Watching Bones

“Can I touch the brain just once, as a reward?”
“Just once.”

Just some of the great lines from the season premiere of Bones, part two. In case you forgot, we left off after Booth and Bones solved the murder of a young American heiress by none other than the butler. As they were getting ready to leave to go home, Booth got a call from Agent Pritchard - his British female counterpart - to come help with the identification of a body. Her partner, Wexler - Bone’s British male counterpart - has died in his apartment by what looks like a gas explosion/fire.

Second image from TV Guide’s spread on the season premiere of Bones.

It doesn’t take long for Bones to come to the conclusion that his death was not accidental and that their trip home has been postponed indefinitely. Pritchard has taken the news hard, but she pulls herself together to devote herself to finding out what happened to her partner. Booth is great to her, completely understanding and very patient. I loved how they “got” each other. Booth isn’t offended in the least when Pritchard reasserts her role as the officer in charge of the investigation, and Pritchard doesn’t even ask Booth to stay, she just hands him the gun back. It’s like there’s just a common, unspoken language going on between them.

During the investigation, we follow Booth and Bones on multiple false leads, one that lead Booth and Bones to confront Wexler’s rowing mates. The lack of anything resembling respect is humorous, but when the guy head-butts Booth and ends up almost knocking himself out, that was just priceless. He tells the other man there that he has a head like a boulder, which pretty well fits my impression of Booth very well!

After this visit, it comes out that Wexler and Pritchard had more than a professional relationship, which of course makes her more of a suspect that she feels necessary. While alone with Pritchard, Bones admits to her “You have a strong sexual appetite and you’re not hamstrung by social moralizing. I can empathize with that.” Just the practical kind of thing Bones would say. Later, Pritchard encourages Bones to take advantage of her own “Everest” - as she has said that she viewed sleeping with Wexler as kind of like climbing Mount Everest, it’s been done before, but you do it for the experience. The sad thing is that Bones doesn’t seem to catch on that she’s meaning Booth.

During all of this, back in the states, Angela and Hodgins are duking it out with Cam after she’s admitted to sleeping with Grayson, Angela’s ex-husband. Sweets pulls them into a Cam-mandated conference where they all apologize to each other and Sweets implies that there’s some other underlying issues that has made them take out their frustration on Cam. Later at the diner, Angela and Hodgins finally sit down and talk, and the outcome isn’t good.

They basically decide that they don’t trust each other, and Angela leaves. I don’t know about you, but I really felt that there was something wrong with that whole scene, and I don’t just mean that I didn’t want to see them break up. Despite the fact that it was just too civil, who wouldn’t be on a high emotional plane after what they just went through? I’ll be curious to see how, and if, they resolve this. I would think that they do truly love each other, and it just seems wrong that they would let it all go due to this. Also, would this have happened if Cam hadn’t confessed to sleeping with Grayson? That seemed to be when all their craziness started…

Back to England, Booth and Bones do their thing and end up almost stumbling into the truth that one of Wexler’s own students was the murderer. The climax of their solving the murder wasn’t as, well, climatic as I usually enjoy from Bones, but the rest of the show held plenty of drama to make up for it. With the case closed, Pritchard can move on knowing her partner’s death has been solved, and at the end, shows Booth a little bit more attention than just that of a colleague. Bones, seemingly completely unfazed and non-jealous, gives him a hard time about it.

Just as the show ends, the once London-hating Booth admits that he has decided that it’s not as bad as he had thought. Seems jolly-old-England has grown on him!