Bones - The Doctor in the Photo recap/review with help from Hatts

Turkey dinner at Brennan’s house apparently includes a blow-by-blow analysis of the main course’s final moments in the slaughterhouse. Her guests, the whole squint crew (plus Hannah and Booth), were less-than-charmed by this party trick, but we found it adorable. Fortunately, they were saved from choking down their dinner by a call from Cam.

This week’s murder happened in a bad neighborhood about 11 months ago, and the body was found enmeshed in the roots of a growing tree. The female victim was a very sophisticated heart surgeon whose weight and height matched Brennan's. This might not have been enough to creep Bones out had she not found a dolphin ring identical to her own on the victim’s skeletal hand. The rest of this highly anticipated episode followed Brennan's decent into a delusional obsession over the similarities between her and the dead surgeon.

Brennan spent sleepless nights in the lab trying to solve the murder while listening to the victim’s recorded medical journal entries. But when Lauren (the victim) spoke in Brennan’s head, she spoke in Brennan’s own voice. As the episodes progressed, Brennan conducted imaginary conversations with the voice, because she felt that because of the similarities she shared with Lauren, she knew Lauren enough to do “her side.” Brennan was visited by the night guard (played by the same guy who was Keith Mars). This episode was a treat for Veronica Mars fans, because two V-Mars actors graced this Bones episode. The night guard quoted all the free Smithsonian lectures he attended to steer Bones deeper into her self-reflection. One of us thought this was a nicely written, sweet part for the absolutely loveable night guard. The other blogger thought it was weird and out-of-place.

It turned out that, in order to survive the emotional toll of the death of young patients, Lauren had become emotionally detached. Whenever she was under great emotional strain, yet felt numb, she would engage in dangerous activities “in order to feel something.” Her death was the result of a car accident in a bad neighborhood where Lauren was buying heroine from a drug dealer, just for the thrill of it. There was an airplane pilot who was in love with Lauren, and being closed-off emotionally because she was fragile, she rejected him. Brennan told the pilot that not giving him a chance was Lauren’s biggest regret. It was around this moment that Brennan realized that she had made the same mistake when she didn’t say yes to Booth last year.

DUH. Oh Brennan, if we didn’t love you so much….

Brennan hurried to the neighborhood where the murder occurred and bent down to check out a road reflector that had possibly tripped Lauren. Lost in the task of blindly following her intuition (a first for Brennan), she didn’t notice a car racing toward her in the pouring rain. Fortunately, Booth appeared to pull her out of harm’s way. He said he was “following her into a bad part of town and saving her life, you know, the usual.” On the ride home, Brennan told Booth that turning him down was something she regrets. A pained Booth quietly insisted that he had moved on, Hannah was not a consolation prize, and that Brennan would get over the pain, because he did. Brennan burst into tears, which isn’t common.

If you like the quippy, “git r done” Booth a la season one, he was back in this episode. This Brennan-centric episode had most of the side characters benched. It looks like Hannah is sticking around, so those of you who have grown fond of her despite her DATING BOOTH WHEN HE SHOULD BE WITH BONES are lucky. This episode had a different tone than most episodes, but it was a long time coming. Brennan reflected at the end that, during the time covered in the episode (three days), the world turned upside down. It was a strange one, that’s for sure.

It left us really sad, because Lauren helped us understand Brennan, and they are both pretty tragic figures. Plus, we really want Booth with Brennan. We can’t believe she reached out and then got her heart broken. UGH. We like a Bones episode that pays attention to the Booth/Brennan imminent love relationship though. This was less of a procedural episode, and more of an intrinsic, character-driven episode for longtime watchers of Bones. We think Brennan's realization and admission will, in the long run, propel the two closer toward a relationship, so we are happy, overall. Even so, that was tragic.

Episode grade: B. We missed the humor and side characters.