FOX
BONES Recap: Child Soldiers
BONES 8.18: The Survivor in the Soap
Case of the Week:
A decomposed body is found sealed in a barrel full of soap (which was made from chemicals interacting with the victim’s own fat – ewww!) at a hazardous waste disposal place. The victim is an African male, 20-30 years old, named Symchay Conteh. He was from Sierra Leone and was granted asylum as a 14 year old.
An immigration official Booth consults tells him that Symchay got regular payments from a law firm in the US. One of the partners at the firm tells Booth and Brennan that he paid the victim to help other immigrants adjust. He gives them a file from one of Symchay’s old friends, Brima, who had been deported to Sierra Leone two years prior. The man came back to the US illegally and asked for help but the lawyer declined. Symchay obviously decided to help, as Brima was clearly staying at his apartment.
Examination of the bones suggests that the victim had been a child soldier during the war in Sierra Leone. After he was rehabilitated in the US, he became a chef. The team learns that he was hired before his death to cater a gallery opening of photos from the war in Sierra Leone. The photographer tells Booth and Brennan that when Symchay came to talk to her about the event, he got very emotional. She never saw him again after that. Brennan thinks she knows why he was so upset – one of the pictures is of him as a boy, holding an assault rifle over the body of another child.
They track Brima to a taxi cab based on some receipts in Symchay’s apartment and the background noise in the missing persons report phone call that he made under an alias. He tells him that the photo from the show had been published in the newspaper 5 years earlier, so Symchay had seen it before. Brima was also a child solder, and lost his arm to the rebels when he refused to kill his teacher. He and Symchay came to the US together and went through therapy together.
Booth and Brennan take Brima to the gallery, assuming that something the victim saw there led to his death. Walking around, he points out the boys in the photos that he knew and their sad fates. He also identifies a man in the photo who was responsible for forcing the boys to fight – a man named Joseph Embarga, who disappeared after the war before he could be tried for war crimes. Booth recognizes him as the janitor from the building where Symchay and Brima lived.
Booth brings him in for questioning but he’s a smooth character and demands a lawyer. Angela uses voice recognition software to show that they are the same man, based on his taped discussion with Booth. They find out that the lawyer that employed the victim also was the immigration lawyer for Embarga. Arastoo determines that the victim was killed by a weapon with two prongs – just like the African tribal mask in the lawyers’s office. It turns out he killed Symchay when he found out that he’d helped Embarga as he didn’t want to be outed for helping a war criminal.
Character Development:
Booth wants desperately to go on a vacation to just relax, but Brennan of course wants to go somewhere educational. They end up compromising on a place in Thailand that has both educational and touristy options.
Arastoo is back working in the lab and he and Cam can barely contain themselves and stay professional when their romantic dinner gets bagged when the body arrives. They both plunge into the case, but it soon becomes clear that Arastoo is having a hard time dealing with emotions of the case. He later tells Cam that his cousin was taken away to be a soldier during the war between Iran and Iraq and was killed. Cam hugs him and of course everyone else in the lab sees them, so that cat’s out of the bag.
My Thoughts:
Heavy subject matter this week! It brings up some interesting thoughts about what the lives of those boys must be like now, decades later, which is something that most people likely don’t think about.
I’m not sure that I entirely buy the lawyer’s motivation for killing Symchay – he took the war criminal on to raise money to help other immigrants and then was afraid of exposure?
I’m still not sure what I think about Camarastoo. He seems awfully hot-headed for her, but maybe that’s part of his appeal. At least it’s all out in the open now. The more I watch BONES, the more I’m convinced that the most functional couple of the crew is always and will always be Angela and Hodgins.
Memorable Quotes:
…now that’s a vacation. I want to come back stupid – Booth
Extremities can be very informative… – Brennan
Are you going to talk about the size of a man’s feet now? -Hodgins
Really Dr. Hodgins, you need to learn how to pick up on the more subtle social indicators. – Brennan
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