones and Brennan isn't the Master, he's the new apprentice. Meanwhile, Zack discovered that, not only did all the teeth in the bomb belong to the Elder Gormogon, there were purposely pulled out by pliers. Zack also found a number etched on one of the bones. Angela says it's definitely a signature - this skeleton was Elder Gormogon's finished artistic "masterpiece" - though Zack doesn't agree. Camille suggests that since they found all this stuff in a vault, why not look in that number's safety deposit box. Well, because they're rigged to blow...but Zack found a way around that. They successfully open the box and find a key-card to an office in a Social Services office. Interviewing the woman who now has that space, she tells them those key-cards haven't been used since the 70's and that the office used to belong to Arthur Graves, a "legend" because of all the kids he's helped. And guess where he is now?

8. At the mansion that's now converted into an old folks home, Booth and Bones talk to an orderly who says Arthur been there for the past 5 years. He's got Alzheimer's Disease and isn't always lucid, meaning they can't really question him. Booth tells Graves that they have a warrant to get his teeth imprint and when Bones gently approaches and tells him to bite down on the imprint tray, the toothless old coot hisses at her. When Booth asks the orderly what happened to his teeth, he says they were gone when Graves got there. He also informs them that he used to get visitations from a man on a motorcycle. They're going to go through his case files to compile a list of kids he could've recruited.

9. Oh, and at the end, Porter the Lobbyist comes home and gets attacked by a knife-brandishing Apprentice Gormogon when he goes to hang up his coat in the closet. And that's why when someone warns you that a face-eating killer is after you, you listen.

The Booth/Brennan Connection: They're special sub-plot had a lot to do with her brother Russ. Booth arrests him when he shows up at FBI headquarters to see his little girl, mistakenly thinking he wouldn't be thanks to Pops. Booth does two things to make up for this. First, he gives Russ 15-minutes to visit the girl in the hospital before taking him in which Bones thanks him for by kissing him on the cheek. Secondly, at Russ' informal parole hearing, Booth gets Dr. Sweets and Archbishop Wallace (Father Cooper's boss) to give good recommendations to the judge who rules in favor of giving Russ 30 days in the County Correctional Facility, 18 more months of parole, and a monitoring device on his ankle. I found the majority of this secondary plot line to be incredibly tedious, as I find everything involving Papa Brennan. But it did give us a few good moments like Booth's reaction after Brennan kissed him and his repeated denial of helping Russ at the end. The more interesting pieces of information about their relationship weren't featured too much. First, there was Camille mentioning Bones looked "a little hurt" at the beginning when she learned Camille was called to see the body. Then, there was Bones' repeated outbursts of irritation when she learned Booth had consulted Sweets. It's like she's being territorial.

Other Highlights & Tidbits:

• I said it before and I'll say it again - I heart Dr. Sweets.
• That last scene of Angela looking at some book and being startled by Hodgins when he puts his hand on her shoulder looked somewhat...foreboding to me. I didn't appreciate that. They better not do anything bad to either of them.
• Can we have the Papa Brennan stuff and the Gormogon stuff in separate episodes please? It's entirely too much for me to take. I'm totally into the case and could give a rat's nest about the family crap. Shifting between such divergent interest levels is tiring.
• Kudos for the scary end scene. I knew the attack was coming and it still freaked me out.
• I'm really glad they're making progress on the Gormogon case. If done correctly, having a big season long case could be really enjoyable but they have to watch the pacing. So far, we're going 0 to 60 and back down again a little too fast.

Quotes of the Night:

• "These are designer pants and my bodies are always so much...gushier than Dr. Brennan's." - Camille to Booth when he says Booth always kneels near the bodies
• "Monsignor. Or Steve." - Archbishop Wallace on how to address him after being told by Booth and Bones about Father Cooper
• "It's like the Sith Lords. They're always only two of them." - Dr. Sweets making an analogy about the Gormogon duo
• "A lobbyist? A total pretender to the throne. This is how we roll, right guys?" - Sweets, jazzed after Booth gets a call identifying the next target
• "I solved that one. In my head. While having my cup of soup." - Zack on how to open the safe deposit boxes rigged to blow
• "If I had a gavel I'd bang it. How about the last one out just slams the door." The judge at the end of Russ' parole hearing

Man, that was a lot crammed into one episode. Was it too much? Did I miss anything? What do you think about the way the Gormogon case is progressing?

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