BONES RECAP: Double vision

BONES 8.02 The Gunk in the Garage

Victim of the Week:  A man walks out to his car in a hotel parking garage and sees a “Ultra” Gulp cup on the roof. He reaches for it and it explodes, spattering his body all over the garage.

At FBI headquarters, Sweets and Booth are having another talk about relationships, only this time it’s Sweets in the hot seat. Daisy’s out of town (thank the Lord!) and he wants to buy her a gift for when she gets back. Before they can discuss much more, Caroline shows up and demands that Booth come with her. She grabs the first person she sees – a wet-behind-the-ears female agent, Olivia Sparling, and pairs her up with Sweets to investigate the Big Gulp (I refuse to say “Ultra Gulp”!) bombing victim. Booth is not happy to go with Caroline and said newbie is like, so, totally not into working with a psychologist, especially one with a gun. Turns out Special Agent Olivia has a bit of an attitude. She treats Sweets rather rudely and arrests the hotel head of security when Sweets’ diplomacy fails to persuade him to turn over the security tapes.

Apparently Caroline is on the hot seat because Booth has the highest cost per conviction rate in the district so she’s going to make Booth justify his budget at the quarterly budget meeting. If he’s successful, he’ll get a promotion which will take him out of the field and give him a raise. The raise is appealing as Brennan wants an $800 (!!!) stroller that she can afford, but that Booth can’t and he insists that they split all costs 50/50.  Brennan isn’t so keen on the idea as she doesn’t think he was meant for a desk job. Booth realizes this pretty quickly when he gets sucked into the complex web of FBI office supply expenditures.

Back at the Jeffersonian,  Angela does a facial reconstruction from the skull and identifies the victim – a man named Robert Carlson. Sweets and Agent Subtlety go to visit the victim’s wife. Right after they tell her that her husband is dead, the husband drives up and gets out of the car. The woman is furious at Sweets for lying to her and starts to punch and kick Sweets. Sparling watches, but doesn’t come to his aid.

Back at the lab, the skull has now been cleaned and Angela repeats her facial reconstruction and gets the same person again – the victim must be an identical twin of Robert Carlson. Carlson was adopted as a baby and never knew he had a brother. Sweets suspects that they can find the brother’s identity by finding more out about Carlson, but Agent Sparling is skeptical. After interviewing Carlson, Angela takes the information and works her magic and soon narrows the list of potentials down to 48 men in the entire country, one of which looks exactly like Robert Carlson – Jerry Langella. Everyone else in the lab is hard at work trying to identify the explosive and in typical style, everyone at the lab (mostly Hodgins) is spending money hand over fist while Booth is driving himself nuts in budget paperwork.

Sparling apologizes to Sweets on the way to go meet Langella’s wife (she’s warmed up to him fast). True to Sweets prediction, Langella’s wife looks eerily like Carlson’s wife. She can’t tell them who might want to kill him, other than herself, that is. Her alibi checks out – she was doing court-ordered community service. More Angelatron magic, this time on the hotel security tapes, and they find both brothers on tape at the hotel that day – both attending a self actualization workshop. Carlson admits that he was at the seminar and that he lied about it to keep it from his wife. He was planning on donating all his money to the founder of the ground and moving to the group’s commune.

Team Jeffersonian finds some hair in the scene debris that didn’t come from the victim, suggesting that someone else witnessed the explosion, survived, and didn’t come forward. Speets (yes, the new team of Sparling and Sweets) interviews Carlson’s wife and she confesses to hiring a hit man to kill her husband to prevent him from giving all their money to the cult. The hit man killed the wrong brother, but is going to try again. Booth, meanwhile, entraps Cam into helping with his budget presentation, but then ditches her entirely when Speets announce that the hit man is going to try to kill Carlson.

They rush to a crowded square where they find the hit man – he is the foreman of a construction crew (lots of experience with explosives) and is still showing the effects of the explosion in the garage. Brennan calls Carlson’s cell and tells him to barricade himself in a nearby enclosed ATM. He gets the door pulled shut just as the hit man gets there, Big Gulp cup in hand. Booth and Sparling draw their weapons and point them at the hit man. Meanwhile, Sweets, acting like he’s engrossed in his phone, wanders right into the middle of everything. Playing dumb, he pretends to freak out about the guns trained on him and grabs the Big Gulp cup from the hit man, just as both Booth and Sparling shoot. Sparling’s bullet grazes Sweets’s side before hitting the bomber.

Sweets is okay, though and Speets share a tender moment while he’s being loaded into an ambulance. He tells her that he’s in a relationship, and she says that it’s obvious(?!), and then kisses him.

We also get some “sweet nothings” between Booth and Caroline.  She tells him that Cam nailed the budget meeting – they are even getting a bigger budget – but he doesn’t get the promotion because he didn’t give the presentation. Which is just fine with Bones, who wants him to stay in the field so that she can work with him.

My Thoughts: I’m not sure what I think about Agent Sparling, but she’s better than Daisy so far, so that’s something. As a bit of a health nut, I also appreciated that the harbinger of death was a Big Gulp cup. I can’t help but wonder if it was a reference to NYC’s controversial new law banning soft drinks larger than 20 fluid ounces. As far as Booth and Brennan go, it seems that all is pretty much back to normal between them after the last episodes issues, although they continue to have mild conflict over the disparity in their wealth. All in all, an okay episode with some witty dialogue – see my favorites below.

Memorable Quotes:

Nah, I’ve loved combustion variables ever since I blew up the multipurpose room for my middle school science fair project. First time I made it on a watch list! – Hodgins

Which means we can narrow our suspect list down to anyone with access to an Ultra Gulp cup – Brennan
This case just solves itself! – Cam

Sweet Pea will get the tapes. [to Sweets] You’ve been to Blockbuster – same principle! – Caroline

The government doesn’t function without toner! – Caroline

It’s always sad whenever anyone explodes – Sweets

You’re the psychologist – point your little shrinky brain at her and pull the trigger – Booth

Watch BONES on Mondays 8/7c on FOX!

Photos: Patrick McElhenney/FOX