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'Bones' and the perils of basketball
Bones ramped up the ick factor this week: We had a nasty crushed corpse (that still had a face); a huge rat; baby rats; hocked loogies; sexually transmitted disease; and a workplace sex tape. T!M!I!
Go spoilers!
Our corpse of the week is found mangled behind the bleachers at a college gym. It's been there over the long weekend, which has given the rats time to move in -- one of them decided Dead Guy's spleen would make a lovely nursery for the little ratlets. The rat nursery used to be R.J. Manning, star power forward for Atlantic State University. Other relevant facts that come out: There's blue lipstick in a sensitive place (at least R.J. was having fun before he died), there's evidence of steroid use, and it looks like R.J. had gonorrhea. Plus, the team finds saliva near where the lipstick was, and spittle on R.J.'s head. Did someone lure him with sex and then spit on him before killing him?
Booth enlists the help of Cutler, chief of campus police. Booth is thrilled – Cutler is a former college basketball star himself. A knee injury ended his sports career, but Booth remembers the glory days. Brennan is befuddled by the resultant jock bonding.
First suspect: Colby, the guy taking R.J.'s position. Colby denies it -- I'm a team player! Besides, I know that every time I step out on court, folks are going to say "He's good, but he's no R.J." Why would he want that?
They next confront the coach: You got a $1 million bonus for keeping your team clean, and R.J. would have screwed that up for you. You killed him to keep it quiet! Hell no, says the coach – I took steroids in college, and now I’ve got a brain tumor. I’ve got a couple of years to live, tops. Any player on 'roids is off the team, and you can test them all.
Testing reveals that one of R.J.'s teammates is taking steroids, and one has the same strain of gonorrhea that R.J. did. 'Roids boy reveals that Mr. Francis, an alum who volunteers as the lawyer, financial advisor and all-around fixer for the team, supplied the drugs. Booth is happy to arrest Francis -- he remembers leeches like that from his own college sports days. Cutler and Booth double team the guy, and Francis finally admits he'd signed R.J. an illegal contract so he'd have a cut of his post-college earnings. Why would he kill his money ticket?
OK, how about the cheerleader girlfriend? After all, the clap didn't come from her, meaning R.J. was screwing around. The entire cheerleading squad wears blue lipstick. The girlfriend is unconcerned: R.J. could sleep with whoever he wanted as long as he came home to me and took me with him when he got a huge NBA salary. With him dead, how am I supposed to get my mansion? Oh, the humanity!
The downstairs saliva belongs to one Celeste Cutler -- a cheerleader, girlfriend of R.J.'s replacement, and Chief Cutler's daughter. The upstairs saliva? That came from Cutler himself. Celeste was fooling around with R.J., and Cutler caught them. When he saw that R.J. was perfectly wiling to give his sweet little girl the clap just to scratch an itch, he snapped and battered R.J. to death with a dumbbell, then crushed him behind the bleachers to make it look like an accident.
Booth is devastated -- he and Cutler were bonding! Cutler is repentant and ashamed, and wants to kill himself. Booth tries to remind Cutler of his past sports glory, but that seems to be the wrong tack to take -- Cutler says that guy died a long time ago. Fortunately, Brennan is there to thrust her hand in front of the pistol’s hammer, preventing Cutler’s gun from firing. Yeeouch! I've been rubbing the webbing between my thumb and forefinger ever since.
Booth and Brennan:
Brennan raises Booth's hackles by giving him her opinion on sports. As Booth has just spent quite a lot of time reminiscing about his college-sports heyday and his love of watching the game, that may not have been the most politic thing to say. Here's how it goes:
Brennan: The truth is, athletes are basically emotionally arrested in boyhood, acting out childish games as though they have adult importance. The only thing more juvenile are grown adults who watch sports.
Booth: Why you gotta says stuff like that? I'm a jock, so when you say those things that you say, what are you saying about me?
Brennan: Nothing, you grew out of it.
Booth: No I didn't. My shoulder crapped out on me. Otherwise, I would have gone all the way with it. And another thing -- I fought in a war, so sports as a childish substitute? I can live with that!
Fortunately, Brennan manages to redeem herself in the end, both by saving Cutler and by telling Booth what she thought he knew -- Nothing I said applied to you. "You don't play at being a warrior, you are a warrior. You're definitely a fully developed man."
The other great Booth/Brennan moment: Booth reminisces about his first time under the bleachers with an 8th-grade hottie. When Cutler is talking about how he was just as bad as R.J. was when he was a star, Booth tries to talk him down -- we all were! Later, Brennan calls him on that -- no one will ever believe you used women like that, because you still remember the name of that first girl.
Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends:
- I know Brennan lives a life of the mind, but did she really have no idea that college sports were a big deal? Come on: Are you telling me she'd never been sucked into a March Madness bracket?
- It kind of amazes me that Booth misread Cutler so well when he was trying to use Cutler's past basketball glories to keep him from committing suicide. I guess it just emphasizes how Booth very much did move on a create a life after college sports stardom, where Cutler never did.
- I was constantly tickled by Brennan's reactions to the various college students. This is a terrible university! No, this is college, Brennan. College kids do stupid things.
- Much of the time at the Jeffersonian was spent on Wacky Squint Hijinks, with Cam as the frequent fall guy. Zack and Hodgins test what would happen to a skull if it were crushed behind bleachers by sticking a human skull in a raw turkey and filling the skull cavity with a “gelatinous matrix” -- which splatters all over everyone when the test is performed. The good news: The gelatinous matrix was ambrosia salad.
- Wacky Squint Hijinks 2: Hodgins decides to puree some maggots to see what chemicals were in R.J.'s system. He uses Cam's blender from the lunchroom. Wah-wah.
- Wacky Squint Hijinks 3: Cam asks Angela to deliver a message to Hodgins, and Angela takes offense -- our personal relationship shouldn’t factor into how we work. Funny you should mention that, says Cam, and shows an unintended sex tape Angela and Hodgins starred in from the supply closet. They didn't realize new security cameras had been installed. Angela is briefly chastened, but later she's kicking back, watching the highlights and praising her own technique. That's what they chose to replace the now outdated Hodgins proposal scenes?
- Booth with a milkshake mustache is a thing of beauty.
I totally hated the Bones character tonight! She was very judgemental and snobby, oh how it must gave her an ego boost being so Mary Sue all the time. I felt bad for Booth, with the way she was so disrespectful of him and his feelings. Pity Booth couldn't get another love interest. The episode was ok but just a rehash of the"....Time capsule" epi and this Season 2 epi felt very forced into Season 3.
| Apr 21, 2008 10:19:59 PM | #ITA what was with Bones and bashing sports and people playing sports? Didn't she have a boyfriend (vile idiot) last year who played baskeball, don't remember her demeaning him about it. And poor Booth, I wanted to hug him after she was such a witch to him and she still didn't get totally why he was so upset. Shame on you Bones. On the whole it was an average epi but a little out of balance!
| Apr 22, 2008 3:10:27 AM | #I found the Cam-Angela scenes to be a bit strange. I know they had to fill in the proposal scenes and fix some other time gaps, but it seemed to be a strange storyline.
Sometimes I wonder how Bones can be so out of touch with pop culture, and yet have the imagination to be able to write books. I've never read any of the actual Temperance Brennan books, and but I would think that to be a successful writer, she would need to have some ability to ground her characters in every day culture.
LiasMom | Apr 22, 2008 4:59:05 AM | #LiasMom,
The books are nothing like the tv show.
amy | Apr 22, 2008 5:55:40 AM | #This is one of the best shows on TV. I think mainly because David and Emily are both producers on the show and if you read interviews with them, they are pretty hardcore about the work put into charachter development and what not. This wasn't the best episode, and it was odd being wedged in there. It did give me the feeling like it was in the wrong season for obvious reasons. I thought the sex tape thing was great, I hope it gets referred to in future episodes, even possibly discovered by Bones or Zach. No king of the lab this week, kind of disappointing. Bones basic ingnorance of sports and the sub-culture of athletes has always been there. While if you've never seen the show before it might be hard to fathom, it's actually pretty true to form for her charachter. And that is her charachter, she's a book worm, only interested in science and has absolutely no interest in the world outside her own for the most part.
realgenius | Apr 22, 2008 6:24:53 AM | #Trust me, there are people not that interested in March madness, or watching sports.
My main reaction is 'Do those fill in the blanks have to take up all the parking spots?'
Susan | Apr 22, 2008 7:26:57 AM | #Some good B&B tension and moments, but a so so ep. The Cam and Angela stuff was kinda off. Though loved Angela watching her own tape.
kirrra | Apr 22, 2008 7:45:05 AM | #I enjoyed last nights episode, including Bones being out of touch, and insulting college sports. There's nothing wrong with her having a different opinion, and I'd even argue that the show works best when she and Booth disagree. People who got upset over her insulting college athletics (it is just a game people, and it's just a tv show.) really need to get over themselves.
Brian | Apr 22, 2008 8:31:46 AM | #Susan - Hey, you're talking to someone who occasionally has to ask what sport a team plays. But even I have filled out a bracket.
I get that Brennan is mostly oblivious to pop culture, but it was too extreme for me in this episode. Brennan saying "This is a terrible university!" when various students acted like idiots made sense; Brennan not knowing that college sports existed was just silly.
I'm torn on how socially tone-deaf she was with Booth. She is the sort of person who just goes ahead with what she sees as the truth -- the anthropological explanation, the cultural history take -- without considering how it sounds to civilians. Remember the stir she caused at the club when she yelled about how "tribal" the music was, causing offense among the mostly African-American clubgoers, in that one ep with the meth and the body in the wall? But she HAS become more sensitive to Booth's feelings and reactions over time. Even though this is a pre-Sweets episode, it seems like a bit of a throwback to the very beginning of the series have Brennan so clueless about Booth's feelings.
i agree with some of the sentiment here. for someone who is so smart, she's becoming too stupid in some of the most basic obvious things. does she not live in america? does she not watch the news or read the paper? for her to be surprised at how big sports is in this country is quite frankly unbelievable. not only that... she's really judgmental and ignorant. many times have we heard her use the word "anthopologically..." and she still doesn't understand human behaviour and that people are inherently different from others and they have their own interests. it can be funny sometimes but often they push it into absurdity that it actually makes her character a bit unlikeable.
jon | Apr 22, 2008 9:00:50 AM | #Exactly, I have been thinking that for a while. The whole clueless thing she has going on is getting old. Her parents left her when she was 15, not 5, so she had plenty of years to be a kid and gain pop knowledge before that happened! And I really have had my fill of her superior attitudd, her view is gospel and to hell with everyone else! Makes me wonder what Booth actually sees in her, he gives all the time to her but she rarely gives back to him!
| Apr 22, 2008 10:35:55 AM | #I thought the sex tape storyline was lame when we could have had a real "King of the Lab" competition going on. I love Hodgela, but this storyline switch to make this episode current to Season 3 (after it was pulled from Season 2) fell very flat.
But I loved Bones taking Booth down repeatedly. That's a little mean, and I love both of them, but sometimes the machismo needs to be put in check.
Jamie | Apr 22, 2008 10:38:46 AM | #I think this episode would've worked better in the overall story arc if it had aired when it was originally supposed to in season two. The gap fillers with Cam and Angela felt forced.
I thought the whole Bones being unaware of sports thing was completely true to her character. She lives almost completely in her head and the people around her know that. I can't picture anyone trying to invite her to participate in a bracket.
I loved that interaction between Bones and Booth at the diner at the end where she tells him, "you're not that guy, you still remember the first girl's name." It shows how well she does know him as a person, even if the exact details sometimes escape her.
I have grown tired of every jock on TV being on steroids. The basketball coach having brain cancer because of steroids was just one of the many false statements last night.
I was upset when this episode was cut last season because FOX somehow correlated the Virginia Tech shootings with a basketball player getting crushed under bleachers.
I was more upset when this episode was not included with last season on DVD.
Now I am even more upset that when it finally airs, the Angela-Hodgins marriage proposal is totally gone. Major plot development whose omission last season made viewers confused......and we still don't get to see it!
I agree that the episode was clunky and poorly edited to include new footage shot to make up for what had to be removed for the sake of continuity. In my opinion, the best thing would have been to just scrap the initial episode and either shoot the thing over with the changes seamlessly incorporated into the new script (which would have allowed for the growth and subtle changes the characters have gone through since this one was supposed to have aired), or just forgotten the whole thing and shown the next episode in this season's stable. I will give the various people involved credit for attempting to keep hair styles, beard lengths and all that the same, even if it meant that Hodgins was not seen at all after the first 15-17 minutes.
As for the crime, which had to have been the grossest thing I've seen since the "girl-run-over-by-a-semi" scene in The Devil's Rejects (trust me, do NOT watch that movie if you are squeamish), I wasn't loving the way the evidence was presented. I don't know if the basketball player was originally supposed to have been shot and that was removed, thus the odd way in which his skull was crushed, but the whole thing just didn't seem as well-done as in other episodes. Definitely not one of the better episodes, forensics-wise.
And as for the original reason for the show being pulled: phooey on the show's higher-ups and Fox for caving in to political correctness. We're all grown-ups out here in the audience, for the most part, and we're perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves, thank you, without some bleeding hearts deciding for me that I don't need to see something because it might make me sadder about the Virginia Tech massacre than I already was. It was a stupid, needless decision, and I hope in the future that network execs will grow a spine and treat their viewers like the adults we are, instead of the ignorant children they apparently perceive us to be. This was an insult, not an act of caring. What they could, and should, have done was show the episode as planned, then at the end of it, have a black screen with a note stating how sorry Fox was about the massacre, and maybe dedicating the show to those that died. Hopefully, such a tragedy will never occur again, so we won't have to worry about how Fox or the other networks will react...or over-react, as the case may be.
Dark Disciple | Apr 22, 2008 12:52:18 PM | #
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