BONES FINALE Recap: On the Lam

Bones 1.13 The Past in the Present

Christopher Pelant is at a parole hearing to determine whether he should be allowed off of house arrest. Pelant is charming as usual and it seems like he just might get off. However, Booth and Bones are present in the hearing room and they tell the panel that Pelant is a person of interest in two murder investigations. Pelant points out that he can’t leave his house, however, the board opts to deny his parole until they can review the files that Booth and Brennan presented. Right after the board makes this decision, both Booth and Brennan’s cell phones start ringing simultaneously, only instead of their normal ring tones, both phones sound like baying wolves.

Booth and Brennan head out to a wildlife refuge where they meet Cam. A body were found by a couple on an ATV who claim that their GPS led them east instead of west. The body has been scavenged by animals – most likely wolves. The victim has a healed arm fracture and was wearing scrubs when he died. Bones recognizes the unusual fracture – she was the one who set it. The victim is Ethan Sawyer, a friend of hers. Just as she realizes this fact, Booth’s phone starts ringing (i.e. howling).

Turns out Ethan Sawyer had been locked up in a high security ward at a mental institution for paranoid schizophrenia. Brennan and Sawyer knew each other from back in grad school – Sawyer was a mathematical genius. Cam finds evidence that Sawyer was alive when the wolves ate him and Brennan confesses to Booth that she consulted Sawyer about the Pelant case. Booth is worried how it will look that Brennan consulted Sawyer. They decide not to tell Caroline until they have more evidence against Pelant.

Booth and Brennan go to the hospital where Ethan had been institutionalized. An employee shows them a video of Ethan after Brennan’s visit – he’s threatening to kill their baby Christine because he thinks she’s a demon. Booth is horrified but Brennan said that she just shrugged it off because he was locked in a secure facility (wow, that’s taking her cold, analytical nature to a new level). A few days after Brennan’s visit, there was a computer glitch and Sawyer was transferred to a minimal security ward, from which he promptly escaped. Angela reviews the security footage from the facility and sees Brennan walking out of the front door of the facility the night before Sawyer escaped.

Angela realizes the significance of the tape – it looks like Brennan killed Sawyer to protect Christine. Angela offers to provide an alibi for Brennan. Booth hits the roof when he finds out about the tape and Max overhears and tries to get involved. Booth assures him that they have it under control. Later, in their bedroom, Booth assures Brennan that he loves her and doesn’t believe that she killed Sawyer.

Back at the Jeffersonian, Cam and Wendell are at work on the case. They find a hypodermic needle broken off in a vertebrae that Bones apparently missed in her exam. Hours later, Brennan comes back to the lab and spends the night there, examining the bones (cause this isn’t a suspicious thing to do!).  She’s found a number of straight cuts on the bones that weren’t made by wolves. She dismisses Wendell’s offer to help her look over the rest of the bones (also not suspicious).

Pelant, meanwhile, is at home taking apart some electronic equipment and working on some sort of project (which can’t be good!).

Hodgins finds traces of curare – a paralytic agent that can only be made from a certain plant – on the needle tip. Coincidentally enough, he had two of the rare plants at the Jeffersonian until Brennan asked to have one two weeks earlier. With this information, the entire team (Sweets, Cam, Hodgins,Wendell, Angela)  see and discuss how all the evidence is leading to Brennan. Although they don’t think that she killed Sawyer, they agree that they have to follow the evidence. Angela gets disgusted with them and stomps off.

Angela goes to see Booth and tells him that the evidence is leading right to Brennan. Booth tells her that she has to prove that the security tape was falsified. Just then, his phone rings – it’s Bones and she tells him that she’s been kidnapped by Pelant. Without confirming anything, Booth rushes over to Pelant’s house. After beating Pelant, destroying his house, and not finding Brennan, Booth calls her phone and sure enough, she’s fine. Oops…

Booth meets with Caroline and learns that once Pelant’s lawyer found out what Booth had done that she went to the parole board and Pelant was granted parole. Booth and Brennan have also both been removed from the case (not sure why Brennan wasn’t removed before!) with Booth actually suspended from the FBI. Special Agent Flynn is put in charge of the investigation

Using the Angelatron, Angela, Wendell, and Cam subtract out the damage to the body from the wolves and see a pattern to the cut marks that Brennan found earlier – they go across arteries. The cuts were made so Sawyer would bleed and the blood would attract the wolves. Of course Pelant seems to have no training in anatomy while Brennan would of course know the path of the vessels. Cam has no choice but to report the finding to Agent Flynn.

Sweets meets with Flynn and Flynn points out that his profiling of the suspect could just as well fit Brennan as Pelant. Sweets defends Brennan and is also removed from the case.

Angela meanwhile, stops by Booth and Brennan’s house and is trying to figure out how Pelant got into Brennan’s email to know that she met with Sawyer. She’s eventually able to get into Pelant’s accounts and finds that the library has delivered a ridiculous amount of books to his house in the past 3 months, not to mention a huge list of cable movies (Angela’s developed some pretty impressive computer hacking skills for an artist).

Before they can make a plan, Flynn comes knocking at the door with a warrant to search the house and Brennan’s car. Booth meets him at the door and refuses to let him into the house because the house number on the warrant is transposed. While Flynn goes to tow  Brennan’s car and fix the warrant, Booth and Brennan rush to collect everything they have on Pelant and remove it from the house. Angela goes to look into the books that Pelant got from the library.

Hodgins walks into the lab and finds Cam crying – the FBI sent over hair samples that they found in Brennan’s trunk – they match the victim. Meanwhile, Angela tries desperately to find a pattern in the books that Pelant has checked out.

Booth and Brennan meet with Caroline but she tells them that she can’t help them and that she thinks that Brennan should turn herself in. Max comes to the house and encourages them to flee – they need to get off the grid, away from computers or it will only get worse. He leaves, after begging Brennan not to let what happened to him happen to her.

As she and Booth try to decide what to do, Brennan has an epiphany – Sawyer had been trying to send her a message about Pelant – he wrote a quote in a book that he gave her when she visited him (sometime either before or after threatening to kill Christine because she is a demon). She is sure that the quote is a message. They call Hodgins and he and Cam go to Sawyer’s room at the psychiatric institution to look for the rest of the message. They soon find a huge pyramid-shaped message of symbols on the entire wall of the room. Apparently Sawyer wrote it with his own saliva.

While the team tries to figure out the meaning of the message, Booth and Brennan take Christine to a catholic church to have her baptized before whatever is going to happen, happens. (Brennan had been resisting having her baptized before due to her distrust/disbelief in Catholicism). While they are at the church, Pelant is in their house and Angela is trying desperately to figure out the code in the books and the symbols on Sawyer’s wall. Pelant switches out the alarm clock next to Booth and Brennan’s bed and takes a picture of the nursery.

Angela meets with Caroline and tells her that she thinks Pelant used the library to get his messages onto computers and the internet – he replaced the libraries normal coding that their automatic inventory computers used with his own, which then got uploaded to the computer systems. Caroline likes the theory, but they can’t do anything without proof. She’s been taken off the case, too. Seems that someone noticed that a large amount of money was transferred from one of Brennan’s accounts to hers recently.

Booth and Brennan leave the church. As Booth goes off to get the car, Brennan calls him back and tells him that she loves him and doesn’t want him to think that Christine is the only reason why they are together. While Booth is gone, Max drives up, they belt Christine into a child seat, and Brennan drives away – apparently Max and Brennan planned this all along. Booth’s car won’t start and when he looks up, he sees Brennan driving away. He runs to the front of the church and finds Max there. He confronts him and Max tells him that he will keep her safe and that Booth must stay above ground. THE END

My thoughts:

Wow, this was a serious, emotional episode! I’ll admit that I was disappointed that the Pelant storyline had been dropped for so long but clearly they had bigger plans for it. The idea of framing Brennan for a murder is very clever – after all, if anyone could pull off the perfect murder, it would be her. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of curious that no one pointed out that if Brennan really did kill Sawyer that it probably wouldn’t be so obvious.

Pelant’s character reminds me a bit of a character played by John Larroquette back on [easyazon-link asin=”B000O77SOK”]The Practice[/easyazon-link] many years ago – a crazy but charming killer that the firm just couldn’t nail down, even as he killed lover after lover. I’m excited to see how Team Jeffersonian manages to catch Pelant and bring him to justice. He’s definitely the best villain we’ve seen on BONES since the Gravedigger and I hope that they don’t try to tie all the ends up too neatly in one episode when BONES returns.

What did you think of the episode? Tell me in the comments!