BONES Recap: ‘The Carpal in the Coy-Wolves’

“When things get boring, that’s when you start killing characters.” HAHAHAHA, BONES! Can a show troll itself? Yes it can! Either way, I loved that line from guest star Betty White (as Dr. Beth Mayer) in this week’s episode, “The Carpal in the Coy-Wolves.” What did you think of this episode? There is a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it.

THE CASE:

In this episode, a father and son hunting expedition gets ugly when they come across human remains. The team investigates and identifies the victim as local real estate agent Justin Ross. Aubrey finds out that Justin was in his office the night before he died, and only one other person was there, an intern named Winfelter.

This leads to a funny exchange in which the intern feels like he didn’t react properly to Justin’s death and wants a do-over. Good times. But he also insists he is shocked Justin is dead, and that if he did have any enemies, the FBI needs to look in the direction of Justin’s fantasy football obsession.

Booth, Brennan, and Dr. Mayer discuss fantasy football and see a viral video of one of Justin’s league-mates being pummeled with paintballs…and making verbal threats to kill Justin. Sounds like motive! Aubrey goes to the man, Craig Smith’s, house and first meets his wife Ashlie. Craig is in his man cave as always, and isn’t interested in looking up from his fantasy football stuff to even acknowledge Aubrey. Eventually Craig tells Aubrey to question professional football player Lou Divers (played by Ronde Barber), a man who ruined a fantasy game for Justin and who subsequently had a Twitter war with him.

Booth and Aubrey question Divers, who admits he was mad when Justin threatened his wife and kids. But he insists that they reconciled offline and that Justin was in a great mood when he left; he’d just won $15,000 in his league. This directs the team to follow the money to the league commissioner.

B&B find him, Jamie Wetzel, working at a local sandwich shop. $15,000 could go a long way toward helping a guy like that…more motive! Jamie insists he could never kill anyone, but he does agree that fantasy football is intense.

At the lab, Angela video chats with Hodgins; she has found evidence that Ross fumbled on helping Winfelter with his foreclosure because of a fantasy football thing. This gives Aubrey ammunition to question Winfelter again, who admits he was angry and admits that Ross dropped the ball. But, he says, it wasn’t because of a fantasy football event—Ross blew him off because he was with a woman. Aubrey quickly ascertains that it was Ashlie Smith.

Aubrey questions Ashlie, who admits to the affair and also states that Craig knew about it. But she didn’t stick around long enough to know if he was angry about it (doesn’t exactly make sense in the timeline of them visiting the Smith home earlier, but whatever). She isn’t sure whether Craig killed Justin or not.

At the lab, the team has figured Justin was punctured with what seems like a nail gun. Booth and Aubrey pay Craig a visit and find him aggressively uncooperative…and they also find a nail gun. Seems convenient. Craig concedes he was upset about the affair but that he and Ross worked it out—he would forgive him if Ross gave him Aaron Rodgers as a fantasy quarterback, but the commissioner blocked the trade. Great priorities.

When Hodgins identifies traces of cured meat on Justin’s body, Brennan and Mayer know what the murder weapon is — a barbecue fork of some sort.

Booth and Aubrey question Wetzel again, positing the scenario that after he blocked the Ross/Craig trade, Justin threatened to have him ousted as commissioner of the league, and so he killed him. Wetzel confesses to the crime; the league is all he has in his life.

THE SQUINTS

There were two main storylines for the squints in this episode. The first revolved around the expertise of Dr. Beth Mayer, which I found very charming and fun. When the episode description came out and it suggested that Brennan would be in competition with Mayer, I was annoyed — after all, we’ve seen that happen SO MANY TIMES before. So while there were twinges of that, it was mostly well done, I thought.

The other storyline, Dr. Wells’ mojo issues, worked less successfully for me, but that’s just personal preference. The tranquilizer darts and getting his mojo back in the woods while searching for wolf feces with Hodgins — it was all a cover for a fairly flimsy case on the science side of things. Not bad, just not my thing.

BOOTH & BRENNAN

I thought the plot of Brennan killing Agent Andy in one of her books (and Booth getting his boxers in a wad over it) was funny. Again, more fodder that the case was flimsy, but still funny. Righteously angry Booth makes me laugh, especially when most people ignore him, haha. It also made me laugh when Aubrey figured he was the motivation for Brennan creating a new, sexier, partner for Kathy Reichs. LOL, no. And the end scene with B&B was cute too.

The showrunners have said they plan to get B&B back to some of their origins, and I am all for that. Mayer telling Brennan that the heat/bickering she has with Booth is what made her fall in love with him in the first place and what will keep them together was about as obvious as it could get, but I think it worked. EMBRACE THE HEAT! So say we all.

Enough from me…what did you like or not like about this episode? PS…sorry I missed last week’s episode. Should be back on schedule for the rest of what is shaping up to be a good and fun season 11!