Review: Paul Levinson's Bones 8.1
Monday, September 17, 2012
Bones 8.1: Walk Like an Egyptian
One thing I missed in the past season of Bones was a cracking good mystery, the kind in which Bones excelled in the first few seasons. We get that and more in the superb return of Bones tonight for its 8th season.
Among the highlights -
Booth and Bones reuniting as Bones, now blond and still on the run, bursts into Booth's motel room. We get a classic segue from Booth wrestling with his at first (for a moment) unknown intruder to the two, well, wrestling in a much better way on the floor.
Hodgins nearly choking Pilant to death, which is what most people in the audience wanted.
Great performances and workouts from each and every one in the cast - that is, in addition to the above, Cam, Angela, Sweets, and Caroline. And kudos to Edison, for a fine job as Bones' temp (in retrospect) replacement. I'm glad that Cam gave him a permanent place in the Jeffersonian at the end, complementing Bones and Bones.
And the ending itself was standout. Bones, smuggled back into the Jefferson to do hands-on work (another fine scene), gets the goods on Pilant. But, as Bones is cleared and Pilant's taken away to prison, Max observes that he'd rather see Pilant dead. Will Max get the chance? Maybe, in some future episode.
But it won't be in prison. Because, in one last twist for the night, Pilant with his programming genius has figured out a way to make the Egyptian government and the FBI think that Pilant is really an Egyptian - meaning, the Egyptians are able to get him released and sent back to Egypt.
Now, aside from Pilant's successful, brilliant programming scam, I'm not quite clear, legally, how this worked. Caroline sagely wisecracks that she didn't even know there was an Egyptian government these days. But even if Pilant was the Egyptian his forged record now shows him to be, surely the FBI would not have released him to Egyptian custody if he had murdered someone here. Possibly Bones' evidence was so tied to Pilant, that, when the man in custody was thought to be someone else - an Egyptian (due to Pilant's manipulation of the data) - that newly created man no longer had a connection to the murder, even though the forged evidence showed him living here in the U.S. since the age of six. Or, might the "Egyptian" have diplomatic immunity? But how could he be a diplomat if he's lived here since he was six? (And that kind of immunity might not apply to heinous crimes.)
In any case, the effects of the twist do something far more interesting than locking Pilant up in the prison - he's now loose and a threat, who could come back to do deadly damage at any time. We haven't seen the last of him, and Bones is off to a roaring 8th season start.
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