BONES Recap: ‘The Money Maker on the Merry Go Round’

Hello, BONES Fans! Did you like this episode, “The Money Maker on the Merry Go Round”? The title is a bit of a tongue twister, and the case is just as intricate. And if you can handle that, you’ll be right alongside Oliver Wells as he tried to impress Brennan, nay…even surpass her. To see if he succeeded, read on!

THE CASE

The Scene of the Crime: Several children are playing on an older playground, and the merry go round gets stuck. Two dads try to pry it loose and as they do, a human skull pops out and rolls into a toy truck. Ew.

The Victim: Toby Wachlin, a trader at a high profile securities firm. He’d recently cost the company a few million dollars but also previously been responsible for gaining them half a billion dollars. In such a competitive environment, any number of people could have a motive.

The Suspects:

• Annie Wachlin: Toby’s wife. She claims she was out of town when she heard Toby didn’t come home. But she stands to make a ton of money from his death.
• Mason: Toby’s boss. If he is upset about losing money, he could have killed Toby.
• Blair Ellis: Toby’s co-worker and sometimes rival. A former football champion, he claims he and Toby were on the same team, and it would go against his nature to harm a teammate.
• Derek Kaplan: Another co-worker. The team discovers Toby was injured (and possibly killed) with a candlestick at Derek’s home as Derek hosted a Wolf of Wall Street-esque party with drugs and women.
• McKenzie Solloway: The woman Toby was sleeping with. She held Toby’s wedding ring, wallet and phone until he paid her $4,000 for some sheets.

The Case Progression:

Booth figures out fairly quickly that the case bothers Aubrey — after all, his dad was responsible for a Ponzi scheme that cheated many people out of a lot of money. He asks Aubrey if he can handle the case, and the younger man says he’s all the more excited to solve it. They visit Toby’s office, and Mason points them toward Blair as a possible suspect.

Booth and Aubrey question him at the FBI building. He is wearing a championship ring and insists he would never kill Toby, the metaphoric quarterback of the team, no matter what types of losses Toby incurred for the team.

Brennan and Oliver Wells examine Toby’s skeleton and discover cause of death was a result of blows to the head. Cam finds traces of cocaine in his nose, evidence of heavy usage. Hodgins also discovers additional pollen in the cocaine substance, the result of Hungarian Oak pollen. This combination, along with trace residue of chemicals used by a pest control company, lead the team to Derek Kaplan’s house.

Booth and Aubrey pay a visit and discover a raucous party occurring in the middle of the day. Booth gets annoyed with Kaplan’s playboy attitude, and Aubrey reveals the tech team found traces of blood in a back bedroom.

The blood is a match for Toby, and fingerprints on a candlestick are those of McKenzie Solloway. Aubrey questions her, and she admits she slept with Toby and that she kept his wallet, wedding ring, and phone as collateral since he owed her $4,000. But she says she didn’t kill him. Aubrey asks her who she thinks he would have gotten that kind of money from. She says it’s not her problem, but Aubrey points out that as a prime suspect, it is definitely her problem.

At the lab, Wells, Brennan and Hodgins figure out that the candlestick was not the murder weapon, and that Toby’s head injuries were caused by a smallish, round object. Angela accesses all of the files from Toby’s phone, but one when one is restricted by retinal access, Cam reanimates Toby’s eyeball. The process works, and Angela is able to access the file — it’s a recording of Mason telling him to blackmail another executive.

Meanwhile, Annie pays Booth and Aubrey a visit at the FBI building; she’s visibly upset at the rumors that Toby was doing drugs and sleeping around. When she asks if it could possibly be true, Aubrey erupts and tells her that Toby never loved her. He projects his own feelings of anger toward his dad onto her until Booth finally tells him to stop. He realizes he’s making a mistake and apologizes, leaving the office.

B&B pay Mason a visit and find blood on the corner of his desk, and so Booth arrests Mason and brings him in for questioning. He says that as much as he would have liked to have killed Toby, he didn’t. He is confident, and Booth doesn’t have enough for an arrest. To help him get evidence, Brennan and Wells re-examine the skull, this time paying more attention to the part of the skull the killer was holding onto. In a tiny crevice is a piece of an emerald.

The Verdict: B&B bring Blair back in to the FBI. Booth posits that Blair killed Toby. He denies it. Brennan points out that she has found blood on his championship ring and that a piece of it broke off into Toby’s skull. Blair realizes he is caught and confesses, swearing he never meant to kill the man.

THE SQUINTS

I really liked all of the science that happened in the lab in this episode. I thought Cam and Angela were great in everything they did. Reanimating that eyeball was disgusting, but cool, and so was the early scene of attaching the skin to the skull model. They were both focused on the case and not personal drama, and that worked for me.

I also really liked Hodgins in this episode — it made me laugh that he was annoyed Cam thought he was Oliver, and I loved the scene where he basically rolled his eyes at Oliver’s quest to best Brennan.

As far as Oliver goes, I normally like him a lot. I think his arrogance is a good match for Brennan and others at the lab — it challenges them to do better. This one definitely straddled the line between confident and obnoxious, but I at least liked that Brennan held her own and eventually won, and I liked her parting line, encouraging him that (essentially) iron sharpens iron and so forth.

I’m glad the Aubrey angst was related to his dad being crappy about money (vs. physical abuse, like Booth’s and Sweets’ experience). It was nice that Brennan could relate to him about being abandoned, and I liked seeing that Aubrey was contrite for his actions. It was clear he really values Booth and Brennan’s opinions — it was just nice all around.

BOOTH & BRENNAN:

This episode’s B&B plot started and ended around Christine using the word jackass. I thought it was a cute beginning and a very cute ending. I also really liked the scene at the diner where they discussed Aubrey’s dad situation and compared it to Brennan and Max. It was a nice callback to previous plots without being over-mired in details.

I loved seeing Booth manage Aubrey in this episode, and I thought he did a great job. And like I said before, it was fun to see Brennan win out in the lab; it was equally as nice to see Hodgins and Cam stand up for her, even if it was in a nice and subtle way.

All in all, I really liked this episode. It was a good balance of science and interrogations, and it left me smiling and more interested in the characters.

What did you think? Did you like the case? Were you surprised by the killer? And which was most disgusting…the skull, the “arts and crafts” skin, or the eyeball? What else did you like or not like? The comments are open!

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