TVSquad

(S03E05) Bones -- Who's stronger -- Catwoman or Wonder Woman?

Jack and Zack together -- Wonder Woman.

Bones -- I concur, vehemently.

Before I begin my review of this week's Bones I need to read this message from the Male Chauvinist Pig Association of America. It goes 'To the Producers of Bones . . . Concerning the skimpy and revealing costumes worn by your characters Temperance Brennan, Angela Montenegro, and Camille Saroyan we of the M.C.P.A.A. have one thing to say to you: you rock!' Oh, there's a postscript as well. It says 'Please ignore the saliva stains.'

Um, yeah. Let's move on, shall we?

Gallery: Bones: Mummy in the Maze

In my opinion this was the best episode of the season so far. It had everything in it that makes Bones the show that it is: a very good murder mystery, fairly creepy dead bodies, plenty of humor, a good bit of interaction between Booth and the rest of the squints of the Jeffersonian, and killer clowns. Plus, there was further advancement in the investigation of Angela's current husband.

This is where a good bit of the episode's humor derived from, as the investigator on this case, Amber Kippler, was a bit unorthodox in her methods. That's not to say that she wasn't good at what she did, but she wasn't as, um, unemotional as you would find other private investigators. For instance, you probably would have never heard Mike Hammer say "He smells exactly like a fresh wind just after a summer storm" about someone he was looking for. And, Mike probably wouldn't have taken off his shirt in order to get the object of a client's investigations to fall for him (well, maybe he did; we just didn't read about it). For her part, Angela wasn't tempted by what Ms. Kippler had to say about her near perfect specimen of a husband.

The rest of the humor came from our friends Booth and Bones. Not so much from their conversational interactions, mind you, but from the actions they took while together. One of the more amusing was Booth's encounter with the killer clown at the amusement park's Dungeon of 1000 Corpses. Seeley plays such a tough guy in front of Bones and the rest of the Squints, but he's still really a little boy inside. Proof of that were his little yelps of fear when Bones kind of snuck up behind him in the dungeon while he was staring at the killer clown and then again when the killer clown touched him.

Another amusing moment, even though it came at a pretty serious climax on the show, was when Bones and Booth found the missing teenager in the tunnel storage areas between the Bethesda and Friendship Heights Metro stations (by the way, my one pet peeve this episode was when they called the Metro the subway. Anyone who has lived in the Washington D.C. area at any time in the last 30 years knows that people call it the Metro or the color of the line on the Metro map.) It was just one mishap or another.

First, Bones shoots the lock off the door with her hideously huge gun (which Booth wonders where she kept in her Wonder Woman costume) and injures Booth in the leg with the backlash. Then, when she discovers the room where the victim is being held is full of snakes, she jumps up on a box and needs to be carried on Booth's back to rescue the kidnapped teenager. Luckily, even after this all occurs, Seeley takes out the killer clown with just one shot. His final line of the scene is the best as he says to Bones "Now you see why I hate clowns."

The costumes of the characters also made the show. Booth dressing up as an overly nerdy Squint (complete with 1982 Casio calculator), Bones as Wonder Woman, Angela as Cher, Jack as Commander Edward John Smith, Captain of the Titanic, and Zack as the back end of a cow (Naomi from paleontology was the front end and was seen passing by Booth later in the episode). Zack's lingering look at Booth's costume and Seely's reaction to it gave me a giggle or two.

For all of the humor that was in this episode the murder mystery itself was pretty heavy. The mummies that were discovered were pretty low on the ick scale, although the spider that came out of the eye socket of the one found in the maze was pretty creepy. When it was discovered that the mummies were teenage girls it made for a more serious investigation. I didn't even suspect the paramedic as the killer and had to go back through the recording of the episode to see if it was the same EMT guy at the amusement park.

Did you all happen to recognize the Grim Reaper dude that was at both the maze and the amusement park? That was Rider Strong, who played Shawn Hunter on Boy Meets World. In this episode of Bones he was suspected of committing the murders. Turns out that he was just fooling around with the murdered girls then slapping them around a bit to turn his girlfriend on. See what happens when sitcom stars go bad?

There was one other scene in this week's episode that I wanted to highlight because it showed some major differences between the characters. It was the scene where Booth and the Squints find out that the last victim is still alive and they all try to figure out where she is. Booth asks Zach and Jack to guess her location, but Cam and Angela reply at the same time that they don't guess. Looking at the scene the analytical members of the team were on one side of the room while those who work with their gut were on the other side. It was interesting to watch because it reminded me that there are really two different camps when it comes to solving crimes on Bones.

Next week ... Murder at the Jeffersonian. Have a joyous Halloween.