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'Bones' gets some Office Space
Apparently the Bones writing staff just had a movie night where they rented the great workplace comedy Office Space, because this week's episode was all about workplace shenanigans. There were disgruntled employees, stoner dudes, a boss who totally wished he were Gary Cole, and the sort of office manager who would absolutely say something like "Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays." Heck, there was even an integral role for a stapler!
Mmm, yeah, this spoiler is going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday. M'Kay? That'd be great.
The corpse of the week is discovered when an elevator at an anonymous office building gets stuck, and then a decaying leg, still wearing a sensible pump, falls from the ceiling. As if being stuck in an elevator with a bunch of odious and stereotypical coworkers wasn't bad enough...
The body most likely belongs to Patty, the office manager, who decorated her desk with countless ceramic frogs and stuck her nose into everyone's business. The show doesn't specify which of these traits is more likely to incite murder, but I'm guessing it was the dictatorial busybodiness. She has dirt on everyone in the office:
Ted, the office stoner, who occasionally toked up in the elevator room from which Patty's body might have been dumped. Patty docked his pay for using too many envelopes.
Dave, the IT guy, who was fired after he wrote her a vicious, threatening e-mail. But she totally deserved it, Dave says -- she always parked across the line, so I scraped my car up getting into my parking space!
Gary Flannery, the boss with the Lumbergh hair. Patty did an audit and realized Gary was ordering too many office supplies and selling the excess online. She blackmailed him into giving her his credit card, which she used for things like massages and lingerie.
Chip, the... you know what, I don't know what his position was. He's East Asian, and he claims he had a sexual relationship with Patty. He tried to break it off, and Patty threatened to accuse him of sexual harassment if he DIDN'T keep sleeping with her.
The team reconstructs the skeleton and squeegees all the flesh from the elevator shaft (which: Ew) and discovers some vital information. Patty had semen on her skirt, and there was semen on the copy room floor. There was some unidentified blue substance on Patty's body in a shoe print, but it looked like she was kicked post-mortem. A stain on the inside of her skull indicated she may have died from a burst aneurysm. Finally, a couple of tiny puncture wounds 7 mm apart are found near the site of the aneurysm. Patty was killed by a staple.
The semen on Patty's skirt and on the floor belonged to Chip, and he confesses. But there's no way he could have opened the elevator doors all by himself to dispose of the body. Brennan finds a broken fingernail painted a rather garish shade of blue, which implicates... the hot receptionist! She and Chip were dating (which was against company policy) and Patty caught them at a little after-hours nookie. She was going to report them and have them fired. The receptionist got pissed and flung the stapler, which made Patty's aneurysm burst. It was an accident... and one hell of a mess.
Booth and Brennan
Booth is having his own Office Space moment: A guy in his office just dies, which means the really spiffy ergonomic chair is up for grabs. He tires to convince Brennan, then Sweets, to write him a doctor's note saying he neeeeeeds this chair. They refuse. Cam eventually agrees, but she pours it on too thick.
Brennan spends much of the episode anthropologizing corporate cubical culture, and calling Booth a drone. (She, of course, is the queen bee of her particular hive). It gets a little old, but in the end, Brennan actually comes through for Booth -- she calls HR and acts as a character witness for Booth, saying he deserves the chair for being so darn awesome. "I mentioned your dedication and courage and sensitivity... " It's actually rather sweet.
The Lab Rats
Speaking of which... Sweets is still trying to analyze the pair, with variable results. Angela ambushes him to ask for help in dealing with Hodgins, and when Sweets brings up repressed trauma from her childhood and such. Angela figures out she'd rather just admit that what she had with Hodgins was awesome, but it didn't work, and just move on. That, presumably, removes all the awkwardness from the lab. We'll see...
Then there's this week's NotZack, who I shall call EmoGothZack. He proves that there are worse things than having a labmate who may or may not have killed someone when he was the apprentice to a crazed cannibalistic secret-society-type murdering fiend. EmoGothZack is prone to contemplating the utter pointlessness of life and going on at great, flowery length about how we're all gonna die and isn't everything meaningless. Representative quote, when Cam asks him if he's discovered the cause of death: "Life, man. Life is always the cause of death." Next!
Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends
- After five years of freelancing, I went back to a regular office job -- and Bones hits me with this. Thanks a lot, Bones.
- Am I imagining things, or was Booth extra-adorable this week? I loved his face and sigh of pleasure when he sank into his lumbar-supportive chair.
- Booth also let slip that he knows his way around a foofy umbrella drink, when he identified the Blue Hawaiian as the one that gets served in the ceramic monkey head glasses. That look of "Doh! They caught me!" was priceless.
- I sympathize with the quest for the ultimate office chair. I'd totally be getting a doctor's note to get that chair!
- Booth, on corporate realities: "When you work for The Man, he buys all the office furniture."
- Cam was getting the love this week. First, nerdy guy takes her picture, proclaiming her "the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in the elevator." Then, when she ahems at EmoGothZack calling Angela "the hot chick," he excuses himself by saying "Sorry, the other hot chick." Not quite what she meant, but thanks, EmoGothZack!
- EmoGothZack actually inspired several good Cam quotes. My favorites: "Buck up, Mr. Fisher. You give me cause of death, I give you a Kierkegaard t-shirt."
- One quibble -- when Cam determines the semen came from an "Asian male," Brennan and Booth say there's only one Asian male in the office. Not true. Last I checked, the Indian sub-continent was part of Asia.
- One question – how did the semen get on Patty’s skirt? Or do I really, really not want to know?
No, Sarah, you don't want to know.
JW | Oct 1, 2008 8:52:31 PM | #In my haste to be first, I forgot I was supposed to mention a few things:
1. The season premiere reaired on TNT just two nights ago, and Angela and Hodgins's breakup reminded me about the week that episode first aired. That weekend I had to say goodbye to this woman I had a crush on because we both know we'd never be any more than acquaintances. Then last Friday, Spike showed Peyton's Dear John letter to Mac on "CSI: NY". Get out of my head, TV!
2. This one was a funny episode all the way, from most of Cam's lines to Brennan's hive analogy to the Squint of the Week.
3. Aren't "Office Space" and "Bones" from the same studio? That may explain the inspiration.
4. My last job--which ended more than five years ago--was an office job. The people I worked with were kinda-sorta as quirky, but they certainly wouldn't resort to murder. Besides, we didn't have an elevator to chuck the body down anyway.
5. Never let an ex-girlfriend write notes on your behalf.
6. I could REALLY go for some french fries right now.
first? seriously? Ya know, this ain't AICN.
The new lab guy might actually make it to a second episode. At least I think I glimpled him in the preview for next week's ep.
I've seen the guy in other stuff, but I can't for the life of me place him.
Loved the fact that the coveted chair turned out to be a bitter disappointment.
Alright, this episode was pretty great. I'm not going to lie, I've been nervous about the show getting too over-the-top, but this week's hit the exact right note. I loved Booth telling Hodgins to keep it to himself at the diner (classic!), and Cam and the intern were hilarious too. Is it just me, or was that intern more morbid than really depressed? I enjoyed it though. I was happy that Brennan was in the lab a bit more and Booth was a little more serious about the case this week. Yeesh, I love Bones! And I second the desire for some fries right about now...
Sarah | Oct 1, 2008 10:43:45 PM | #The question of how the stains got on the victim's dress can be answered like this:
1) After she was hit in the head with the stapler, she dropped onto the ground face-down (this explains the semen on the front of her skirt as well as the toner on the front of her skirt).
2) They then rolled her over onto her back to determine if she really was dead (this explains toner on the back of her clothes).
3) The man, seeing that she is dead decides to give her body a good stomping (this explains the Blue Hawaiian stain on the front of her shirt, since the man had been at a bar that served that drink earlier in the night).
After that, they dragged her body and dumped her down the elevator shaft.
Does that explain everything?
Yossarian | Oct 2, 2008 7:28:15 AM | #Yossarian: you super-sluth, you! tee he he
vicious circle | Oct 2, 2008 8:01:18 AM | #EmoGothZack was in the movie Dodgeball.
Heather | Oct 2, 2008 9:34:06 AM | #He's been in a number of shows, usually as a creepy shopkeeper or head of some bizarre cult or some such. I'm pretty sure he was on The X-Files once, but don't remember which one.
I agree with those who said this episode was one of the best of the season so far. With the exception of the needlessly gross elevator crime scene (for the first hour of prime time, things have gotten even too graphic for me, and I like Italian horror movies), I liked everything about it. The office chair subplot was funny to me because of an auction I went to, where I bid on a chair that looked just awesome, only to find out that it tilted to the side most of the time. Only spent $25 on it, but still.
Having had a total bitch for a boss, I can understand how the entire office might want to kill her (the rest of my female bosses have been quite cool, thankfully). Too bad it couldn't have been a Murder On the Orient Express type of ending, where everybody in the office did her in, but eh...
Revenant | Oct 2, 2008 12:04:41 PM | #Yeah, when the word spatula is uttered at a crime scene it's time to stare at the ceiling.
Italian horror? Hmm. Might have to pop in some giallo tonight. eek. Black-gloved killers in movies with animals in the title scare me.
That's right, I said eek.
oneblood | Oct 2, 2008 3:53:46 PM | #"eek" is cool. Now if you'd gone "oogledy-boogledy-bop," then I'd have to consider turning you in. :P
Revenant | Oct 2, 2008 6:07:39 PM | #God, I love the smell of deja vu in the morning! Well, night too.
Where's my surfboard?
I just have to comment on what I took as a slick subtle joke especially suited for a program like "Bones". When Dave, the I.T. guy was giving his alibi, he referred to a game player with the name "Donnerparty819" which I translated to "Donner Party ate 19", a referrence to the Donner Party wagon train which resorted to cannibalism to survive being trapped by a blizzard.
Ron Robinson | Oct 3, 2008 5:25:27 AM | #
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