BONES: Family Matters

Episode 7.04: The Male in the Mail

Character Development: Booth and Brennan are talking about potential houses at the diner when Booth’s grandfather, Hank, shows up unexpectedly. Hank reports that Booth’s father has died of liver failure. Booth is stoic, pretending that he doesn’t care. He throws himself into work to avoid facing all the emotional baggage that this news brings up, refusing to talk about it with Brennan or anyone else. Brennan really wants to be able to help him, but doesn’t know how. Angela advises her to figure out what she can give Booth that no one else can.

Booth later has a heart-to-heart with Hank who reminds him that even if he (Booth) had a bad relationship with his father, he was still his son and he is hurting. Hank finds a letter in Booth’s fathers’ possessions at the hospital where he died. The letter says to tell Booth that he loved him and that Booth and Jared deserved a better father than he was. He also gives Booth a wooden box that his father left for him.

Meanwhile, we get reacquainted with Genny Shaw, an over-eager FBI agent who tries way too hard to impress Booth. We last saw Shaw in last season’s riveting “The Hole in the Heart“, when she helped Booth nab Broadsky. Not sure if she will be a recurring character this season or if this was a one-time deal.

The episode ends with a very sweet scene where Brennan gets Booth to talk about his father by reminding him of the good memories of his father that he has shared with her over the years. She encourages him to open the box, which he does. Inside he finds his father’s Purple Heart, a father’s day card Booth made as a kid, and some family photos of him with his dad. As Booth goes through the items, he remembers the good times with his father and finally allows himself to show his emotions as Brennan holds him.

Case of the Week: A dismembered body is found in multiple pieces packed neatly into boxes at the US Postal Service “Dead Letter Department”. The body is identified as Oliver Lawrence, an employee at a local “Ship N Print”. Hodgins and Clark find out that a guillotine was used to dismember the body after playing with a whole bunch of medieval weapons. Turns out that the employees at the Ship N Print, including Oliver, won a 50 million dollar lottery jackpot. All of them have since retired from the shop except for the manager. Booth and Breenan find an industrial paper cutter in the shop that turns out to be the “guillotine”.

Sweets and Booth bring all of the lottery winners together to try to get them to implicate each other. It’s obvious that they are trying to cover for something. The Jeffersonian team zeroes in on the employee whose ID code was used to print the shipping labels for the body parts. Turns out that everyone uses his ID code, so back to the drawing board. Luckily, Angela finds a photocopied butt print and they measure the pelvis size to implicate the only woman lottery winner. She admits to having a relationship with the victim, but says she didn’t kill him. The team next checks out her husband, but he’s not the killer, either.

The cause of death is determined to be exsanguination secondary to laceration of a subclavian artery by the blade on a tape gun. The final important piece of evidence is a small piece of bone from a Buddist necklace that the team finds in amongst the body parts. Turns out that the killer is a Buddist-necklace-wearing (not a lottery winner) employee of Ship N Print who Oliver caught selling drugs and threatened to turn in to the police. They found and Oliver ended up dead.

My Thoughts:

This was a good episode for character development and the case of the week definitely took a backseat to some really nice emotional scenes between Booth and his grandfather and Booth and Brennan. It was nice seeing Brennan and Booth getting along well and communicating with each other like a “normal” couple.

Memorable quotes:

“My bra size has increased by 2 cup sizes” – Brennan  “I hadn’t noticed.” – Clark   “Well, it’s quite obvious! You should be more observant” – Brennan

“Your ass bones…you see, they’re like fingerprints…in your pants” – Booth

“Crime? I thrive off of crime, that’s my job!” – Booth

“I’m a slut, not a killer!” – ex-Ship N Print employee

“I’ve been non-violent for over 25 years. I lost it for 5 minutes. I’d say overall that’s not that bad in the scheme of things” – the killer, explaining how the victim died

Catch BONES on Thursdays 9/8c on FOX.