BONES RECAP: I Smell a Rat

BONES 8.02: The Partners in the Divorce

BONES is not known for its subtlety and this week’s title suggested some relationship rough patches may be forthcoming for our favorite murder-solving duo. Sure enough, the episode focused on Booth and Brennan coming to terms with her absence and their very different views of marriage (i.e. squabbling constantly) while figuring out who murdered a well-known divorce lawyer.

Victim of the Week: Two drunk homeless guys are discussing the finer points of the Keynesian economics when they smell something cooking. Not a big surprise that what they find cooking in a fire barrel is, in their words “not chicken”.

The body of the week isn’t the only thing cooking, either. Brennan is in the kitchen, making pancakes for Booth. He usually cooks breakfast, but she tells him that she worked as a fry cook to earn money while she was on the run (the first of many “when I was on the lam” comments). When they arrive at the crime scene, she also tells him that she camped out under a bridge when she was on the run, which doesn’t make Booth happy because he can’t believe she’d do that with Christine. Soon the two of them are sparring over who has the most expertise to handle the scene while the others watch awkwardly.

Back at the Jeffersonian, Cam and everyone’s favorite southern-fried squintern, Abernathy, examine the body.  They quickly find out that the victim suffered multiple long bone fractures and had heart stents placed, which allow them to identify the victim from the serial numbers. They also find a melted gold fountain pen nub in the victim’s neck.

While they are hard at work, Booth is at the firing range making a paper target into confetti. Sweets asks him why he’s so steamed and Booth tells him it’s because Brennan made breakfast (he usually makes breakfast!). Sweets tells him he’s mad because he can’t get the three months that Brennan and Christine were gone back and he should face that. Before they can discuss it much further, though, Brennan calls and Booth acts normal with her.

The victim is ID’ed as a ruthless divorce lawyer who made lots of enemies. Booth and Brennan check out his office while continuing to squabble. “It’s a good thing we aren’t married”, Brennan tells Booth matter-of-factly. Not surprisingly, he’s not so happy with this announcement. The office is undergoing renovations and they talk to the foreman and  the victim’s assistant. Conveniently, on the assistant’s desk is a rack of fountain pens that just happens to have blood on it .

Back at the Jeffersonian, Angela questions Brennan about what is going on between her and Booth. Brennan denies that there is an issue. Meanwhile, Booth is also denying to Sweets that there is an issue.

Team Jeffersonian starts investigating the victim’s clients, with Booth and Brennan continuing to demonstrate their opposing views on marriage along the way. They meet with one of the craziest couples to find out that they’ve reconciled and are expecting a baby, “a child sort of puts things in perspective”(Ouch!) so they move them down on the suspect list for now.

Back at the lab, in this week’s ridiculous-Hodgins-subplot, he determines that the victim’s last meal was a “rat burger”. One of the victim’s disgruntled clients is a chef and he apparently served the victim a rat burger once a week for several years – as long as his marriage lasted. The chef/client is apparently a virtuoso in the kitchen with the rat as the victim raved about it.

While Hodgins is up to his eyeballs in rat burger residue, Angela miraculously is able to reconstruct shredded documents from the victim’s office which turn out to be a copy of his pre-nup and a picture of his wife in bed with his secretary, in an interesting twist on an old archetype.  Angela and Finn make a model of the victim’s injuries and decide that he must have fallen down a very steep sort of stairway.

Meanwhile, Sweets questions the secretary who denies killing the victim and claims to be in love with the wife. She knew the victim knew, but he wouldn’t talk about it with her.

After talking with Angela and Finn, Brennan brilliantly deduces where the victim died and her and Booth head off together. On the way, all the issues between them finally bubble to the surface and Booth and Brennan have an actual fight, a opposed to the squabbling they did all the rest of the episode: “Do not tell me how to live! We are not married, we are both free agents!” (wowsa, I’m totally on Booth’s side in this one!). Luckily, they arrive at the crime scene at that moment and are interrupted by the construction foreman. Bones rushes to the edge of the building in the construction area and identifies the garbage shoot as the place of death – now all that is missing is the murderer.

Later, while Brennan is examining a set of bones back in the lab, Booth wanders up and they apologize to each other. Finn shows up just then and they tell Booth that they’ve figured out that the victim was doused in a special kind of solvent used by architects before he was burned. Turns out that one of the newly happy-with-baby couple was an architect. They both immediately start arguing – apparently they weren’t as happy as they appeared and she had lied to her husband about being pregnant. The fight escalates and “rat” (haha) out each other, right there in the interrogation room. The wife stabbed him with a pen and told her husband that he was dead, so he threw him down the shoot where he actually died, and then burned the body. Case closed.

Cue to soulful music and Booth nursing some whiskey, alone, at the kitchen counter. Brennan comes home late. He points this fact out and she tells him that she went to see Sweets. She realized that everything still isn’t fine between them, despite the earlier apology. Booth tries to dismiss her concerns by telling her it will all work out. He finally admits that he’s mad that he lost her and Christine for 3 months. Brennan tells him that they will make up the lost time, that she loves him and is “willing to do irrational things to prove it”. And just like that, all the angst is over and all is right in the world…um…yeah…we’ll see about that!

My Thoughts:

Not one of my favorite episodes. I thought the rat burger plot strained belief, even for BONES and it seemed like Booth and Brennan worked things out way too easily in the last seconds after fighting the entire episode. That said, there was no Daisy and everyone was actually treating Sweets well, so I’ll give it a passing grade.

Favorite Quotes:

It’s so nice to have everyone back together again! – Hodgins
It’s not nice! There’s brain on my shoe! – Booth

Do you know why I have good hair? I don’t let lawyers stress me! – Booth

Dr. Hodgins, this is not Top Chef! – Cam