Liz Tells Frank What Happened on BONES

My friend Frank doesn't watch BONES. I do. So I tell him what happens. At least, the parts worth telling.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The Woman At The Airport

Dear Frank,

I've been trying to figure out what the best time gap is between watching an episode of BONES and telling you about it. Sometimes I've waited a week and written something intensely detailed and dense; sometimes I'll do it a day later and it's concise and possibly much funnier. This seems like the opposite of how things should be, but I try not to judge.

This week, it's only been two days since I saw the episode, but between then and now I've seen the first two seasons of the animated Justice League. I've lived a lifetime in those two days, Frank. A lifetime. So be warned that at any moment, you might find yourself reading a very long and eloquent paragraph about how BATMAN IS TOTALLY HOT, especially just after making out with Wonder Woman. I might include visual aids.

So, right off the top we're looking at a dead dude, who the people at the Smithphonian need to prove is super-old and dead (as opposed to regular old and dead, I suppose). Beau pops in to sweep Bones off to LA, where there's a fun dismemberment case waiting for them, but Bones wants to stay and play with the dead guy.

Wow, that's... that's the first necrophilia joke I think I've told you, Frank, and now that the floodgates have opened, I don't know what'll happen. We'll just have to take each day as it comes, I suppose.

Anyways, Beau flexes both his literal muscles and his FBI muscles and drags Lesser Deschanel away to Cliche-LA, a town which bears absolutely no resemblance to the city I've lived in for the past six years. We'll call it CLAX, just to keep from getting confused. The X is for Airport, because CLAX is populated strictly by tourists and shallow whores. More on the shallow whores in a sec.

Beau and Bones go to the beach to enjoy some cool ocean breezes while examining the torn-up remains of some girl. Bones freaks out when they find the skull because it's been heavily altered surgically, making identifying the girl hard, but then they use the serial numbers on her breast implants to track her down.

And off into the CLAX party scene we go. The location budget apparently all went to pay off the dudes at the downtown Standard (the one with all the cool candy-shaped bed-couch shells), and there are at least three long, lingering montages of girls getting into and out of pools, wearing high heels with their bikinis. These montages are always made by people who have never seen how much a pair of calfskin pumps can cost.

Beau spends bunches of time interviewing a model/actress/whore who has deep and profound thoughts about how all CLAXians are struggling souls who live on dreams and never really say what they are -- like, she says she's a singer, but she really works as a call girl, and Dead Girl was an actress who was actually a call girl... Apparently, being a call girl is a fabulous day job for struggling MAWs. Take notes, girls!

Apparently the dead MAW was addicted to plastic surgery, and Beau and Bones meet a few doctors who go all Nip/Tuck on Lesser Deschanel, only to fail miserably at shaking her self-confidence and body image. Lesser Deschanel apparently has a moral problem with plastic surgery. This is a really easy moral problem to have when you look like her and you have a Tragic Past to distract you from any memories of junior high school.

The CLAX FBI agent on the case wears lovely tailored pantsuits and is working on a screenplay about a FBI agent who wears lovely tailored pantsuits -- I think this is the role originated by your friend, Frank, and she's pretty delightful. In a thoroughly enjoyable scene near the end, Beau rips her a new one for using the FBI as a means to an end, rather than treating it like a beautiful and strangely distant woman whose Tragic Past can only be healed by the application of exciting cases and dead bodies. That's not what he actually says. But subtext is everything.

Speaking of screenplays, it's the return of the Bones: Best-selling Author! subplot! Lesser Deschanel takes a break from solving crime to have a meeting with Penny Marshall regarding a possible adaptation of her most recent crime not-quite-fiction. But apparently, these days "having a meeting with Penny Marshall" means "being co-interviewed with Penny Marshall on a Fox daytime talk show." Which is the ultimate in bizarre, for the record. Lesser Deschanel wants to write the screenplay. Penny Marshall rolls her eyes. Penny Marshall should fight crime. I bet she'd be great at it.

Anyways, the whole time we think it's one of the Nip/Tuckers who killed the MAW, but it's really the other MAW whodunit. As she's being arrested at the Standard, she asks Beau, like a sad little girl, if he thinks she's pretty. I think he says yes? After all, what kind of jerk says no to that question?

(Batman would probably say no. But he could get away with it, because, you know, HOT.)

I suppose you're wondering what happened with that dead dude at the beginning -- and our supporting cast, for that matter. Really, don't. They spend the entire episode poking at the dead dude and arguing about it. ParaNerd is a jerk. Boring Black Boss is boring. There's a lot of archeology talk. It's the most boring archeology talk ever. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I'm decomposing. Bah-duh-ching!

So, what have we learned? We've learned that CLAX is a horrid cesspit of shallow whores, and that Penny Marshall will one day be called to rule them as their queen. We learned that archeology is stupid, call girls make great bank, Batman is hot, and everyone looks good in pantsuits.

Just another week of solving crime. Just another week of atoning for all those snipe-ees.

Love,
Liz

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