Bones: Yanks In England (Episodes 401/402)

Tiny cars are funny, right?For those of you new to Bones, you’re about to get a crash course in this teaser. And yes, this show is exactly the amount of ham and cheese sandwich these two hours are, but usually a little less chewy. We’re at Oxford, in England, where Brennan is lecturing. She explains that she is the scientist, and her partner Booth, the one dozing instead of paying attention, is the humanist, the one who tempers logic and empiricism with intuition. She mentions how her assistant, the most brilliant of brilliant, showed her how destructive pure logic can be. Which Booth affirms with a too-flip for this recapper summation of the last season’s finale: he ended up a sidekick to a cannibalistic serial killer. Booth (and, presumably, Zack’s still rather unbelievable downfall) has shown her that scientists may need to arm themselves against said pure logic. “A quality which deflects us from an irrational admiration for the rational,” suggests Dr. Wexler, Brennan’s Brit counterpart. Brennan likes this. Enough to have the forensic anthropologist equivalent of cheer sex with him.

Outside, Booth and Brennan are mid-silly argument when Dr. Wexler pulls Brennan aside. She says she’s been warned about him, but his phone ringing thwarts his attempt to overcome her better judgment. Wexler’s been called to a murder, and he wants the Bs to go with him. Probably because he knows a good murder might get him into Brennan’s pants.

A car’s been pulled from the Thames. We meet Booth’s Brit counterpart, Cate Pritchard, who exposits that Booth is awesome except for his overzealous love for his sidearm. Wexler introduces his partner to Brennan, saying she’s just like him. And then the writers have a lot of fun knowing that they have a Brit delivering their lines, giving her about thirty ways of saying the guy’s a really smart asshole. The point that Pritchard and Wexler are the SAME AS BOOTH AND BRENNAN EXCEPT THEY SPEAK WITH BRITISH ACCENTS is driven home. A lot. Let’s allow it to be cute for thirty seconds and move on, okay?

The woman in the car is Portia Frampton, daughter of an American developer who Wexler’s battling over a possible Bronze-age site Frampton’s trying to turn into a high rise. Wex and Pritch invite the Bs to help them, since Portia’s dad, Roger Frampton, will want American investigators, and Brennan immediately starts listing things to be sent to the Jeffersonian. Booth is tickled, because he thinks this means he’s winning.

New credits! Still running Booth, which I enjoy, so they pass.

Brennan has sent evidence and the entirety of the human remains to the Squints, who now include Clark Edison (yay!) among them. Hodgins is psyched at the prospect of British slime: “So much more proper than American slime.”

Angela takes the crime scene photos to examine, giving her an excuse to be alone when Berimbau finally makes his appearance. Yes, Angela’s ex-husband Grayson is finally gracing our screens. He’s got an exotic accent, perfect skin, and he is, of course, still totally in love with Angela. This sub-plot is infuriating and drawn out far too much over the course of two hours, so here it is, all together: Angela kisses Grayson hello but insists she still wants her divorce. After some toolish fronting on Jack’s part, Grayson sees the angry little man (his words) with Angela and decides fate wants him to give Angela his divorce, so he does. And before he heads home for Fiji, Grayson sleeps with Cam, because the minute she sees him her thighs go up in flames. cam feels weird about it, talks to Sweets, of all people, and tells Angela about it. Angela’s initially weirded out over it, which weirds out Hodgins, who punches Grayson, which irritates Angela, who asks Hodgins if he trusts her. He apparently can’t? For some reason? And he thinks that if she thinks he doesn’t trust her, then she doesn’t trust him. How’s that for “pure logic?” In the weirdest, least passionate break up scene ever, Angela asks Hodgins if he thinks two people who don’t trust each other should be together, and he says he doesn’t, and they break up without actually saying they’re breaking up. It’s like: “This is happening, isn’t it?” “Yeah, it is.” It is the lamest break up I have ever seen, precipitated by nothing. My sister totally agrees with me, so I feel confident in this assessment. Angela tells Brennan only that she can’t even begin to process it until her best friend is home. I do not understand this “we don’t trust each other” bit. It’s so trumped up and not based in anything we’ve seen of them before. It’s a mystery. Whatever, show. Be better. Do more.

Addendum to the subplot: Clark comes from the real world, where people do not discuss their romantic liaisons in front of their subordinates with other subordinates, but do actual work and remain professional. Cam might remember this dimly from before she worked at the Jeffersonian and started sleeping with Booth again, but not enough to keep her from putting her business all over the lab and being not only the worst boss ever because of it but totally sketchy around her new employee. So Clark turns in his badge to be a real man of science elsewhere, much to my great and everlasting disappointment.

Sweets continues to be too adorable to live.

London, the next day. Wex fills us in about Portia, most importantly, that her mom passed away almost fifteen years ago, and Portia recently turned 21. Also, bangers and mash and tea. No, seriously. Portia was last seen leaving her birthday party and shortly afterwards reported missing. Booth announces he and Brennan will go talk to the family because, as they say to the doubtful Brits, that’s what they do.

Clark figures out that Portia was hit from behind, fell, and hit a few times more. In England, meanwhile, the Bs talk to Roger Frampton, who is engaged to a woman much younger than he. She tells them about Harry, Lord Bonham, a young, handsome Duke secretly dating Portia, because his father wanted it kept out of the papers. Frampton wants the Bs to find out what happened to Portia.

Booth is driving a tiny car, which we already did in the first season when he got blown up by Brennan’s refrigerator, and cannot drive on the left side of the road. Oy. He also misses coffee, which apparently you can’t get in London? Silly boy. While he has a hissy fit in the street, Cam calls and tells Brennan that Portia was pregnant. So they go to the home of Portia’s boyfriend, where they are met by the butler. Or gentleman’s gentleman.

Angela and Hodgins figure out that there was a motor scooter in the back of Portia’s car, meaning that whoever killed her drove the car to the river, got on his bike, and rode away.

Butlers, codpieces in armor, blah blah British humor blah blah. The family butler’s is the eighth in his family to serve the Bonhams, and he is very proper. Young Harry, looks like Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Portia was not really welcome in the family home, because Harry’s family is aristocracy and Portia’s not, and it’s just not done. The Duchess makes a creepy comment about how of course Portia and Harry were sleeping together because Harry is a strapping young man, and of course Portia would have enjoyed it. Ick. Harry’s grandmother says that Harry kept the relationship secret because Roger Frampton is a “rapacious crook who uses intimidation and bribery to get what he wants.” The Bs drop the bomb that Portia was pregnant, which Harry didn’t know about. He tells the Bs that the day she disappeared, Portia broke up with him.

Angela figures out that a much-flaunted tabloid photo of Portia was actually taken from inside her house. Turns out this is because Portia’s almost-stepmother is tired of Portia interfering with her wedding plans: she’s talked her father into postponing the wedding an absurd number of times over the years, and the future Mrs. Frampton thought maybe a scandalous picture of in the tabs would make Roger see Portia’s an adult (and sexually mature, again, ick) and not let her manipulate him into not getting married. So she took the pictures herself, sent them to the tabs, and hoped Roger would marry her. But she didn’t kill Portia, she insists. Also, British lawyers wear wigs, and that’s funny. To Booth.

Pritch gives Booth a gun, but tells him to be discreet. Angela phones him to tell him that a letter she found in Portia’s things proves her mother is alive. Dun dun… dun?

Wex’s assistants, Vera and Cyril, have found some bones on his Bronze Age site, but nothing old enough. He is not exactly nice to them. He comes on to Brennan some more, rather bluntly, but Brennan puts him off by saying Booth’s told her to watch out around him. They decide to get a drink instead. The next morning, the Bs talk about whether or not she had sex with Wex (she didn’t), and Booth basically says all men all over want to have sex with Brennan because she is a special person. And he looooves her. Cam calls and says that, basically, Portia had a hereditary genetic disease, which her mother did not have, and if Roger Frampton doesn’t as well, he’s not her father.

Frampton insists that his ex-wife isn’t alive. The explanation for this particular red herring? Portia’s mother, knowing she was dying, wrote letters to her daughter for her birthdays, gave them to her husband’s lawyer, and had him deliver them every year. Brennan asks about Frampton’s health, which is perfect, leading Booth to ask if he knew Portia wasn’t his biological daughter. Pritch is like, whoa, Bessie. Except more British.

Tiny car humor: Booth has broken an axel and popped a flat driving the tiny car, which coincides with Hodgins’ discovery of crushed coral and rose petals in Portia’s tire treads. And in the Bs’ tire treads, thanks to the private road at the Bonham estate. Which means that the “royals,” as Brennan calls them, lied about Portia never having been to the house.

Pritch and Wex and the Bs arrive at the Bonham estate, where there is a motor scooter in addition to the gravel mix on the drive. They decide to play the family using the letter from Portia’s mother. The long and short of it? Portia’s boyfriend Harry? His father? Is also Harry’s father. Which means that Harry and Portia were totally Flowers In the Attic without realizing it. “How remarkably unsavory,” Grandmother muses. Yes. Brennan finds a fireplace poker that could be the murder weapon, but Duke Bonham says he didn’t kill Portia. And that is because, quite simply, the butler did it. Yep. The butler did it. And communism is just a red herring.

The Bs have a pint with Wex, who Brennan turns down regretfully. She says you don’t offend your partner for an hour of fun. Also, they are in looooove. They have one more mystery to solve: the next day, before they leave, they find that Wexler’s been killed.

This would be a nice time for them to revisit the whole Booth’s-fake-death thing and how it affected Brennan, but they skip that part. Brennan quickly finds that the bones in Wex’s freshly burned out apartment are Wexler’s. It’s been made to look like an accident, but Brennan concludes that the wound on his forehead means this was murder.

The first focus of the investigation is Wex’s gentlemen’s club. Wex had just paid off this tab, which was over 5K, though no one knows where the cash came from. He was escorted out of the club, rather roughly, by a few guys he knew. These turn out to be a few of his rowing crewmates, who dragged Wex from the club because they had a race the next day and when he got wasted in the past, he tended not to do well in races. The boys put the Bs onto someone named Jasper Ferry, someone Wexler had fought with and who is a palace guard. Booth has a staring contest with him, because that is required when Americans go abroad? Pritch arrives and tells them that Wex was sleeping with Ferry’s sister, hence the fight, but probably, the guy didn’t kill him.

Pritch and the Bs have coffee, and the Bs ask about Pritch’s relationship with Wex. They were partners and they were, you know, partners. (Booth is drinking a juice box. I find that totally cute.) But she also didn’t kill him. Brennan gets a call from Clark and Cam, who say that Wexler was stabbed to death by something sharp and long, as the wound was deep. No weapon was found at his apartment, though the Bs are less than confident in Pritch’s intel, given her relationship with him.

Brennan manages to catch up with the pissed Pritch, and they talk about sex some. Sleeping with Wex was like climbing Everest, she says: done before, sure, but breathtaking. Pritch says she only didn’t tell them because she didn’t want to be taken off the case. She shows Brennan a document that Wexler signed that certified that Frampton’s building site, on which Wexler was digging his Bronze Age site; it would be worth millions to Frampton. Pritch tells Brennan, in so many words, to totally have sex with Booth. So say we all!

Frampton tells the Bs about all the crackpots that have tried to stop him from building on the site that Wexler just signed out to him, including a group called the Saviors of Antiquity. But Frampton didn’t kill anyone; he’s still dealing with the fact that Portia got bludgeoned to death, thanks.

Hodgins tells Brennan that he’s found traces of mercury fulminate, which can be found in tanneries and such. On the dig site, she and Booth inform Vera and Cyril that he’d signed the site over as historically worthless. They are shocked, shocked! Pritch arrives (this is like Scooby Doo) with the answer to Wex’s sudden influx of cash: Frampton bribed him to vacate the dig to the tune of 25K.

Continued red herrings as Clark and Hodgins work on a likely murder weapon: Cyril, one of Wex’s grad assistants, was a member of the Saviors of Antiquity. He did it years ago to meet women; he hasn’t participated in ages; and he was home with his parents when Wexler died. Meanwhile, Brennan’s discovered the weapon, thanks to Clark’s casts: a bone. Clark found an extra among them, and it fits the depth of the wound and the scarring pattern. “Live by the bone, die by the bone…s,” Booth sighs. Brennan says that the weapon-bone has high levels of mercury fulminate and, more importantly, it’s ossified. It’s Bronze Age, which would have prevented Frampton from building on the site. Someone, so pissed at Wexler for handing the site over despite the presence of this bone, stabbed him with it, and, in a panic, set up the crime scene to seem like an accident.

Brennan and Booth bring Pritch, Vera, and Cyril to the site so Brennan can show them all that it definitely has Bronze Age artifacts and bones. There was a tannery there in the 17th century, which explains the mercury fulminate in the bone. Cyril catches on, while Vera is all, so what? Brennan hops down to play in the dirt, but instead of the dig site being all loose and upturned, the soil’s been packed down and covered with pallets. Brennan finds another bone, while Vera keeps protesting that they moved on from the site like Wexler told them to. When Brennan says that the killer would have wounded her hand because of the jagged bone, Vera clamps her fist shut. Booth quickly gets her cuffed, and all is explained: Wex took Frampton’s bribe when it seemed there were no bones to be found, but once there were, he decided to give the cash back. It would have ruined his career, and by extension, Vera’s, and she killed him rather than have him sully her reputation.

And we end with Pritchard giving Booth a fake knighthood with a toy medal, prompting Brennan to say Pritch totally likes him (and is also very sexual) and Booth to say he might actually miss England. They decide to leave before someone else gets killed. And hopefully to solve more compelling mysteries next week. Two hours is too much for this show, I think. Come back, show! Come back!