Bones 4.19 The Science in the Physicist

Of all the places for a fashion magazine photo shoot, I think that an abandoned lot filled with dumped trash would be right up there. Because what model wouldn’t want to traipse through ripped-open garbage bags and assorted rotting biologicals in starchy clothes and strappy, six-inch heel shoes. This week’s episode “Bones and Booth Go to the Death Chamber” starts with a model in this exotic locale. Her photographer is shouting instructions. “Look at the garbage-eating crows! You love the crows! Pretty crows!” Picture – picture – picture. “Now, you hate the crows! Bad crows! You are scared of the crows!” Picture – picture – pic… wait a minute, what’s that falling out of the garbage bag?

Now the pictures are being taken by crime scene photographers. Bones hunches over one of the garbage bags with Booth peering over her shoulder. “What does that look like to you?” “An ear,” replies the ever analytical Bones. “Is that a joke?” “No.” But thankfully there are actually a few funny scenes this week, so stick with it. Booth asks Bones what she thinks the rest of it looks like. “Chili con carne.”

In the lab, Cam looks at the evidence before her in amazement. In her 13 years as a pathologist, she has never had anyone give her two bags of person before. Mr. Wiki Nigel-Murray has returned and offers several examples of cultures that cut up their dead. Sure, says Cam, but did they use a woodchipper? No. Wiki says he gets the point but you know it’s not going to last long. They also find remnants of a ring and pearl in the chili.

Meanwhile, Angela and Bones are discussing Angela’s celibacy in the diner. Angela’s getting pretty zen about the whole “no sex” thing. Once you get past the agitation, there is clarity. Bones asks her how she’s enjoying the clarity. Angela shakes her head. She hasn’t gotten beyond the agitated stage. But her thoughts of sex disappear when she sees a great, big, bearded bear of a man across the street.

Cam and Wiki bring Booth up to speed on the facts so far. Cell analysis indicates that the body was frozen before it was chopped up. Booth is a little leary of this information. “Frozen? As in froze to death climbing Mt. Everest?” That’s exactly it. Or froze to death waiting for a bus on a January night in Winnipeg.

Angela bursts into the lab with a death threat. Her daddy dearest is in town and he is going to kill Hodgins. He swore he’d kill Hodgins if he did anything to hurt his little girl and breaking up would definitely qualify. Hodgins is shocked that Angela’s father blames him for their mutual break-up. Angela admits he may be a little biased in her favour.

Wiki pipes up with his news. The pearl they found isn’t a pearl. It’s part of a meteorite.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, Booth interrupts. Back to the case. What turned the person into chili?

Cam knows. Obviously, the person froze to death while climbing a mountain, where the body was hit by a meteorite and was knocked down the mountain where it fell into two garbage bags which were left in an open lot where the bags were torn open and the body was eaten by crows.

Booth glares at her. “Obviously.”

Wiki informs us that the slowest meteor travels at 25,000 kilometers per hour. This is a big fat lie according to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Either way, he’s pretty sure that Hodgins won’t be able to duplicate the phenomenon by firing a cannon at a dummy. Never one to pass up the chance for a practical experiment, Hodgins asks if he is staying or leaving. Apparently, Wiki wants to fire the cannon too so he stays. They are set to light the fuse when Bones walks in. She asks them if a meteor would really turn a person into chili.

Well, we’re about to find out.

Booth and Bones are on their way to find out about the meteorite when they hear, “Fire in the hole!” Booth gives it a three count before he heroically throws Bones into the wall and shields her delicate female form with his hard, muscular body in order to protect her from the falling Anvils of Unresolved Sexual Tension because they are secretly in love with each other. It’s about that subtle. They are unharmed and flee the lab before it goes into lockdown because of the explosion, leaving Cam behind them, screaming something about “you two are in so much trouble!”

They arrive at IHCSSI (the Institute of Hard Core Science and Sexual Impropriety), an institute that turned Bones down for a job because her studies deal with the past and real science is only about the future. There they meet Landis Collar aka Batman. He’s working on sonar technology to help blind people “see” via energy wave bounces or something. Give me a break – I stayed out of the science building for a reason. There is also something about superconductivity but it was a little beyond me. He recognizes the not-pearl as part of the engagement ring he had made for his fiancee Dr. Diane Sigmond, who was the Editor-in-Chief of the IHCSSI journal.

When Booth and Bones ask to see her friends, they meet Milt-the-Goth, who is working on teleporting pond scum and was going to be published. Milt breezily informs them he can’t give an alibi since he has a disability that doesn’t let him remember a timeline accurately. Is it just me, or would that put someone who runs highly scheduled experiments for a living at a distinct disadvantage? It’s obvious from his disdain that Booth is beneath contempt for his plebian education and he only speaks to Bones. He sends them to see…

Jennifer, who was working with carbon-dating. She didn’t have a motive to kill Diane because she knew she wasn’t going to be published. Again, because carbon-dating techniques are only used for the past and science lookes to the future.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Wiki and Hodgins are having a serious conversation about particulates. Cam catches them talking and they both look guilty. It seems they are not allowed to be in the same room without supervision. And why is that? “Because we were stupid enough to fire a cannon indoors,” Wiki responds in a sing-song classroom voice. It was funny. They did have a serious reason for breaking this new lab rule, though. The pitting they found on the bone chips did not come from a woodchipper. The new theory is that the body was frozen and then shattered somehow. Cam allows them to confer on their own but warns them that any future damages will come out of their pay. Seeing as that Hodgins is a multi-millionaire, I can’t see that being much of a deterent.

Booth and Bones check out Dr. Sigmond’s office. Booth expects a lot of lab equipment but Bones shares a patronizing look with Batman as she explains that the doctor was a theoretical physicist. Seven-year-old Booth comes back with, “yeah, but you can’t make your own beer.”

Dear Writers: While Bones has always viewed the social sciences contemptuously, even she has acknowledged that they can be useful and has done so on more than one occasion. She has never insulted Booth so purposefully in public. And she certainly hasn’t mocked him for his mistakes. Your retcon is showing. Sincerely, Featherlite.

Batman then offers up Milt as a suspect as they were having a sexual relation. Sure, Batman and Dead Girl were engaged, but that doesn’t mean she had to stop sleeping around until the wedding. In fact, the IHCSSI lived well up to its name as we discover that everybody is sleeping with everybody and nobody considers sex to be a valid motive for murder. These eggheads just aren’t normal.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Hodgins addresses the Squints from the lofty second storey balcony. Hear ye, hear ye, I will now demonstrate how the body of the dearly departed was turned into chili. We have frozen yon turkey (Wiki holds up the young fowl who has given his life to the pursuit of science) with liquid nitrogen.

“Which freezes at 43 Kelvin or -643 Fahrenheit. Saying degrees Fahrenheit is redundant,” informs Squire Wiki.

Ahem. With liquid nitrogen. When we drop yon turkey from this balcony, it shall shatter like glass.

And they flip the observers the bird. It drops from the second storey and the turkey takes a wild bounce and pegs an onlooker right in the head! Awesome! Oh my God, I never saw that coming! I fully expected it to shatter, or possibly punch a hole in the floor. But the bounce was right out of Bugs Bunny and nearly killed me. From the looks on their faces, it almost killed Hodgins and Wiki as well.

In the ongoing hunt for suspects – because the deceased’s colleagues are not enough – they look at Dead Girl’s hate mail and come up with a physicist-welder who is afraid of a theoretical particle. (I told you – Arts degree.) And, oh yes, anyone who is rational is an agnostic because religion is for fools. Is there anyone without a doctorate who is safe this week? Apparently not.

Cam and Bones take another look at the bone chips and realize some of the damage was caused by a tumour. Dead Girl had leukemia. Cam notes that she had a full physical two weeks ago and was fine. How can anyone develop leukemia in two weeks?

And now we come to the half-time show. Last week I saw the blooper reel. This week they had the blooper reel, and then Cam and Angela caught viewers up on the first half of the episode. Victim, suspects, secondary story line. It was… different.

Hodgins, Sweets and Wiki plot strategy in the diner. Hodgins is trying to explain who Angela’s father is (a Blues guitarist from Texas) and why he’s slightly peeved with him. Sweets offers to mediate. He thinks he’ll be successful because he has studied some of the Blues culture and is aware of the history of it being the devil’s music. Hodgins passes. Father, guitarist, peeved, devil. Somehow I’m thinking that the most important word in this paragraph is Texas.

Booth and Bones return to Dead Girl’s “lab” in full protective gear. There is no radiation but Bones does find a stain on the deskchair that used to be radioactive. I have no idea what could be used and fully dissipate in a two week period but I’m guessing radioactive iodine. We aren’t told for sure, so I could be right.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Bones is surprised to find her Squints still working hard and looking for clues. Hodgins tells Bones that “up and forward (the IHCSSI’s motto) are only two directions. Science should look in all directions. She (Bones) taught him that.” That is my favourite quote in ages from this show.

Anyway, Booth and Bones return to the institute to re-interview the suspects. They hear a woman screaming and Booth breaks down the door only to find Milt and Jennifer going at it on the desk. Booth, this is Club P-h-e-D-onism! You didn’t see that coming?

As they wait in the hall for… the experiment to come to its natural conclusion, Booth and Bones sit on a couple of anvils and discuss sex. Booth warns Bones that Batman is going to hit on her. Bones says that his fiancee is dead; it’s healthy to move on. Well, most people would wait until after the funeral for propriety’s sake, but who am I to argue. Booth is quite disgusted with her attitude. Good people leave marks on each other that take time to fade. Booth, honey, you’re a good person but Bones is the teflon sort. After 4 years you’ve obviously left no marks on her. Sorry, sweetie.

Milt and Jennifer finally emerge. Booth is all “show me your isotopes” and she complies. She goes into her lab and pulls the radioactive material out of the fridge with the glass door. She is shocked – shocked, I say – to see that two of her six canisters are missing. They are bigger than soda pop cans – how can you not notice they were gone? And of course, everyone in the IHCSSI had access to the lab so we can’t whittle down the suspect list.

Somewhere in Washington on a street corner, Angela’s dad plays the blues. Sweets approaches him and offers to help with Hodgins. Angela’s dad thanks him but says he can take care of Hodgins on his own. That’s not what I meant! Sweets lays a hand on his arm. Angela’s father says nothing but looks at the little man in front of him. Sweets removes his arms and runs away with his tail between his legs.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Wiki and Cam have determined that the strongest bones were not affected. The victim was killed, frozen, and then vibrated until the weaker bones shattered like crystal.

Sweets returns to the Jeffersonian and heads straight to Hodgins. Angela’s dad plays the Blues because he’s the Devil incarnate. The whole “selling your soul at the crossroads” thing? He’s buying it! Sweets used to have a thing for Angela but it’s gone now.

Still at the IHCSSI, Booth and Bones are looking for something that could shake a frozen body apart. Since the suspects are working on sonar, earthquakes, and teleportation, so they all could have done the shaking. But the most likely vibrating weapon would be a resonance chamber, which is an apparatus that can generate a sustained sonic wave.

It seems neither Booth nor Bones has ever seen a horror movie because they both walk into the BODY BREAKING ROOM and don’t leave anyone outside on guard. Not surprisingly, they get locked in and somebody turns on the machine. Twits. They squeak like dolphins trying to counteract the frequency but eventually collapse after Booth tries to shoot out a panel.

Batman swoops in and saves them! Really, he only turned off the machine and opened the door, but let’s not get picky.

At the lab, Cam and Wiki discover the pitting on the bones was caused by a mechanical pencil. Man, office impliments are deadly this year. The radiation was killing the victim too slowly, so the murderer stabbed her to kill her faster.

Angela, however, is deep in conversation with her dad. Not conversation exactly, more an attempt to persuade him that the break-up was not all Hodgins’s fault. “Could he have stopped it?” her dad asks. “Yes, but so could I,” Angela replies honestly. “Then his dad can come kick your ass.” I love this guy! Her dad promises to “ameliorate his vengeful intentions”. (For the record, ameliorate isn’t quite what it sounds like. ) Honest? As honest as a Texas sundown.

Booth, Bones and Sweets confront the PhD suspects. Since radiation poisoning is the opposite of a crime of passion, they have deduced that there was no sexual motive for the murder. The stabbing, however, indicates there was some kind of deadline. It was the journal’s deadline. Milt killed her because she was blackmailing him. She wouldn’t publish his work unless he gave her partial credit and that, my friends, was worth killing over. Batman tries to punch out Milt and misses, clobering Booth. Wow, we almost made it through the whole episode without a blind joke. He then asks Bones out. She debates the decision aloud and comes back with “no.” Because she’s secretly in love with Booth.

After successfully catching another bad guy, the gang celebrates in the bar. Booth tells his partner that she will have to stop hanging out with geniuses or she will figure out how stupid he is. Bones says that she figured out how stupid he was long ago. She then goes on beating this very dead horse and proceeds to insult Booth a couple more times as well as Angela and Sweets before she completely swallows her other foot. In a belated attempt to change the subject, Angela asks if anyone has seen Hodgins.

Hodgins is not at the bar. He is waking up in the middle of nowhere with a portrait of Angela tattooed on his bicep. I love Angela’s dad!

***

Okay, Bones fans. Two new episodes next week. Wednesday AND Thursday. Set your VCRs/DVRs/TiVos.