In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in . . . Oh, sorry. This is Bones. Every time the victim’s name in this episode was pronounced oh-so-carefully as Made-LINE, I got distracted looking for nuns and French school girls.
The Case:
Moving on, what’s left of Made-LINE’s body is discovered when a dog playing fetch retrieves more than a tennis ball from a pool of stagnant water. The couple looking over the swampy home-lot immediately decides to try another subdivision, which leaves room for the J-team to move in. Figuring out the who, what, and why proves to be difficult since, according to Hodgins, bug evidence says the victim could have died in the last three hours, three days or two weeks. Back at the lab, X-rays prove the victim donated bone marrow. This leads to identifying the body as belonging to Made-LINE Pappadelos, who recently lost her young daughter to cystic fibrosis.
The weird stuff is only beginning. Also found on the remains are bits of tongue and snout from various small predators. Cam also discovers that the internal organs have fractured, which is odd because that’s usually a bone thing. Cam suspects the body might have been frozen (small animal bits stuck to the remains like tongues to frozen flag poles) but can’t reconcile commercially available freezers with the kind of cold necessary to fracture organs. Brennan and Intern of the Week Arastoo look closer at the bones, and when they don’t find ice crystals, they realize the body was cryogenically frozen. Angela reviews Made-LINE’s credit card records and finds only purchases of bus passes to Virginia, where there is a cryo facility called Cryonova, owned by Noah and Michelle Summers. Booth and Brennan visit there and discover Made-LINE had her deceased daughter frozen there after the girl died, and that Made-LINE visited the place every Saturday to visit her daughter’s metal storage tube and to work on grant proposals with Noah. Noah and Michelle also add a name to the suspect pool, Tripp Warshaw, a competitor in the frozen heads business who is upset because they competed him out of business and who, they also believe, shot up Cryonova.
Warshaw is brought in for questioning, but he’s just an oddball scientist obsessed with “biological immortality” and running from his creditors; besides, he was out of town when Made-LINE disappeared.
Also on the list of suspects, Made-LINE’s ex-husband, Ethan. She had a restraining order on him because he tried to kill her, but Ethan says that’s wrong. He wasn’t trying to kill her, he was only cleaning his gun and waving it around while they were arguing, which is totally not at all creepy (/sarcasm). Their arguments were over the extreme treatments Made-LINE sought for their sick daughter (Ethan calls it torture). When it turns out that the bullets that shot up Cryonova match his weapons, Ethan says he only went there to get his baby so he could bury her decently. He couldn’t figure out how to get the little girl’s body out of the metal tubes, though, and uses being unable to open the storage containers as an alibi for not killing Made-LINE, too.
At the lab, Brennan and Arastoo find small holes in the skull made for crackphones, a word which I did not make up, BTW. Crackphones are small speakers inserted into the skull to listen for sounds of cracking during the freezing process. Angela works her magic and on the recordings made by the speakers, and Michelle Summers can be heard bitching at someone for trying to steal her man. Michelle is brought in for questioning, but she says she was talking to another employee who was flirting with Noah.
Brennan realizes the holes for the crackphone were drilled by someone left-handed. Michelle is right-handed, but hubby Noah is left-handed. He’s also adept at unnecessarily complicated stitches and evidence of those stitches sews up his guilt. (See what I did there? I know, I’m awesome.) Noah insists he didn’t kill Made-LINE, he just froze her so he could revive her later, after she’d had time to fall in love with him. (I’m so glad I’m single.) He blames his wife Michelle for killing Made-LINE because she took the body out of the freezer and dumped it in the swamp.
Intern:
The always awesome Shohreh Aghdashloo is (of course) awesome as Arastoo’s mother. She and Dad drop in for a visit and to meet Arastoo’s boss girlfriend. There’s nothing about the Cam/Arastoo relationship that isn’t painful and awkward to watch, right down to the “I’m constipated” smiles they both wear when they’re together so, whatever.
Booth and Brennan:
Booth is doing double-duty during this episode, as the Assistant Director and then the Deputy Director have him reviewing old files from other agents. I guess Booth’s great score on his tests last week brought him to the attention of the powers-that-be. Those powers also have Sweets reviewing Booth’s own file and his military experience. Brennan and Sweets see all the extra attention on Booth as preparation for a promotion. Brennan is excited at the possibility of living in Germany, seeing an opportunity for Christine to learn a second language and for the family to be closer to Parker (Just kidding. Of course no one mentioned Parker. No one ever mentions Parker.) but Booth’s gut smells something hinky. The base in Germany that might be the reason for his promotion is used for counter-terrorism operations and Booth wants nothing more to do with the life of a sniper and snipage. What’s going to happen next? Tune in and see!
“And that’s all there is and there isn’t any more.” Madeline
