Bones - The Bullet in the Brain recap/review

This week on Bones, the death of one Big Bad gave way to a new Big Bad.

The Gravedigger, a former prosecutor, liked to bury people alive, including burying Brennan and Hodgins, and trapping Booth. The manipulative baddie was trying to win an appeal, and she was riding to the courthouse with Sweets. She tried to intimidate Sweets by calling him the weakest part of the group, saying that if he testified it would benefit her. It worked. Sweets was completely wigged out. Ok, she’s scary, but we’re not buying that she is THAT scary. Sweets knows that she is a manipulative creep and, as a smart guy and a shrink, shouldn’t have let her get to him.

As they exited to walk to the courthouse, a sniper blew The Gravedigger’s head off, blasting Sweets with blood and getting chunks of skull and brains all over the ground. Nice. And disgusting. Although, it’s amazing that they can show something that nasty on network, prime time television nowadays.

Hodgins was ecstatic when he heard of The Gravedigger’s fate, and Angela was concerned at his approval of the man who shot her. Booth drew up a suspect list of possible vigilantes who could have made such a difficult shot. Brennan’s father, Max, was on it. Max showed up to prove to Brennan that he didn’t do it, because her opinion was the only opinion that mattered to him. As it turns out, Max could not have made the shot, and he was able to show Brennan and Booth that he wasn’t in town at the time of the shooting.

Sweets was still upset at the memory of The Gravedigger’s words bashing his skills (and the sight of her brain matter on his nice suit). But prosecutor Caroline gave him a lecture that smacked him right back into reality, and in a vulnerable moment, she admitted that she “messed herself” when The Gravedigger got shot in front of her, because she was scared. She asked Sweets not to tell anyone. We respect Caroline so much that we feel bad telling you that she messed herself on this blog. It was a sweet, brave moment where she reached out to Sweets in empathy, throwing away her tough-as-nails image for a moment to help him out. Good character moment.

The Squints and Brennan found out where the sniper was sitting when he shot The Gravedigger, and Booth and Brennan went to that location—an apartment. There was a dead escort in the bathtub, and that image was even nastier than The Gravedigger’s blown-off skull fragments. The escort lived in the apartment and had been warned by the sniper to get lost that day. She didn’t, so she became a casualty.

Booth narrowed the list of suspects down to just a few snipers, and they were all men that he knew, because men so skilled operated in a small circle. The final suspect was a man who shot a suspect despite instructions from his superiors, because he wanted to ensure the safety of a hostage. Booth knew and admired the man, but when the evidence pointed to him, Booth didn’t deny it. He found the man and confronted him, but the sniper got away.

Decent start to the sniper arc, and some good continuity and character development.

Episode grade: B+