The Salt in the Wounds – REVIEWS

Post reviews here; hopefully the trend they started last week will continue and Bones will keep given peeps good things to talk about!

Zap2It reports:


[Only admins are allowed to see this link]


'Bones': After-school special


By [Only admins are allowed to see this link]
March 19, 08:31 PM



BONES slips into very Special Episode territory with this tale of teen
pregnancy, a poor man's Paulie Bleeker, and a gruesome corpse. Plus,
NotZack teaches us a valuable lesson about religious tolerance, and
Angela's Gotta Have It.

Our Corpse of the Week is found in the
road-salt supply, so it's basically jerky. That would be Ashley Clark,
a 16-year-old volleyball player who was pregnant. Funnily enough, so
were half of her volleyball teammates. Look, I hated volleyball, too,
but there are easier ways to get out of playing...

Ashley was impregnated by one Clinton Gilmour, who only wishes
he were Paulie from Juno. Sorry, kid, but goofy hair and a schlubby
manner do not a Michael Cera make. Clinton also knocked up three of
Ashley's teammates. Booth is incredulous -- no way do hot girls like that sleep with a goofball like Clinton -- but yep, DNA tests prove that the babies are is.

Did
he kill Ashley? Nope. Let’s try door number two! She argued with her
coach, but that was because she (1) tried to seduce him and (2) came
back later and threatened to name him Baby Daddy if he didn't fork over
$5000. Coach went directly to the principal. Then there's her mom --
she's a little off-kilter, and there's evidence that they fought the
day Ashley died. Yeah, we did, but I didn't kill her -- I was just
upset that she forged my name on a check for $5000.

Brennan is
all excited to get to the bones, but Cam wants to rehydrate the flesh
and examine the soft tissue. Good thing, too -- there's a bruise right
over a specific nerve by her ear. Hit that nerve with enough force, and
a person will go into cardiac arrest and die. That's the cause of
death, and the bones wouldn't have shown it (although a blown-up
digital x-ray of the skull is what showed a cracked bone in the middle
ear that led Cam to investigate that bit of tissue, but never mind.)
Ashley was killed by a single, expertly placed blow with a strange
rounded implement. That, we discover, belonged to her chiropractor --
Ashley finally managed to seduce an adult, and tried to blackmail him
for that $5,000 she was so hung up on. He killed her.

But why
did she want $5,000? That's because Queen Bee Alyssa -- the first girl
to get pregnant, the captain of all the teams, the student body
president, etc. -- figured out that it would take $5,000 apiece in seed
money for all the teen moms to rent a house together and raise their
kids as one happy, communal group. The newspapers think there was a
pregnancy pact, but the show suggests that it was just... peer
pressure? Wanting to be like the Queen Bee? A really lousy year for
movies, and so the girls had nothing else to do? Sure, whatever.
Anyway, Alyssa got knocked up (by Clinton) because she was under too
much pressure to be perfect and by her parents mapping her life out for
her. Again -- easier ways to get out of that, Alyssa...

In the
end, Booth decides to scare Clinton straight, telling him that he could
be on the hook for child support, that he brought life into this world
and he's responsible whether the mothers want him to be or not, and
that it's time for him to man up and, you know, be a man. Booth's
steely gaze convinces Clinton to embark on the path to responsible
adulthood.

The Lab Rats
Roxie dumps
Angela, and Angela ends up in bed (and it may have been Louis XIV's
bed, considering it was in the middle of the Jeffersonian's storage
warehouse) with Hodgins. Angela's fine with it -- she's a "live in the
moment" type -- but she gets wigged when she realizes that Brennan
approves of her romantic philosophy. So Angela chats with Sweets, who
advises her to lay off sex for six months and try to make other
connections with people. Hilarity will presumably ensue.

Speaking
of "hilarity" -- the NotZack of the week is an Iranian Muslim who --
get this! -- prays five times a day! Isn't it wacky? A guy, taking
breaks to pray! On his knees, bobbing up and down! Haw! Brennan is
possibly even more tone-deafly insulting toward his religion than she
is towards everyone else's, which takes some skill. That’s annoying,
but not unprecedented. Hodgins, Cam and Angela getting wigged or making
comments about someone who observes religious practices? That struck me
as odd. But in the end, Special Episode NotZack teaches us a Valuable
Lesson by speaking in a language we all can understand -- the
post-breakup wallow-mix CD -- thus showing that we're not so different
after all. That's one to grow on!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• No Booth/Brennan section today, because there was no notable
  Booth/Brennan interaction. Sure, Brennan smiles at him through a window
  at the end, but that hardly even registers.
  
• Angela tries to get Roxie to decide between a dog and a cat. She
  contrasts a picture of an adorable shelter puppy with a lion eating a
  gazelle.
  
• OK, foley artists? The crackling as the scalp and top of the skull were removed was wholly unnecessary.
  
• Clinton, when Booth and Brennan interview the guy Ashley and her
  friend Becca fought over: “Dude, you're a murder suspect! That's
  awesome!” I weep for the kids who get his genes…
  
• Booth, when they see the room full for pregnant or new-mother
  volleyball players: “This school ever hear of sex education?” Bones:
  “If so, there are gaps in the curriculum.” Does sex ed cover
  Chiroptera-feces crazy?
  

I so forgot all about EW's Popwatch recap on the last aired eppie!! If someone is still interested, here it is:

[Only admins are allowed to see this link]

'Bones' recap: Booth gets serious, Hodgins gets ripped!

Mar 20, 2009, 10:45 AM | by Mandi Bierly

[Only admins are allowed to see this image]
I know we all like Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) because he's charming
and goofy, but, honestly, he's never sexier to me than when he's
talking seriously about what it means to be a man. Last night's episode
was very interesting
both in terms of the case at hand -- an alleged teen pregnancy pact
that resulted with a dead girl in a winter salt truck -- and for how it
could factor into [Only admins are allowed to see this link] (Brennan asks Booth to father her child, Booth has a major illness)...

I'm beginning to wonder if bad jokes are a symptom of whatever
medical crisis Booth experiences later this season. Did he really say
that he was getting a potato chip craving when they found
that girl in the mound of salt? [Only admins are allowed to see this link] Said girl was quickly ID'd as a
missing high school volleyball player, and the hormones in her blood
revealed that she was pregnant. Her mother (Caroline in the City's Amy Pietz, who just guest-starred on TNT's Trust Me -- good for her), refused to believe that her good little girl was sexually active, but dad had seen a pregnancy test and guessed as much.
The writers toyed briefly with the usual suspects: The ex-boyfriend
(only he's a good Christian); the pregnant ex-best friend, played by
Monique Coleman, who also dated the ex-boyfriend (only they would've
made up); the father (no incest here); the strict mother (she didn't
know the girl was pregnant, she just knew that she'd tried to forge a
$5,000 check from her); and the volleyball coach (he reported the
girl's attempt to extort $5,000 from him). I thought maybe it would've
been the volleyball team's alpha female, a girl who'd been the class
valedictorian and student body president until she got pregnant -- but
no, she just allowed half her teammates to think it was a great idea
for them to get pregnant, too, so they could buy a house together (in
this market? good luck!) and raise their babies together.

I've never spent much time thinking about what would motivate a teen
pregnancy pact -- because it's just so unthinkable to me -- so I can't
speak to how unique the show's theory was. I guess we're supposed to
believe that like the alpha female, the other girls were under so much
pressure from their parents to succeed and follow a certain path that
they just wanted their roads to end. You can give up dreams and
ambitions if they're not actually yours. As Brennan said, these girls
are being raised in a society that tells you half of all marriages end
in divorce, you can't count on a man. You count on your friends;
they'll never leave you. I like that concept (as a plot device, I mean)
more than I would the idea that these girls got themselves pregnant
just because the most popular girl in school did. Each of the girls had
to come up with $5,000, and the victim was killed when she seduced her
chiropractor and threatened him with statutory rape if he didn't give
her the money.

It turns out the same schlubby kid, Clinton, got the alpha female, the
victim, her ex-best friend, and a fourth girl pregnant. He'd comforted
the alpha one night when her parents overwhelmed her, but he didn't
want to help raise the baby. In other words, he was no Randall Batinkoff in the 1988 Molly Ringwald classic For Keeps. (LOVED that movie.) But that made him the perfect sperm donor for the other girls who didn't have boyfriends that would put out.
It's unfathomable to me that a 16-year-old in today's world wouldn't
get that he had fathered four children until Booth pointed it out to
him, showing him pictures of the girls, telling him that anyone of them
could change her mind and ask him for child support -- except for the
victim, who was killed along with his son. (I guess it had to be a son
to make a kid that would use girls like that care, huh?) Where was this
boy's father? Why wasn't he the one telling him what defines you as a
man? I guess maybe he, like bench-pressing Booth at first, refused to
believe that his boy was the "Mac Daddy Baby Daddy." Regardless, as I
said at the start of the recap, it was nice (and sexy) to see Booth get
serious for a change. To be commanding, protective, and nurturing at
all once. His conversation with Clinton -- which made Brennan swoon, if
that's possible -- made me think that there's no way he'd
father a baby for Brennan unless he was going to commit to her. I can
see her thinking to ask him (if you believe that she's actually ready
to have a baby -- which I don't), but how does she honestly expect him
to say yes? Unless maybe she thinks he's going to die, and
she convinces him that another piece of him besides Parker should live
on, and that it should be with her because his personality completes
hers...

We could ponder that plot twist (and whether Booth's sudden visits
to the vending machine are a symptom of the mystery illness -- god, I
hope not!), but let's get back to this episode. Back at the lab,
Brennan was breaking in a new assistant, Arastoo, and learning about
religious tolerance in the workplace. Loved the classic Brennan defense
that she wasn't prejudice against Muslims -- she finds all religions
equally irrational. After so many episodes where Brennan was more than
happy to be in the field, it was almost weird to see her back in the
lab, acting sooo competitive with Cam. It was, however, cool for
long-time fans to see Brennan attempt to use one of the "freebies" she
negotiated when Cam was first hired. She wanted access to the bones
before Cam was ready to part with them. It was also rewarding to see an
example of why Cam is actually the boss at the Jeffersonian -- she was
smart enough to figure out how to rehydrate the body, which made the
assistant have to find some way to get an image of the skeleton while
the skin was still on it, which revealed some mark on some nerve that
the chiropractor would've known to strike to cause cardiac arrest. I
really didn't understand half the words that were spoken in the lab
last night, but that's how I like it. Be smarter than me. Please.

Of course, the other big development last night was Hodgins' upper
body. Damn! Roxy broke up with Angela because Angela wasn't ready to
live together even though she wanted them to get a puppy. Okay. So Roxy
(not blonde before, right?) gave Angela some line about how Angela
lives for the moment, and sadly, this moment has passed. I really
thought Hodgins meant it when he said he was taking Angela for coffee,
but they ended up in their old Egyptian haunt, in bed, where we saw the
shirtless, ripped Hodgins. Obviously, they can't stay together because
Angela doesn't think about the future -- EXCEPT FOR THAT TIME WHEN SHE
WAS TOTALLY READY TO MARRY HODGINS. I think this Angela-can't-commit
storyline is kinda bullcrap. She was past these issues before her
ex-husband showed up and ruined everything but Cam's night. But it
did yield some nice moments, like Brennan and Angela having what could
be their first lunch together, ever, and Angela being horrified that
Brennan approves of how she operates her love life. And, my new
favorite pairing, Angela opening up to Sweets as they went undercover
as a married couple to find the chiropractor's murder weapon. He told
her she needs to give up sex for six months and start to relate to
people in a way that's not carnal. This could be very fun. I'd love to
see a sexually-frustrated Angela come on to Booth, or Sweets (what? he
looked good in that T-shirt when he was getting his back cracked).
Maybe she could just kiss Sweets one night when she's drunk. That would
be enough to make me happy.

So what did you think of last night's episode? How do you hope the
Brennan-wants-a-baby and Booth-has-an-illness storylines will be
introduced and play out? Do you want Angela and Hodgins back together
now, or would you like to see her accept Sweets' celibacy challenge?
How lame was that "Bones Break"? (This show is known for having awesome
blooper reels, but those ones weren't funny.) Why do you think Brennan
is huffing and puffing like a spoiled child in the lab now? And what
was your favorite song on the melancholy mix CD empathetic Arastoo made
for Angela? (I'm off to find my Mazzy Star album now.)

Hey Mary, you need to edit the second review to warn people of the spoilers contained within! I didn't read the second one in case there was more spoilers, but the first review was quite positive!