Bones 4.15 – “The Princess and the Pear” Recap

Okay, okay, I got one. An elf, a wizard and an alien warrior walk into a culvert, and the elf says…

What do you think this is, a joke?

The elf says, “Eeeeeeeek!” when he sees a rat emerging from a putrefying corpse and then he disappears in a cloud of dust that would make the Road Runner jealous. The other teen geeks are somewhat taken with the kinky boots before they realize that they are still attached to a corpse without a face. Then they also run away screaming like little girly men.

Thus begins “Bones and Booth go to Fantasyland.” The fantasy for some fans continues when we move to Booth’s apartment where he is wandering around pantless, which I understand is the newest fashion trend. He limps as he wanders because his back is out again. He begs Bones to do him like she did him before. She has magic phalanges and he trusts her like no-one else. Flattery will get you crunched, so she scootches up behind him, pulls his arms back over his head, and … my God, I think she killed him. She definitely didn’t help, that’s for certain.

Back at the lab, Bones is all pissy that she has to deal with Agent Perotta because she put Booth in the hospital with her spinal misalignment and now he’s stuck on bed rest. Perotta asks if Bones is okay. She replies, “Of course, I wasn’t the one who was injured.” By the expression on Ms. Deschanel’s face, even she knows this line makes her look like a twit. Attention writers – it’s time to move on from this joke.

Examining this week’s victim are Cam and Intern Eeyore Fisher. They have determined that facial recognition is out as the victim’s face looks like it was hit with a wrecking ball. Since that is out they consider alternate means like – oh – personal items like clothing and such.

Cam exposits that the victim is dressed as a character from Lord of the Rings – Porno Version. (For the love of all things holy, do not Google that. Or Winnie the Pooh Porn. Don’t do Anne of Green Gables Porn either. I’m not even going to look at Sesame Street. Why, world? Why?) She then says that Fisher might recognize the costume. He asks if she means LOTR or porn. Eeyore protests that she is making biased remarks and that just because he resembles the stereotype she is wrong to pigeon-hole him as a fan. I agree. We, I mean, lots of fans look like completely normal people. LOTR fans. Not porn fans.

Agent Perotta cues her magic 8-ball and discovers the victim had a UV stamp on her hand. Eeyore admits that he is a geek and that recognizes the stamp as the Imagicon insignia. Imagicon is a convention of sci-fi and fantasy stuff. From this, they ID the victim as booth babe Kendra Kim.

Perotta and Bones interview booth babe Shiny Kopinsky, who informs them that Kendra was bragging that Imagicon was her last gig – she was a girl with a plan. Unfortunately, Shiny didn’t know what the plan was so she sent them to talk to Kroon the Blacksmith.

Kroon the Blacksmith says that Kendra tried to sell him Excalibur, a movie prop that hadn’t been seen in 20 years. He advised her to sell it in the con’s auction.

Back at the lab, Hodgins and Eeyore have a sad story contest about lost loves. Believe it or not, Fisher wins. But alas, even the victory does not make him happy. But what Hodgins really came over to say was that he found dirt under the victim’s fingernails that indicates she was on the banks of the Potomac at some time before her death.

With this new information, Bones and Perotta start going at it in a three-way with a drugged-out Booth, who is wearing a girdle. During the phone call, they determine nothing relevant.

An interview with Kendra’s father turns up the fact that she was a terrible money-manager. They glean permission to search Kendra’s condo. It has been tossed by a bad guy who is undoubtedly looking for the sword. The bad guy looked everywhere, even to the point of slashing the sofa cushions. Who the hell thinks you can hide a broadsword in a sofa cushion? Come on! If you sit on a sword, you are going to get a goose that you never forget. Also, they discover the plot point of a digital answering machine. Hodgins takes off with her shoes. That’s really starting to be a thing on this episode.

Back at the lab, Bones and Eeyore deduce that Kendra’s face exploded from the inside out. Eeyore, surprisingly, is despondent from the lack of clues but Bones rallies with the fact that she’s seen a gazillion different ways that people have been killed. Since face-exploding hasn’t been one of them, she can immediately eliminate all the weapons that she has seen before. This doesn’t particularly cheer him up.

Hodgins finishes playing with her shoes and finds more Potomac dirt. And toad gunk. It seems that Kendra’s father did not want to encourage stereotypical roles for his little girl by reading her fairy tales or else she’d know she was supposed to kiss, not kick, a toad to find her prince.

Sweets listens to the answering machine and determines that the woman who left the message is a slut. Considering the fact that he has maybe four sentences to work with, I can only presume that he knows this because his mother was a psychic in a travelling circus.

The auctioneer is Chip Derf. Boy, the writers had fun with names this episode. Sweets and Perotta accuse him of spreading the news of Excalibur’s return by tipping off buyers and allowing pre-auction bids. He denies it, but between Perotta’s 8-ball and Sweets’s psychic abilities, he folds like a cheap suit. Although, considering his wardrobe, that is probably the only kind he owns. Derf gives up collector Valerie Daniels.

I understand that Goth is a life-style choice but it can be really, really unflattering on some people. Valerie is one of those people. She is a powerful, strong, active, highly-sexual, undoubtably dominant, intelligent woman, dammit and if the world can’t see past her physical black-on-black appearance it’s the world’s fault. She makes an incredibly sloppy pass at Sweets, who diagnoses her has having unresolved Daddy issues. He handily slaps her down (and she enjoys it) and she admits that she left the message but that she has an alibi for the time of Kendra’s death. She says Kendra told her that a mysterious Black Knight handed her the sword as a gift.

Hodgins and Angela return to the scene of the toad-stomping. They comb the running paths along the Potomac looking for clues. Hodgins cheats – he has a metal detector. I’m not going to complain too much. At least the dirt guy is looking at dirt. Anyway, the detector beeps and the duo uncover Excalibur. Hodgins hoists it over his head in a two-handed grip, proclaiming “I am the once and future king.” You gotta love a man who is unafraid to get his geek on.

Back at the lab, Hodgins, Eeyore and Sweets, continue to geek out about the sword. When it is Sweets’s turn he opts for the Obi-Wan quote: “A more elegant weapon from a more civilized era.” The team decides that the best way to draw out the killer is to use the sword as bait. They will let it go up for auction and use Sweets as the ringer buyer. Eeyore will be in the audience with a video camera.

The auction is on. Eeyore is all in morose goth-wear and Sweets has his own costume. Bones asks Perotta where he could have gotten a costume on such short notice. Perotta guesses from his closet. Sweets is in a Star Trek uniform. Actually, he’s wearing a red shirt! Sweets, have you never seen Star Trek?

The bidding vacillates between Sweets, Valerie and a mystery buyer in a suit. Also, standing in the background, is a Black Knight. Sweets almost has a coronary when the bidding reaches half a million dollars for a prop sword but Perotta tells him from the sidelines that it is fake money. Sweets wins the action. Perotta goes over to talk to the suit, who turns out to be a dude named Badgley Mormont, who represents a consortium of King Arthur enthusiasts who wanted to add the swort to their collection. Eeyore, in the meantime, gets picked up by Valerie.

Sweets and Bones drive off. Sweets is riding high from having spent $500,000 even though it wasn’t real money. They have some weirdo conversation about how Sweets said his heart was pumping from excitement and Bones corrects him saying it was adrenaline and he corrects her by saying they have been working on proper social responses, or some such nonsense. Either way they lull you into a false sense of security when WHAM!

T-BONED by another car! Sweets and Bones swerve down the embankment. Sweets is dazed and gets a bloody nose when the airbag goes off. The Black Knight exits his vehicle, comes down to their car and pulls Excalibur from the wreckage. Bones stumbles out of the car and attacks a guy with a sword. Perhaps she was also dazed. Apparently, she must have studied fencing because she manages to disarm him, pick up the sword and get in a few shots of her own. The Black Knight runs away. Impressed, Sweets looks at her and says, “Mad props.” “Thanks,” says she. What?!? THIS you understand? Let’s have some continuity, people. Please.

Upon hearing the news, Booth tries to get dressed to come in to protect his sweet damsel. It is a little more difficult than normal, what with the girdle and herniated disc and everything. Bones pleads with him not to come riding to her rescue. After all, she has Sweet’s with her. Booth says that is like being protected by a Smurf. Booth reluctantly capitulates and takes another Vicodin, but not before warning Perotta that if anything happens to Bones’s silky hair and soft skin, he will hold her responsible. Bones explains to Perotta that Booth gets unnecessarity protective and she doesn’t know why. Perotta looks at her in surprise and says, “You really don’t, do you?” Oh, Anvils of Unresolved Sexual Tension, how I’ve missed you.

Hodgins is working to track down the Knight’s car by tracing the polymer from the paint exchange. Angela comments that Bones is only happy when she’s getting into sword-fights and other deadly situations. Why can’t she get her rocks off by having sex, just like everybody else? Hodgins agress and offers in the name of friendship to help Angela get her rocks off any time she wants.

Sweets thanks our intrepid forensic anthropologist for saving him and is impressed with how Xena-ish she was. He asks if they have progressed to the level of friendship where he can call her “Bones”. ‘Please don’t,’says she. He tries it out. ‘Please don’t’say we.

Perotta gets called “Milady” for a couple of hours while she interviews all the Black Knights they could round up at the con. Meanwhile, Cam is ready to behead Eeyore for sleeping with a suspect. In an attempt to save his head, he tells her that he figured out what the murder weapon was. It was a pear of anguish and Valerie has some in her medival torture device collection. Ew. Just, ew.

He also manages to save his job by not only swearing never to go to bed with another suspect but also by hypothesizing that the Black Knight was not injured by Bones’s sword hits because he was wearing chain mail under his cloak.

Back out to the crash site. Again with his trusty metal detector, Hodgins finds some pieces of chain mail. Analysis shows that while the armour was historically accurate is was not authentic. Only three people are known to have the ability to replicate it to such a high standard. One of which is…

Kroon the Blacksmith. It turns out that Kroon was a respected academic who ended up making geekware at sci-fi conventions. He fell in love with Kendra and give her his heart. He also gave her the sword as a token of his devotion and she tried to sell it back to him to cover her rent. He was a Renaissance man – a lover, a scholar, a poet – and his precious flower destroyed all that was good in his world. So he offed her.

Booth understands all about chivalry. Of course, with the amount of Vicodin flowing through his brain he probably also understands combinatorics and gene therapy at this point. Anyway, Bones looks at his xrays and says that he was misdiagnosed. She can fix him. Having been put in a girdle once already, Booth is understandably wary but Bones reminds him that he said he trusted her. She snuggles up behind him and Agent Perotta walks in. She brought supper for her FBI partner. Bones and Perotta flee the awkward scene as quickly has humanly possible, leaving Booth alone, limber and still in his girdle.

“Bones” returns in 3 weeks with 11 new episodes in a row.