Two Bodies In The Lab

Dear Frank,

I'd like to report an attempt on my life. BONES tried to kill me last week -- with CUTENESS. It still hurts a little, Frank. It's like they took my heart-strings and knit them into a sweater. A really cute sweater. Seriously, this episode just made me curl up like a baby cat inside. There ought to be LAWS against it. And those laws ought to be broken regularly. BONES is the new marijuana. BONES makes me high.

Open on: Our lesser Deschanel, trying to juggle hooking up with an internet date and solving not one, but two crimes -- one death-by-serial-killer, one death-by-mob. But Beau doesn't much appreciate Bones's hot-to-do-some-trotting attitude, and gets all nervous about Bones going off to dinner with Internet Boy in the middle of some body-examining. Bones is all, I'm going to dinner! I know kung fu! I'll be fine! But her attitude changes significantly when, while waiting outside the restaurant, someone tries to drive-by her robot brains.

Bones is all freaked out, understandably, but manages to keep it together enough to finally meet her mystery date -- in an interrogation room, under Beau's jealous, pained eyes. But Internet Boy's not the culprit, and Bones resolves to keep with the crime-solving, despite that whole people-wanting-her-dead thing. Beau agrees reluctantly. Beau's such a softie.

Anyways, Bones's robot brains prove their use and she starts solving both crimes like a mo-fo, which makes Beau grin in that proud-like-a-really-inappropriate-papa way. And at the end of her long day, he makes her TAKE HIM HOME so that he can use his sniper expertise to watch over her that night...

I'm sure you're thinking, Frank, that that's cute, but nothing earth-shattering. This is because you don't see -- NO ONE sees -- what's coming next. Beau, in search of entertainment, finds Bones's CD collection, which contains Tibetan throat chants, Kanye West, free-form jazz... and Foreigner. Knowing that there's never a bad time for Double Vision, "the classic rock supergroup's second album" (Amazon.com), Beau starts up the sultry "Hot-Blooded" and, oh, Frank. He starts dancing along and air-guitaring and acting like a big silly goof and Bones is like, oh, I'm a robot, I'm not supposed to be feeling these emotions, but BAM, I'm gonna high kick along to this song anyways and dance around and oh, now we are BOTH big silly goofs and we're gonna end up doing it by Track 2 ("Blue Morning, Blue Day") if this keeps up...

...Then, of course, stupid Internet Boy calls to say hey, and Beau still dances around while Bones talks to him, but afterwards they're slightly more awkward (JUST as cute, though), and maybe it'll take until Track 6 ("Double Vision") for them to do it... And then Beau asks Bones if he can get a drink, and she says sure, and when he opens her refrigerator, it (and he) get exploded. Whoops!

Beau ends up in the hospital, where he will not be able to convince Bones that the only way he can keep her safe is with sweet, tender love-making. He is, understandably, a little pissed. But then he assigns Special Guest Star Adam Baldwin to guard Bones (The Man They Call Jayne has been hanging around all this time, but he wasn't dancing so I didn't feel the need to mention it). They start running around solving crime, and Bones is close to Cracking the Case when it becomes clear that Jayne isn't likely to make any more appearances on BONES, what with him being the killer at all. Beau figures out that Jayne is a dirty FBI agent who arranged both murders to cover his own ass (or something like that -- I certainly don't care) about twenty-five minutes after the audience does, and gets the visiting ParaNerd to sneak him out of the hospital and to the nearest SWAT team.

Bones has, in fact, gotten her ass abducted by Jayne, despite an admirable bit of kung fu, and he's tied up her arms so that he can dangle her from a meat hook so that a bunch of dogs can eat her alive... Jayne's plans aren't very sound on an practical level, but it's not like this guy gets typecast as the SMART one, you know?

Anyways, Beau and the SWATers find them just in the nick of time, Jayne's brains are ka-plow-ee-ed with skill and care (Beau used to be a sniper, you know), and, oh, Frank. Beau rushes up to Bones, but she's all dangly and he got exploded so he can't just pick her up, but he lifts her up a bit and her bound wrists go behind his neck and it is what we call a Goonies Hug. And they hug and hug and it is so freakin' adorable and she cries into his strong, yet bandaged, chest...

WE'RE NOT EVEN DONE YET, FRANK!

Beau goes back to the hospital, and Bones is visiting in fancy dress clothes because she has a date with Internet Boy, but you can tell she wants to stay with Sniper Man, and sure, she leaves him to his TV after a few minutes of exposition about Jayne's poor planning skills. But then she immediately COMES BACK, having blown off her date (because who goes to dinner with another man after a Goonies Hug? Seriously!) and asks if she can watch TV with him. He is not an idiot. So they start watching THE GRAPES OF WRATH (date movie!), sitting as close as a man in a hospital bed and a woman in a hospital chair can. Two damaged people, clutching at the faintest chance of feeling whole again.

Man, they're gonna do it so hard in the season finale.

Love,
Liz

The Man on the Fairway

Dear Frank,

So I've been kvetching about the lack of sweet Beau/Bones sexual tension this season, potentially ad nauseum. But no more! This week, the folks at BONES HQ hear my prayers, and grant unto us an episode that not only allows our two heroes to be totally adorable with each other, but also gives unto us delicious jealousy, Frank! Jealousy! The path upon which all Will They/Won't They tensions find real fruition! It's enough to make a girl share her tragic past with strangers!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. See, the folks at the Smithphonian are tasked with the job of sorting out the bodies from a private plane crash at a golf course, which is a national security issue because some of the people on the plane were Communists (the Chinese kind). Lesser Deschanel is totally uninterested in this assignment, but Deep Bass Boss's testes (and thus, low manly voice) are under threat by the State department, and he orders her to make the case a priority.

However, Bones doesn't really care about the fact that I don't want to come up with a new nickname for Deep Bass Boss, because it's been three weeks since she hooked up solved crime with Beau, and she's starting to get that deep low itch but good. Thus, when she finds a couple of unidentified, hacked up bone fragments in the plane wreckage which clearly weren't burned up on re-entry, she decides to investigate that crime instead, asking her legion of nerds to cover for her while she brings the case to Beau. Beau isn't impressed with Bones's love offering, mainly because his incredible sniper vision sees easily through her lies, and he teases her about how much she misses him because THEY ARE ADORABLE. But, just as things are getting Adorable To the Max, this sad-eyed guy steps forward to say that the bones Bones found might have belonged to his Tragically Missing Father, for whom sad-eyed guy has been searching lo these many years.

Sad-eyed guy is hot and serious and clearly haunted by his Tragic Past. It's Dude-chanel! And Dude-chanel has, like, magic powers and shit, because he knows all about Deschanel's own missing parents, and tries to use them to manipulate her into helping him. She tells him: "I'm not interested in bonding over my Tragic Past." She then proceeds to bond with him over her Tragic Past.

Beau, sensing that Dude-chanel's got an unfair advantage on his girl, takes on the case of the missing dad in his usual investigatorial way, strutting around, asking insulting questions, and of course deciding that Dude-chanel is a suspect. None of this really matters, of course, because Bones figures out that the bones she found weren't Dude-chanel's father, which means that Dude-chanel is yet again without a clue as to what happened to his dad. She tells him this in a very sweet scene at the end of the episode, where they have approximately this conversation:

Dude-chanel: My Tragic Past. It consumes me.
Deschanel: I was trying to ignore mine, but that just made me a robot. So yeah, me too.
Dude-chanel: Look, I'm too busy with my Tragic Past to investigate yours, but what about that flirty FBI agent guy whose cheek you pinched after admitting that you missed him? He seems single.
Deschanel: Let's hug the sad hug of two people whose Tragic Pasts prevent hooking up.
Dude-chanel: T'was never meant to be.

I might have paraphrased a little.

So after hugging Dude-chanel, Bones meets up with Beau and asks him to read the file on her tragically missing parents, in case he can spot any clues. This is, I'm guessing, the equivalent of third base, if only because there's a picture of fifteen-year-old Bones in the file that Beau scopes out with the eyes of a man who knows that he's this damn close to getting lucky solving crime.

But who can tell the difference, in this crazy world of ours? When violent men and haunted women stand side-by-side in the red and blue carousel of crime scenes?

They have sexual tension, you know.

Love,
Liz