Hey, BONES fans! How did you like this episode, “The Family in the Feud”? Once again the theme of the case overlapped into the family drama. There is a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it.

THE CASE:

The Scene of the Crime: While truffle hunting, a man comes upon a skeleton perched against some tree branches. Booth and Brennan and Hodgins arrive to the scene, where Brennan determines the victim is male and near 80 years old. There is quite a bit of dried blood on his clothing and his overalls were caught in tree branches.

The Victim: Tug Babcock, oldest living member of the Babcock family, currently in a feud with the Mobley family. The feud between the families goes back to the 1890s, when Carlene Babcock married Stonewall Mobley. Legend has it that Carlene killed Stonewall and stole his land. When she ended up dead as well, the families have been fighting over the land ever since. As the case continues, the team realizes that Tug had stage four bone cancer and only a few weeks to live.

Potential Suspects and Motives: Booth talks to Tug’s family — his son Ephraim, his wife Claire (a lawyer) and their son, Junior. Claire makes it clear that she doesn’t like hunting, especially not for food. They tell Booth to question the Mobleys, and so Booth and Brennan make their way to the rival family’s land.

On that property, Norbert Mobley takes a gun to Booth (and is soundly beaten at his own game…well done Booth!), and once he’s restrained, Brennan asks for the full history of the feud. He is glad to hear Tug is dead but can’t take credit for the kill. When asked why he’s walking around his property with a rifle, he says it’s because people have been digging holes in his land at night.

When Hodgins discovers the land is embedded with a vein of copper, the pool of suspects grows larger. Dennis Timmons has an agreement with Tug that he can mine the land, once Tug is dead. Sweets questions him, and while he admits he was sneaking on the land and night and that his company is bankrupt, he insists he didn’t kill Tug.  He says there is a young blonde woman sneaking around the land at night too.

Booth follows that lead and meets SueBob Mobley. He threatens to take her in for murder, but she confesses that the reason she was on the property is because she and Junior are in love. Meanwhile, the Jeffersonian team figures out that the bullet used to kill Tug was embedded with Stonewall Mobley’s bone fragments.

The Verdict: Booth questions Junior, who has Claire alongside as his legal counsel. Junior says that Tug wanted to end the feud and supported his love for SueBob. Claire is horrified, but Junior insists Tug even gave him money to buy a ring for SueBob.  Sweets suggests to Booth that Claire is a good suspect, since she has the most to lose financially. She denies that she was in the woods, but Hodgins is able to analyze her clothing and once it’s clear she was, she confesses that she just wanted a little more time to make more money from the feuding families’ lawsuits.

THE SQUINTS:

Well, I won’t clog up this review with more Daisy-hate, except to say this — she often brings out the worst qualities in people. That it’s not just one person this happens with makes her the suspect there, I think. But truly, she egged Brennan and Cam on toward unnecessary competition (not that those two don’t compete on their own), passive-aggressively taunted Hodgins regarding his truffles and patronized Angela about her work on the case. I think Daisy also brings out the worst in Sweets, but then again, he was doing enough on his own on that front, pestering Booth about the Christine childcare situation with Brennan and Max. To Sweets’ credit, he did correctly identify the murderer.

What did you think about Cam’s insistence that she was victorious in the lab over Daisy? Also, last week there were mixed feelings about Hodgins and his zealousness regarding the lab equipment. Did you have the same reaction to him and the truffles this week?  And what are your thoughts on the Brennan/Angela/Cam conversation at the lab where both women tried to convince Brennan to forgive Max? I was torn because I love Brennan, and I thought Angela and Cam were kind of flippant about it, but on the other hand, I believed Max too.

One of my favorite moments of the episode came courtesy of Caroline Julian, when she all but promised to kiss Booth if he solved the case. Um, Caroline, when he’s wearing that holster and solving crimes, we all want to kiss him.

BOOTH & BRENNAN:

After Christine is expelled from the daycare (because of how much Brennan cares for their daughter, Booth smiles sarcastically), Booth and Brennan are forced to consider alternate childcare for her. Brennan has worked her way through a couple of nanny agencies as well as some doctoral candidates, but none are good enough. Booth tells her he’s going to take care of it, and she balks at first but eventually tells him that she trusts him.

But she wavers when she finds out that Booth has enlisted Max to babysit Christine. This brings up fear and memories of the past for Brennan. Booth asks her to give Max a shot, and she agrees, but when she tries to call him several times, and she doesn’t answer, she calls a halt to the experiment and tells Max to leave.

The relationship between Max and Brennan has always been a fascinating one. We’ve seen that Brennan likes to be in control of it, allowing him into her life when she can handle it. That sounds cold, but we know she isn’t cold. She might be reserved, but she does love him and accepts his love, and it has worked for them, until now.

I liked Brennan’s honest emotions of fear and sadness at her reaction to Max — when he said he thought she hadn’t called him because she trusted him but that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, I teared up and I loved that Brennan didn’t want it to be that way. I loved the way they reconciled at the end, and I think it’s important that Max is the one who showed up to apologize again.

I think Booth has had a long history of sort of pushing Brennan toward Max and family reconciliation (while resisting his own family sometimes, but that is another story!), so it didn’t surprise me that he did that in this episode too. What do you think? Did he overstep his bounds or did he do the right thing?

Enough from me; it’s time for you to weigh in. Were you surprised by the killer? Did you like the Booth/Brennan/Max/Christine storyline? The comments are open, so sound off!