By Faith McQuinn
This week on a very special BONES, Brennan (Emily Deschanel) dresses up as Wonder Woman. Booth (David Boreanaz) dresses up as a squint, and they both have to face their phobias.
Even the deaths have a Halloween theme this week. Two mummified girls are found in a Halloween maze and an amusement haunted house. Both girls were literally scared to death. When a couple comes to Booth’s office saying their little girl has gone missing, Booth and Brennan are afraid they may have a serial killer on their hands. Well, it’s good to know that the writers of BONES know how to play up a holiday.
While attempting to figure out how each girl was killed and where, the team starts to uncover some pretty creepy stuff. The first mummified body was killed nearly a year ago, and Zack (Eric Millegan), who never jumps to conclusions, says it looks as if she were buried alive. Not too big of a surprise to learn the girl was extremely claustrophobic. The other girl is covered in spider bites. I wonder what she was most afraid of. The third girl has a fear of snakes. When Booth discovers that all the pet stores in town have just sold out of snakes, he’s hopeful she may still be alive.
My favorite thing about BONES is the nice balance of serious crime fighting and dry humor. The past couple of weeks on the show have been lacking in this balance, focusing more on the will-they-or-won’t-they relationship Booth and Brennan have going, but this week gave us relationship stuff, gooey bodies, and the funny.
In one of the many moments of funny meets serious, Brennan, Zack, and Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) are trying to scientifically work through figuring out where the girl could be. Meanwhile, Booth, Cam (Tamara Taylor) and Angela (Michaela Conlin) are simply getting in the way. Why is this funny, you ask? Because everyone in the room is in a costume. Even though they’re trying to work through a serious case, Zack corrects Booth when he calls him a horse’s ass (Zack is dresses as a cow’s ass by the way), and Brennan must assure herself that Wonder Woman is far more powerful than Cam’s Catwoman.
When the team finds the killer’s lair (that’s what Zack called it), Booth and Brennan rush to save the missing girl. Remember, they are in costume, and Brennan’s costume leaves very little to the imagination. So, could someone please explain to me where the hell Brennan could’ve put that big ass gun she carries? The fact that Booth asks this very question made it that much funnier. Is it bad to laugh when a girl’s life is on the line? No, not at all. It’s also not bad to laugh when Brennan uses her big ass gun to break a lock and accidentally shoots Booth in the leg because the bullet bounced off her Wonder Woman cuffs.
After the duo save the day, they return to the Jeffersonian looking like an extremely roughed up Wonder Woman and Clark Kent. The final scene with Booth and Brennan’s heart-to-heart seems to be the new staple for this season, and I don’t know how much I like it. It’s as if the writers want to keep beating us over the head with the possibility that these two could become more than friends. There are far better ways to do this, but I can’t complain too much. At least they didn’t go with the generic music video ending that so many shows are doing these days.