Quotable:

"In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is a sign of perfection." - Curnonsky

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Bones: The Bone That Blew

The theme was family on Bones. First, Temperance dealing with the fact her father, Max Keenan, now works for the Jeffersonian. Meanwhile, Seeley battled with feelings that he was an inadequate father when it came to his son’s education. Further, both Bones and Booth investigated a family with a few skeletons in the closet. Finally, on the extended family side of things, Cam tried to tempt Hodgins back into doing something he hadn’t done since Zack left the Jeffersonian.

Max Keenan’s Science Squad: Temperance’s Dad was back — the first time this season — and she was not happy about it one darn bit. Sweets hit it right on the button, diagnosing the reason why she disliked having her father be a science teacher at the Jeffersonian: she was afraid he’d get up and abandon her again. With his past enemies dead I don’t see any reason why he would leave her side. If anything, Max is making a concerted effort to stay as close to Tempe as possible.

Max is a good balance for his daughter. Where Bones has taken her science to one of the highest levels possible, Max uses his knowledge in a more common arena, which makes it more available to others. Hence, the reason why he was able to work with Hodgins on the experiment that I’ll talk about in a bit. If he was as hyper-logical as his daughter was, he probably would have never been hired at the Jeffersonian. I mean, one Bones is enough!

Daddy Booth: In this episode, Seeley felt that he had become a below-average father because he wasn’t able to get his child into a prestigious (translation: snooty) private school in the middle of DC.

Why did he begin to feel this way? Well, Bones’ doubting tones, of course. You know, there are some times on this show where I think that Temperance just says those things to incur doubt in others and start an argument. This is one of those cases. Why she decided to do this to Seeley when he has been secure in his son’s educational progress for this long is beyond me.

Intern of the week - Mr. Bray: Have we seen this intern before? I thought he had appeared but, because they have been rotated in and out since the season began, I couldn’t recall. Anyway, he was probably one of the more straight-forward interns that the Squints have utilized. That, and he worked well with all of the team members, including Hodgins — something that hasn’t happened much this season. Bray may have to go into the top three list of interns that I would like to see return.

The wacky experiments return: I didn’t realize it, but Hodgins hasn’t performed any crazy, potentially deadly, experiments lately in order to forward the Squints’ weekly murder investigations. Of course, this is due to his last experiment partner, Zack, being in the psych ward right now. Not to mention that Dr. Addy was severely injured the last time an experiment was done.

But, a new era of Mr. Wizard-type testing returned this week thanks in small part to Max’s and Temperance’s wind tunnel project from her school years. Granted, no ‘King of the Lab’ statements from anyone after the experiment was successful. Still, it was good to see Hodgins getting back into some of his old traits.

This case: Kind of choppy, if you ask me. I had to watch the episode a second time (bless you, DVR) in order to really fit the pieces together. There were some big leaps of logic and focus on suspects that really only needed one round of questioning. The reveal was interesting only for the reason why the victim was murdered.

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