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Bones recap: The Mastodon in the Room

By Alicia Sutton Sep 24, 2010, 15:31 GMT

05/17/2010 - Emily Deschanel - 2010 Fox Upfront Programming Presentation Afterparty - Arrivals - Wollmink Rink, Central Park - New York City, NY, USA © Charles Norfleet / PR Photos

After being disappointed in the finale last season with the team splitting up and Dr. Brennan (Emily Deschanel) rejecting Agent Booth (David Boreanaz) and therefore crushing all the Bones/Booth shippers, “Bones” returned Thursday night leaving us all a little bit more hopeful. 

Seven months after the goodbye in the airport, Prosecutor Caroline Julian (Patricia Belcher) gets the gang back together under the pretense that Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) will lose her job if the team doesn’t help her solve a case involving a child’s remains. 

The team comes home from all over the world to help.  Once they get back they slowly throughout the episode realize that they belong back in D.C working together.  Bones and Booth have a cute reunion which turns to disappointment when Booth declares that he fell in love over in Afghanistan - which seemed a bit tacky to me to show her a picture on his phone, but moving on... Bones is taken aback but quickly composes herself and leaves. 

It's hard to feel sorry for her though as she did turn him down.  Hopefully by the end of this season they will get their acts together and FINALLY realize they are meant for each other.

Because Bones left the Jeffersonian, all the interns left, Dr. Saroyan had to leave, the team has to work elsewhere and everyone seems to be in disarray.  Saroyan is mad at Brennan and goes so far as to tell her that she let a good thing fall apart.  All the interns seem to be out of reach except for Wendell (Michael Grant Terry), who Bones tracks down working in a car shop. 

She offers him a job as her assistant.  Hopefully his past with Angela won’t cause too much drama considering Angela (Michaela Conlin) is pregnant with Hodgins’ (T.J. Thyne) baby!  Both Angela and Hodgins are really excited about the baby but they also decide to not tell anyone until after the first trimester (except Bones of course). 

Solving the case was a no brainer once the team came together.  The remains are not the boy it was assumed, and it turns out that an accident occurred and the remains are that of a 3 year old North Korean immigrant who accidentally choked on a screw from his crib.  Stories like these always make me uncomfortable - watching the parent come apart as Booth tells her he knows what happened.  This is the stuff of a parent’s worst nightmare.

The assumed identity of the remains by the media was a 2 year old boy who turned out to have been kidnapped by his father to get revenge on his ex-wife.  Fortunately mother and son were reunited and Booth won the day.   Luckily the team is allowed back into their lab only to discover its been turned into an exhibit, with a mastodon, literally!, in the center of the room.  I guess, as Booth says, they will have to find a way to work around it, metaphorically of course. 

The mastodon could only be one thing: his new girlfriend and Bones’ inability to acknowledge her feelings. 

It was fun to watch the episode and see each character assume they were the glue, or lynch pin that kept the team together.  Booth claiming it was him, Angela stating it was her and Jack, Bones going so far as to saying it was most definitely her and later that it was Caroline. 

But as it turns out, I really think that each one is a lynch pin in a way and the team wouldn’t work quite the same without each one of them.  I look forward to seeing how Bones deals with Booth being “seriously” in love (though I doubt he really is, a few days around Bones and he will fall right back to where he was 7 months ago). 

Maybe it will give her the insight she needed to realize she is in love with him.  I only hope that this girlfriend doesn’t stick around too long.