Bones Recap 6.20 “The Truth in the Myth”

The the cold open, we follow a couple on an online blind date. The guy is a lepidopterist, and they’ve come to a spot where butterflies frolic. The girl isn’t as into butterflies… she’s brought a blanket so they can get to some al fresco love making (or just making out, who knows). He points out a swarm of butterflies on the ground and she lays out the blanket there. As they tumble around, the butterflies disperse and the couple realizes they were swarming around a dead body. Libido: off.

“The Truth in the Myth”

The location team (Brennan, Booth and Hodgins) checks out the scene. Booth is grossed out that butterflies eat dead people. The victim is a male, 40-50… his ribs have been flayed open and his heart is missing. He smells of sulfur. There’s no blood left in the body and unidentified teeth marks on the bones. Also, there’s a goat hanging out. Obviously, as Mr. Nigel-Murray concludes back at the lab, this is a victim of El Chupacabra. Cam’s not buying it and neither is Angela, who has discovered that all the victim’s clothing was brand new, leading them to think he wasn’t a real outdoors man. Booth sends the description to local hotels, thinking the guy was a tourist and finds out that Lee Coleman, Wilderness Man, was checked into the Pine Tree Manor Hotel. At the hotel, they meet the owner, Randy Shepard and the activities coordinator, Melissa Lawson. They were very excited to have Coleman there… he monopolized Melissa’s time while he was there. Hodgins calls with an update: the skin cells they found on the victim: reptilian. And the quill-type things? Mammalian hair. Brennan says that doesn’t make sense and Booth says that it does if it was a chupacabra.

Sweets speaks with the producer of Coleman’s show, Nadine Tweed. Fun Fact: The reason that Sweets is doing all the interrogation scenes in this episode isn’t because John Francis Daley co-wrote it; Emily Deschanel and David Boreanez were in Florida filming for the next episode during part of the schedule, so it had to be B&B lite. The producers give Sweets two suspect tips: A Pet Psychic that Coleman once debunked (who was played by Jo Anne Worley, who I adore!) and a cryptozoologist with a competing tv show that Coleman got booted off the air.

Watching some footage from the show, Brennan thinks that Coleman was providing a valuable service by debunking things. Booth confides in her that he saw a Yeti once. He was in Nepal, at a training base with the Rangers. Brennan dismisses it as a hallucination, but Booth challenges why she can’t admit the possibility of what he’s saying being true, comparing her to the people who were once certain that the Sun revolved around the earth. Later, Brennan informs him that she did some research and she thinks that he saw a bear, covered in ice.

Angela and Hodgins find one of Coleman’s hidden cameras in the woods. While they’re out there, Hodgins replies to Angela’s lack of wanting to do… anything… with a comment that children who’s mothers exercise have less of a chance of childhood obesity. Angela responds about a study she read “that husbands who suggest their pregnant wives are fat are far more prone to being slugged by them.” On the video footage, there’s nothing showing a killer, but the goat that Coleman had out there perks its ears up just before Coleman shuts off the camera. Angela works some audio magic on the background noise as Hodgins finds no saliva on the bite, just an unknown mix of chemicals. And the scales and hair… they came from a brush. He’s so disappointed. When Angela works the magic, she finds two sounds… a white tail deer call and something mechanical. Dr. Nigel-Murray finds that the bite is consistent with a black bear and the also that the damage to the spine and ankles suggests with the victim being hung by his ankles, possibly to drain the body of blood. Hodgins comes in with an ID on the chemical: jaw jelly, used by taxidermists. So a taxidermied black bear? Booth knows where they can find one.

They visit the Pine Tree Manor Hotel again and business is booming since the news of a chupacabra killing. Randy is red-handed… literally… he has rope burns. He admits making the death look like a chupacabra attack, but denies killing Coleman. Angela finishes analyzing the sounds and the white-tail deer call was a man-made one. The second sound: an ATV. Someone was out hunting. They confront Melissa, the activities coordinator, and she confesses that it was an accident… he wasn’t wearing an orange vest. My husband would like me to note that he totally called that from the first time she came on screen.

In the B-story, Vincent Nigel-Murray is in the ninth step of AA: Making amends. He apologizes to Hodgins for urinating in his tadpole tank and to Angela for telling some of his friends that they’d slept together. He apologizes to Cam for taking coupons from her desk. And also for telling the guys in paleontology that they had a “extremely gymnastic” sex life together. He apologizes to Brennan for wearing her iguana as a hat and also saying that they were lovers. Brennan laughs and comments that his friends must be very gullible and that she would sooner confirm that the chupacabra is the killer than that it would be likely that she was sleep with him. Okay, that’s kind of harsh and he meekly defends “I’ve been told I’m an excellent lover.” Brennan apologizes for hurting his feelings and leaves saying that she’s impressed that he was able to get the iguana to stay on top of his head.

In the wrap up, Booth reveals to Brennan that his Yeti story never happened. He made it up, yet she found herself coming up with an explanation for it… for something that never happened. “Just because you can explain something doesn’t mean it’s explainable.” Booth tells her as she gets into a cab to go home. “Like us, we don’t make any sense at all.” The cab drives away.

While I felt that this week’s episode was better than last week’s, it still fell a little flat for me. Nigel-Murray’s b-plot felt shoehorned in and out of place with the rest of the show. The chupacabra story was fun, and it is always nice to see one of the cases end up as an accint rather than a killing. Brennan and Booth had some great moments, but with the taste of last week’s regression still in my mouth, Brennan’s humor felt forced. I did like Booth’s challenging of Brennan’s certainty that cryptids couldn’t exist, but I wish the division weren’t quite so solid along gender lines.

I was working on a 16 hour day, though, so I might have just been cranky… Anyone disagree?