Bones: The End in the Beginning

Posted by: Paul Little  •  May 15, 2009 @ 12:34am

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

So with the season ending tonight, we were told of some "developments" between Booth and Brennan that were definitely going to happen. Emily Deschanel and creator Hart Hanson, in particular, were openly talking about the "incident" between the two in this episode over the last couple weeks. They just weren't saying how or why it was going to happen. And with the last episode ending with Booth going in for brain surgery, his fate still up in the air, there was even the question of how would Booth even be well enough.

Of course, knowing all that, I still never saw an episode like THIS coming. From the first shots, with a voiceover from TJ Thyne (Hodgins) over Booth and Brennan in bed together (the "developments" mentioned above), I knew it would be a different kind of episode. But then as we discovered that all the Bones characters were somehow in this alternate universe surrounding this nightclub called "The Lab" (a night club version of the Jeffersonian), I for one was completely baffled. Was this a story being told with the characters we know and love stepping in for real people as a story device, or was this some sort of elaborate dream inside a comatose Booth during brain surgery?

Not knowing for sure until the end that it was the latter (even though it made the most sense), I still decided I jump on board and enjoy the ride. Did you?

Pretty much every recurring character, including all the rotating lab assistants (and a non-imprisoned Zach!), showed up in this one. Here's the breakdown of who did what in this story... Booth and Brennan ran the nightclub, and were also married. Cameron and Booth's brother Jared were cops working a murder case at The Lab. Angela, Sweets, Zach, Daisy, Mr. Nigel-Murray, Fisher, and Wendell all worked at the night club. Caroline was the club's legal representation. Hodgins was a crime novelist visiting the club. Clark was a hip-hop performer trying to play the club, whose brother had gang ties. Mr. Vaziri was the mysterious Persian real estate mogul trying to buy the club. And Brennan's shady dad Max was... well... Brennan's shady dad. Even though things were vastly different in this world, the characters still mostly had the same general characteristics, which was nice to see.

This alternate reality certainly had some fun stuff. Sweets had a band (the discovery of which led to him hooking up with Daisy). Oh, and the band was called Gormagon -- a nice shout-out to the multi-episode arc from last season. There was also mention of The Gravedigger, who in this world was a mobster that both Max and Jared worked for. Motley Crue even performed in the club at the end, for whatever reason. The hunt for the murderer showed us that all of the nightclub staff thought Booth did it, but were withholding evidence from the police to protect him, especially after they found out the victim was in the club to kill Brennan. As it turned out, Jared was the one who killed the hitman to protect Brennan (we found out early on that he had a thing for her), and Brennan talked him down from a surely lethal showdown between him and Cam once everyone realized who did it.

Turns out that while the story in the episode was Booth's four-day coma-induced dream, the voiceover from Hodgins was actually something Brennan was writing while waiting at Booth's bedside for him to awake:

You love someone, you open yourself up to suffering, that's the sad truth. Maybe they'll break your heart, maybe you'll break their heart and never be able to look at yourself in the same way. Those are the risks. That's the burden.

Like wings, they have weight, we fell that weight on our backs, but they are a burden that lifts us. Burdens that allow us to fly...

Despite the run-on sentences (Brennan must have a good editor if she's such an accomplished author!), it was the first time she ever opened up to the possibility that she actually loved Booth (at least for the audience to see). And then, just as she finished typing the last sentence, she promptly deleted the whole thing. And then we discovered the big cliff-hanger: Booth can't remember who Bones is.

So where does that leave us for next season? Will we have a Booth trying to remember who he is? Or who the people around him are? Or is it just Brennan he doesn't remember? Obviously the memories are somewhere in his head, given his dream, but how long will it take to come to the surface? And how will it affect his relationship with Brennan or his job as an FBI agent?

It's gonna be a long four months for Bones fans!

Tags: Bones, Emily Deschanel, David Boreanaz, TJ Thyne, John Francis Daly, Tamara Taylor, Michaela Conlin, Eric Millegan, Eugene Byrd, Ryan Cartwright

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Paul Little is the founder and Managing Editor of ShowbizMonkeys.com. When not interviewing his favourite musicians and comedians, he can also be found putting on and promoting music and comedy events with The Purple Room in Winnipeg, or co-producing the live comedy game shows Pants on Fire and The Great Patio Showdown. (@comedygeek)

Original Comments Posted (2)

stacyleigh says...

are you sure it was Sweets doing the voice-over? i thought it was Hodgins right from the get-go.

May 15, 2009 2:26pm

metal2000 says...

You were right. It's fixed now.

I assumed (without listening too closely) that it was Sweets' voice, given that he's been following their relationship and is writing a book on it.

But it was Hodgins, which makes sense, as it was Brennan's writing that was being spoken, and he was the crime novelist in Booth's dream.

May 26, 2009 3:33am

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