BONES Recap: ‘The But in the Joke’

Hello, BONES fans! With a title like “The But in the Joke,” it’s almost a guarantee this episode would be one the writers affectionately like to call a “crimedy”. But did it make you laugh? Did the crime intrigue you? There is a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it.

The Case: The Scene of the Crime: An artist using super adhesive to add a poster to a billboard loses his bucket of glue and falls to the ground, becoming adhered to a human corpse. Very gross, but kind of creative, and it generated some funny moments in the lab. The live human refuses to give his name so Booth nicknames him “Michelangelo”, and Fischer, Hodgins, Brennan and Cam work to have his body unfused from the corpse, who, because he had a fake arrow on his head, is nicknamed Steve Martin for awhile. Nice!

The Victim: Michelangelo turns out to be Seth Zalinsky or “Zed” a famous local street artist. “Steve” is eventually determined to be Morgan Donnelly, a local telemarketer by day and stand up comic by night. His coworkers, friends, and rivals aren’t positive about him, as he often stole women, and jokes. Morgan’s body suffered blunt force trauma, particularly to his face. He had a few teeth bashed in, and the team also finds a small sliver of ceramic with the teeth remains.

The Case Progression: The comedy world proves to be an underbelly of potential suspects, from the bartender, Larry, who fed Morgan funny lines to keep the audience laughing and coming back to Rex, the competition, who stood to snag the primo Friday night slot with Morgan’s death (and also used a large mallet in his act)

Booth and Brennan talk with Denny Bennet, who directs them to question Morgan’s girlfriend, Alexa. Booth and Brennan go to her house and also meet her brother Elliott. They are surprised when Alexa and Elliott laugh hysterically upon hearing of Morgan’s demise.

It quickly gets serious when Sweets questions Alexa about Morgan’s death at the FBI building. She insists she’s innocent and that she and Elliott only thought Morgan was playing a practical joke. Alexa tells Sweets they should be looking for whoever put the arrow on Morgan’s head–he would never stoop to such base comedy; his jokes were cerebral. She tells Sweets that Elliott, who also provided jokes to Morgan, recorded all of Morgan’s routines.

B&B question Larry, a frequent heckler who insists he was part of Morgan’s act and they question Rex, who is not sad to hear of Morgan’s death. But his mallet contains only traces of turnip juice from his act.

When Sweets analyzes Morgan’s jokes, he figures they were written by other people, giving credence to the idea that Morgan stole jokes. He suggests that Booth try his hand at stand-up, using some stolen jokes, to try to fish out the killer. Booth takes the stage and sure enough, a young woman, Annie Pinkus, accuses him of stealing her jokes.

Booth questions her at the FBI building, but she insists that she sold her jokes to Morgan with the understanding that he would take her to New York and get famous as a joke writer.

When Brennan, Angela and Fischer determine the ceramic shards found in Morgan’s remains were part of a toilet, Hodgins examines toilets in the DC area and narrows it down to the toilet in Alexa and Elliott’s home.

The Verdict: Booth and Brennan question Alexa again, who insists she’s innocent. When it looks like Elliott might be the killer, she lawyers up. But it doesn’t matter much, as Elliott confesses to the crime. Morgan was brushing him off, and he got angry.

What didn’t work for me:

Everything about Angela, basically–from her peanut butter (contrived plot!) to the unicorn/rainbow painting (though I also blame the show— what was that?!). I hate to even waste more space on this server about her, except for one thing. It is insanely awful that her ‘comforting’ reason for ‘making-up’ with Hodgins after she kissed Zed (and didn’t apologize) was because she failed as an artist. Hey, Hodgins, congratulations man…she’s resigned herself to being with you because the other thing isn’t panning out. Except, watch out buddy, because she got a little excited at the end, when the (deliberately) douche-y Zed kind of liked her art. Unbelievable, seriously. She’s the worst.

I love Steve Martin, so I was a little annoyed when Sweets dissed him. At first, I was indignant, like “HE WOULD!” but then it also struck me as strange. Sweets seems like he *would* like Steve Martin, you know?

What I loved:

I laughed when Zed was excited to have a large, rugged pelvis and when Brennan corrected him. Also laughed when he said everyone in the lab was a combination of smart and dumb

Booth in his robe and pajamas and the arrow-to-the-head at the end of the episode was pretty cute, as was Brennan in her pretty peach nightgown telling Booth that she has been an excellent influence on the sophistication of his thinking

There was also a moment at the beginning of the episode, when B&B were questioning Denny. Once he admitted that Alexa was his ex-girlfriend, Booth recognized a motive. He just sort of sidled up to Denny and perched on the interrogation room table, and yeah…Booth worked for me in this ep

Like probably all of us, I think the Toyota ads are awful, but at least when they are B&B together, ED and DB do a good job of making them work. I laughed when Booth said sometimes he wanted to die of a busted knuckle

Enough from me; what did you like about this episode? What didn’t you like? Were you surprised by the killer? Do you think Booth ‘killed it’ on stage? The comments are open–sound off!