'Bones' goes to the dogs

I'm a little pissed at Bones at the moment. Yeah, it was a good episode -- the show I remember, in fact --  but it had a few too many stupid Booth jokes, there was an unnecessary and convoluted vocabulary bit, the guest star was kind of random, and it got rid of a NotZach that I actually liked. But mostly I'm pissed because I'm still crying over that last scene. Wah!

This spoiler is thinking bad thoughts about Michael Vick right now.

Booth's son finds a half-decomposed finger in a bird's nest, which causes some dismay. Not for Parker -- he thinks it's kind of cool -- but for Booth, who is convinced Parker will get around to being traumatized. While he's waiting for Parker to turn into Ted Bundy, he asks Brennan and Co. to help look for the body the finger belongs to. Conveniently, the body is found on National Park grounds, so it's an FBI case.

The body belongs to Dr. Seth Elliot, a divorced veterinarian with a bad gambling habit. He also recently tackled a guy who tried to steal a supply of ketamine from the veterinary medical supply, and was hailed as a hero. That's a start...

Casts of the fatal wound show that Eliot was killed by a dog with sharpened teeth. The drug dealer has a dog, and Schazi's teeth are filed, but they aren't the right shape. A  prescription bottle in the car points the team to Donald Timmons, an old friend of Elliot's for high school. Timmons' son, Robbie, occasionally worked at the vet's office. Timmons says his son is heading for med school -- he's even got a third-year med student for a tutor. That tutor, Andrew, verifies Robbie's story, but he's there only long enough to show off his suturing technique and to suggest that Elliot was a drug addict.

Then the case takes another turn: The team finds dog-fighting photos on Elliot's PDA, time-stamped the day of his death. They're not pleasant. But one of the photos shows a dog toy Brennan recognizes -- it belongs to Gladys, Timmons' very well trained pit bull. That's not enough for a warrant -- there's a couple million dog toys like that floating around -- but particulates found in the car indicate that a substance used to clean astroturf was there, and the dog-fighting ring is covered with astroturf. Since that substance was delivered to the Timmons farm, they've got their warrant.

They show up at the farm with an expert -- Cesar Milan, TV's Dog Whisperer. Apparently he's really good, because he's able to calm a room full of half-starved, brutalized dogs with his voice (Although if he could tame Cartman on South Park, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.) Cesar gets to show off his dog whispering skills and he and Brennan finally find the weapon -- a dog named Ripley. Ripley was brought to Eliot's vet clinic to be put down, because the owners didn't realize the itty bitty puppy they got would turn into a huge dog. Grrr. Because Ripley was perfectly healthy, Karen says Eliot saved Ripley and found him a good home. Unfortunately, that home turned out to be not so good.

Timmons claims he rents out the barn to an anonymous company that just pays cash. Plus, he was at a seminar in Chicago when the murder occurred. Examining the pictures, Brennan realizes it wasn't Eliot patching up the fighting dogs -- it was Andrew, the med student. Eliot was trying to expose the right. Brennan and Booth bring Ripley to the barn, and a little Dog Whispering shows that Andrew was Ripley's master. Robbie confesses that he witnessed the attack, and that Andrew is guilty. Now they need to track down the rest of the dog-fighting ring. That, apparently, will happen off-screen. 

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• I tried to resist the easy headline. I failed. I'm so ashamed...
• This episode really felt like a return to form -- the characters were acting recognizable, and there were consequences of what happened last season. We FINALLY got to hear someone talk about how freaked out they are about Zach, and Hodgins and Angela were appropriately awkward around each other.
• But I'm not letting the writers of the hook for the "dumb Booth" moments. Come on -- he seriously never heard of "playing possum?" He couldn't figure out that a Canid was a kind of dog? Give him some credit.
• But then we got the Booth parenting scenes, and all was right with the world. Boy, he's great with that kid. I buy Booth as a father -- trying his best, freaking out over some things, stumbling, but ultimately doing his best.
• And how about his advice to Parker -- walk away when it's for himself, and stay and fight when it's for someone else. That's so perfectly Booth.
• I think we can all agree that dog fighting = bad. Still, the storyline was a punch in the gut.
• I'm slightly confused -- did Timmons really not know about the dig fighting on his property? Or was he fine with being caught for dog fighting as long as his son wasn't caught for murder?
• Brennan also hit me this episode as she bonded with Ripley, and then gave his eulogy over his grave. Oof, She was so excited to adopt Ripley, and so angry when she realized what happened. Booth was right -- what she said was "as much as any good dog could hope for."
• Even her objections to Booth about eulogizing Ripley made sense -- "Ripley's dead. Plus, he's a dog, with limited vocabulary skills."
• And what do you think of Brennan telling Booth Ripley reminds her of him? "He's got warm and reassuring brown eyes, and he's capable of great violence."
• The Cesar Milan guest spot still strikes me as kind of pasted on. Does Fox produce his show or something?
• I'm torn on the Sweets role this week. His interaction with Booth and Parker was perfect (and you just know Sweets has been someone's monkey boy in the past), but his bit with Hodgins was a bit weird. First he's talking like Hodgins is a suicide risk, then he's saying he's fine with Hodgins "coping mechanism of hate." Weird.
• The enervating bit bugged me. First, it's such an obscure word, and then, there's no way karen would have used it in the context she did. She wasn't saying there's nothing nervous-making about a divorced man and single woman sleeping together, she was saying there's not wrong o nothing unusual about it. It was too much of a stretch.
• OK, I liked Starret, the NotZack of the week. First of all, he was played by Michael Badalucco, who I just like, and second, he seemed like a good guy. Yes, he had a ridiculous number of past professions (car salesman, park supervisor, veterinary assistant...), but it worked for me. Besides, he stood up to Hodgins when Hodgins was being an ass, and I like that.
• Brennan tried to reassure Booth that Parker finding a finger wasn't going to scar him for life -- after all, she found a dead neighbor when she was a little kid, and nothing's wrong with her! Of course, there was that stretch of time when she staged her own death -- pretending to drown in the bathtub, faking electrical shock, staging a hanging -- but that's normal right? Right?

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