In this week’s episode, Booth and Brennan find themselves in the Chesapeake Bay
area, where the remains of a body have been found in Bay. Upon arrival the team realizes that this will be one of their more difficult cases. The body has been severed at the spine and only the upper half is present. As a result, gender cannot be properly determined until the other half of the body is found. This also means that a facial reconstruction will be postponed, making it harder to identify the victim. However a break in the case comes when Cam finds a breast implant with a serial number. Booth uses the serial number to trace it back to its owner, enabling them the find out the identity of their victim. They discover that their victim is Pastor Patricia Ludmuller from Mayor Island, Maryland. With this information Booth and Brennan now feel more confident in their ability to tackle this case, until they discover that Patricia cannot be traced back any further than five years.
Meanwhile, the second half of the body is found and shipped to the Jeffersonian. There Cam and Brennan’s current intern, Vincent Nigel-Murry, discovers that Patricia is actually male, indicating that the victim had a sex-change, which forces the team to find Patricia’s original identity. Angela is able to recreate a face for Patricia’s skull using masculine features and discovers that Patricia was originally Pastor Patrick Stephenson, a well-known televised pastor. Also Booth and Brennan find their prime suspect, J.P. Gratton a married congregate of the church who fell in love with Patricia, even though he knew of her past. Booth believes that J.P. had motive for killing Patricia, stating that J.P. was angry and upset after learning who he really feel in love with and wanted revenge. However, Booth begins to think he has the wrong Gratton when he discovers that J.P. is too tall to have committed the murder.
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This episode was probably the worst one so far this season. It was disappointing to see the show go from such a great episode last week to such a poor one. One of the reasons behind this week’s flop was the intern. Unlike last week’s hilarious Colin Fisher, Vincent was just plain annoying, blurting out random tidbits that just made the scene awkward. Also, the writers were not staying true to the characters. For example, Booth, a former gambling addict, was betting with Sweets. They have gone from a man who couldn’t even play a game to monopoly to a man who is now casually betting with his therapist. Additonally, one thing that every “Bones” fan looks forward to each week is the playful banter between Booth and Brennan. However, this week there was a lack of banter, as it was only seen a few times in the episode, as opposed to being incorporated into the whole thing.
All in all, this episode was very unsatisfactory. It did not feel like it stayed true to the show. However, “Bones” is going on a mini-hiatus and won’t be back until November, so hopefully it will return better than ever.
Overall Grade: B-