New Show Recap: Bones, Episode 8.16 “The Friend in Need”

A homeless guy comes into a pawn shop with a mud-caked suitcase. He wants at least four dollars for it, but the shop owner won’t give him anything. He cracks it open and there’s a gooey, disgusting corpse. He lowers his request to fifty cents.

Side note: homeless people seem to find a lot of bodies on this show. At least once a season. I wonder how that correlates to reality. I would imagine that most homeless people wouldn’t report finding a dead body for fear of being suspected themselves. But I could be totally wrong. Moving on.

At the lab, Brennan says the body is a male and Squintern Finn Abernathy says that the jaw makes him at about 15. Hodgins, going only on this information, suggests that this was a Jackass-style stunt gone wrong. Dental records ID the victim as Martin Manicone and Sweets and Booth go to inform his mother, Mary. At her place are her neighbor, Dolores, and her daughter Cat, who was good friends with Manny, as everyone called Martin. The mom is distraught and insists that her son didn’t do any silly stunt type things. Cat says he didn’t have problems with anyone in school. The last she saw him was two weeks ago at a party; she talked him into going. Cam interrupts the questioning with a phone call to let Booth know there was ketamine in Manny’s tissue – the party drug known as Special K. In Manny’s room, Booth and Sweets find a load of cell phones and computer parts. Cat comes in and explains that he would “fix” people’s phones. Sweets asks about drugs and Cat says he didn’t do anything like that. The stack of cash Booth finds behind his headboard seems to say something different, though.

There’s no data on any of the phones, but Angela finds some info in Manny’s personal phone. All his calls were to and from his mom. Most of his texts were between him and Cat, with some coded ones to a Nick Pavonetti. Booth goes to question Nick at his dad’s moving company, where he also works. Nick says that he doesn’t know anything about any drugs; he was helping Manny sell hacked smartphones and that they’d made a couple of grand so far. He says he was trying to help Manny make more friends. He last saw the kid at the party, too, which Nick describes as the “best party I was ever at.” Now, usually I don’t comment on the end of a case in the middle of the recap, but knowing how this all turns out: wow, what a douche.

Cause of death is determined to be asphixiation from a cervical cord being severed. There are some more fractures that don’t make sense, though, so Finn keeps checking out the bones.

Angela finds that Manny’s most frequented website was porn. No, not really, we’re just going to assume he was smart enough to clear his browser after doing that because a computer-smart 15-year-old without a girlfriend who doesn’t view online porn is just unbelievable. Anyway. The real most visited site is Hipstashot, where he was viewing photos from the awesome party the night before. Angela uses facial recognition to stitch together his journey from that night. Cat was dancing with another guy, Manny appeared to be following her around, confronted the guy, then left.

Booth brings the other guy, Stanton, in. He says that he doesn’t even know Manny. Stanton’s a senior, Cat’s a sophomore, she asked him to dance, Manny shoved him off and yelled at him. Stanton went to go get a drink while Cat yelled at him that she hated him and wished he was dead. Meanwhile, Cat has asked to meet with Sweets. When she arrives, Sweets starts recording the conversation. She wants to know that he can’t tell anyone what she says to him and he says that he won’t tell anyone anything they don’t need to know. Cat reveals that she was raped at the party. She blacked out, and woke up at home, but she knew she’d been raped. She was a virgin and in the morning, there was blood. All she remembers is one green eye that she has nightmares about. Her mom told her not to call the police; since she didn’t know who did it, they’d say it was her fault (wow, way to be a bitch, mom). Sweets asks if she took anything and Cat says she didn’t, but thinks she was roofied. Sweets asks if it might have been Manny, but Cat says he wouldn’t do that, even though he’d been weird to her lately. After a moment, Sweets asks he to wait a sec. He heads to see B&B, who just found out that the ketamine was in the suitcase with Manny, not in his liver – he didn’t take it. Sweets tells them about Cat’s admission and Booth freaks out that Sweets was questioning her without a guardian present. Sweets tells him that he recorded it and made sure not to ask case questions. Booth is sure that Manny was the rapist.

Sweets has to tell the authorities and Cat is upset with him. She approaches him later outside the building. He tells her that she has to deal with this or it’ll stay with her forever. She asks what he knows about it and he reveals his past history of being beaten in his foster home. He promises that he’ll find someone who can help her and find her rapist.

Dolores (Cat’s mom) reveals to Booth that she’d told Manny to stay away from Cat because she’d seen the way he was looking at her. She confronted Manny about the rape; Manny said nothing, just paled and ran off. Dolores defends not telling the cops because she wanted to protect her daughter’s reputation. Sweets doesn’t think Manny fits as the rapist, though; he was protective, not aggressive. Angela uses the pictures to follow Cat around instead. After the fight, they see her go into the backyard, get offered a drink from someone who’s not Manny, get sloppy and slumping eight minutes later. This, combined with the discovery of the other wounds being from three ratcheting straps compressing the body in the suitcase point to Nick. In the interrogation, Booth plays Nick by making it seem like if he admits to the rape, he won’t get charged for the murder. Nick falls for it. Sweets gets to let Cat and her mom know that they found Manny’s murderer and her rapist. He kept his promise.

The end of the episode features a PSA about the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

The B Plot

Michelle’s coming home from college soon and both Cam and Finn are excited. Brennan posits that Finn is excited about the impending sex and, clearly, neither he nor Cam want that to be a topic of discussion. As Finn picks up some cash at an ATM, he’s surprised by Michelle, who he wasn’t expecting until next weekend. She didn’t say anything because she wanted to stay with Finn for the weekend, rather than with Cam. Finn is uncomfortable with lying, but the prospect of booty clearly wins him over.

While talking with Angela about Manny’s potential double life, Cam is sure that she would just know if Michelle were lying to her. Mom instincts. Um, Cam, you’ve been a mom for, what, three years? How about you tone down the smugness?

All the deception is too much for Finn and he blurts out that Michelle’s in town to Cam. Cam says he’s in big trouble – with Michelle: “You owe her your trust.” He’s very confused. Cam says that he’ll arrange to meet Michelle, let her know where, Cam will happen upon them. She gets to be mad at her daughter, and Michelle will think it’s a coincidence. As Finn and Michelle wait outside a club that night, Cam happens by, very casually. Michelle says it was all her idea and Cam plays the martyr. After she leaves, Michelle confesses to Finn “I hate it when she’s right. I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”

Michelle apologizes to Cam later and Cam comes clean about Finn revealing the secret. Michelle’s pissed, but Cam thinks they should let him off the hook. Michelle says that secrets are too complicated and they should just be honest with each other. Cam cagely admits that she’s seeing someone, and reveals that it’s Arastoo. “I suppose you want me to keep this a secret from Finn?” Michelle suggests. Cam didn’t even think about that.

The C Plot

There’s some little side plot about Brennan being a backseat crossword puzzler and Booth telling her she’s not always the smartest because she doesn’t know about Gilligan’s Island.

The Verdict

There were a lot of little infuriations about this episode. The assumption that the victim died of stupidity, the leap to him being a rapist, Cat’s mom’s victim-blaming, Cam’s ploy with Michelle. So I’m not really sure how I felt about it. Something doesn’t sit right. How do you feel?

(Screencap via http://bones-daily.com)