Bones – Papa does teach; Bones in trouble deep

(Season 4, Episode 11 – “The Bone That Blew”)

The theme was family on this week’s Bones. First, we had 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.

All that, and Sister Sledge performed “We Are Family”. Okay, I just put that one in just to make sure you were paying attention. Now that I see you are, let’s look at a few factors from this, the last new episode of Bones for 2008.

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 week’s 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. I want to ask the fathers who are reading this a question: have you ever felt the same way? Personally, I’d rather save my money and have my children go to a good college then break the bank early to get them into a privately-owned educational institution. And, trust me, there’s plenty of temptation where i live since I have several private schools within a 2-mile radius of my home in beautiful Delaware. Anyway, I have four kids … so, I can start a college of my own if I wanted!

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: You probably 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 week’s 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. But, as a regular viewer of Law & Order:SVU, if you’ve seen one messed-up, private school student, you’ve seen them all.

Well, that does it for the first half of the fourth season of Bones. After a pretty dismal premiere the show picked up well and was able to move ahead without the inclusion of Zack. There’s been some activity in the Bones-Booth thang (though, it’s barely noticeable) as well as a resolution to the Angela-Hodgins relationship. When the show returns on January 15th it will be on it’s new post American Idol night of Thursday. The time will still be 8 p.m. Until then, have a good holiday season.

Clacked by Richard Keller
on Nov 28, 2008 @ 11:00 EST5EDT