BONES PREMIERE RECAP: Flower Power

BONES 8.01 – The Future in the Past

When last we left Booth and Brennan, Pelant had framed Brennan for murder and she had fled with baby Christine.  This season started out with Brennan and Christine on the lam, sitting in a park. Brennan shows Christine a picture of her daddy and then Brennan’s daddy, Max, approaches to tell her that its time that they move again.

At the Jeffersonian, Angela is still trying desperately to figure out how Pelant inserted Brennan into the security footage from the mental hospital.  Clark has taken over Brennan’s office and position as the Jeffersonian’s forensic anthropologist and this role puts him in conflict with Angela and the others who aren’t fond of the new layers of organization that he’s put in place.

At the FBI, Booth is stuck at his desk and is under pressure from Agent Flynn to reveal that he’s had contact with Brennan, but he hasn’t. Then the FBI gets an anonymous call about a body. When the Jeffersonian team arrives on the scene,  they find a skeleton that has already been carefully unearthed in a very precise fashion – so careful that it appears to be the work of Brennan herself. Sure enough, Angela finds a few cut flowers -snowdrops – in the grass near the body. She’s sure that it’s a message – a symbol of hope. Cam and Hodgins are suspicious that she’s been communicating with Brennan, but she won’t tell them anything. Cam insists that Clark email all of the information about the body, including the flowers, be emailed to Booth, even though they’ve been avoiding using email because of Pelant, because she tells them that there is no evidence that the body is related to Pelant.

Clark determines that the body is female and they soon identify her as a high school guidance counselor that disappeared 10 years prior. The story gets picked up by the local news, and Bones is overjoyed to see her coworkers on television, but is disappointed that Booth isn’t visible. Pelant also sees the news from the crime scene (in his hometown) and sees Angela pick up the flowers. Booth finds out that Pelant went to the high school where the victim used to work and heads out in a car to go to Atlantic City, or so he says.  He contacts Cam and fills her in. She agrees not to tell anyone what he’s up to.

Meanwhile, Pelant is at a computer, accessing a secure site. He is able to pull up all the crime scene photos and a picture of the victim. He downloads this data to a tablet computer.

At FBI headquarters,  Flynn confronts Sweets, but he won’t reveal why Booth is suddenly headed to Atlantic City the day when a body turns up in Pelant’s hometown. Booth is actually in a cheap motel, waiting… he sees someone approach the door and then the door opens and he tussles with the intruder…who turns out to be Brennan. Turns out the motel is called the Snowdrop (the flowers were indeed a clue) and Booth is overjoyed to see Christine. Apparently Brennan and Max had spent some time researching Pelant and found out that his guidance counselor had disappeared. She had been a cross country runner and went out for a run and never returned. Bones combed the woods until she found signs that suggested that there was a decomposing body buried underneath and then dug up the body just enough to be able to get a quick exam. She has some pictures, but she really wants to examine the bones closely herself.

Cam and Clark find skull trauma on the victim and Hodgins determines that she was hit by a certain type of rock – red agate. Angela is busy as well – she meets with Caroline and tells her that she can prove that Brennan didn’t pay her off – both electronic signatures were forged, but she can’t trace it back to Pelant. Angela turns over the proof to the FBI and Caroline is reinstated. She meets with Sweets who tells her that the victim wrote Pelant an excellent letter of recommendation to Stanford. However, a year before the letter was written, Pelant was busted for hacking into the school computer system and altering his grades. After analysis, Sweets realizes that the letter was actually written by Pelant, right before the victim died.

Angela admits to Hodgins that she is in contact with Bones, but tells him that she has to keep it secret so everyone else is safe and clean. Hodgins agrees to take flowers to a specific spot, which happens to be a cemetery. At the cemetery, he is approached by Pelant, who goads him by telling him that he read his FBI file and he’s not a threat. Hodgins grabs him and starts strangling him but soon realizes that is what Pelant wants and lets him go as soon as he loses consciousness.

Back at the FBI, the whole team meets with Agent Flynn. Hodgins tell everyone about running into Pelant but denies interacting with him. Angela is forced to admit that her and Brennan were using flowers to communicate. Flynn insists that Angela tell Brennan to turn herself in, but Sweets explains that Brennan isn’t going to show up now that Pelant knows about the flower system. Later, Hodgins confides to Sweets that he almost killed Pelant, but stopped because he knew that if he did that they’d never clear Brennan. Hodgins tells Sweets that Pelant seemed to want him to kill him.

Max, not Brennan, goes to the cemetery and he announces to Pelant  (who is hiding on the other side of a mausoleum) that he’s not going to lead him to Brennan as he’s headed straight to Mexico.  Back in the hotel room, Booth and Brennan are increasingly anxious when Max doesn’t return within the normal window of time.

Back at his computer, Pelant is searching vehicle VIN numbers and comes up with Clark’s file – apparently Booth bought his car. Booth goes outside and finds Max trying to start his car. He’s going to drive it off so that Pelant will follow him and he can kill him. He drives off, leaving Booth protesting. Booth calls Flynn and reports that Brennan is driving the car that Max just left in and he was unable to convince her to turn herself in. Flynn tells him that he’s the second person to report that car stolen.

Hodgins meets up with Cam at the Jeffersonian and tells her to take Clark and everyone else out of the building. He’s going to stay around by himself and catch up on some “paperwork”. They all leave and lock down the building, leaving him and Angela there alone. Booth and Brennan then arrive and they have a mini-reunion. Bones examines the body while Angela passes off computer data to Booth. Sweets arrives and he’s really conflicted – he feels like he should arrest her, but he’s so happy to see her. Booth has invited him there as protection now that he passed his gun training.

Booth takes Angela’s computer data to Flynn and manages to convince him to examine the evidence. He and Booth go and arrest Pelant for hacking into the FBI email system – he fell right into the trap that Cam set for him.

Bones determines that the victim was hung, gutted, and bled. Pelant snared her as she was running, and she fell back and cracked her head on the rock. Angela and Bones examine the triangular code that Ethan Sawyer (the victim that Bones was framed for killing) left on the wall of his room. Sweets informs them that Pelant wants one of them to kill him and that he thinks the pyramid is both significant and important to Pelant. This suggestion gets the gears turning in Angela’s mind.

Brennan looks at the bones again and reviews all the data that Clark has painstaking collected on the case and realizes that the weapon was a Japanese sword. Turns out Pelant’s grandfather is a WWII veteran and he brought home some swords as souvenirs. We are treated to a montage of Clark examining a sword and Angela finally cracking the pyramid code – it is the secret to how Pelant altered the security footage to frame Brennan. Booth and Max watch Pelant being led into the jail and Max is unhappy that Pelant is still alive. Booth confronts Pelant with the sword.

Later, the whole crew meets at Booth and Brennan’s house, including Agent Flynn and Caroline. Flynn turns everything back over to Booth. Caroline announces that Brennan has been cleared and will return her to her position at the Jeffersonian. Cam then announces that Clark will stay on to do archaeology work for the Jeffersonian. Booth apologizes to Angela for being so angry with her and thanks everyone for helping put his family back together. Everyone is happy again.

In a private moment in the laundry room, Bones apologizes to Booth for leaving, but he’s already forgiven her as he thinks that she did the right thing. They start kissing and taking off their clothes when Booth’s cell phone rings.

Back at the FBI, Pelant is being released. Turns out he’s not Christopher Pelant, he’s an Egyptian citizen, and his countrymen have come to take him back to Egypt. The Pelant identity was an alias. There’s nothing they can do to hold him. As he walks out of the room, he passes by Brennan and stops and hands her a marigold. She smacks him across the face. Pelant protests, but then leaves. After he’s gone, Booth asks what kind of flower it is. Bones explains that it is a marigold – it means pain and grief. Booth grabs it and throws it in a trash can. Later, Agent Flynn retrieves it from the trash and stares at it in his hand. DUN DUN DUN…

My Thoughts:

Alright, I so did not see that coming. I really thought Flynn was going to be a good guy, especially after he was hanging out with the gang at the end. The twist of Pelant not being who he seemed was a bit far out and out of the blue – hopefully it will be better explained in future episodes. I guess he has some sort of diplomatic immunity or otherwise the FBI would have been able to hold him on a murder charge. It appears that it will be a few episodes before the story line is picked up again and in the meantime, it appears that we’re up for more of the comedy that BONES is known for but that was conspicuously absent in this episode. I’ll hold off rendering judgement on the whole Pelant storyline until it is fully concluded, but it all seemed to fit together too neatly today, until it veered off inexplicably at the end of the episode.

Memorable Quotes:

There are three sides to a triangle…. -Sweets
Ha! Your understanding of geometry is not very advanced – Bones
Well, I wasn’t finished! – Sweets