The Wife:

I’m not going to spend much time talking about the actual case for “Con Man” because that’s not the important part at all. The important part as Baby Booth, Jared, a military man over whom all the ladies of the Jeffersonian grow quite smitten. Jared has a way of seeming like the shining member of the Booth family, but that’s only because Seeley is constantly sacrificing his own success and happiness so that his little brother can play pretend alpha male. Given Seeley’s past with Cam, Jared invited the good doctor Saroyan to be his date to a military ball, but Cam has to cancel, so Bones volunteers to go as Jared’s date. He wastes no time in kissing her, a kiss that I can only assume would have been better coming from Seeley, although, as she notes, Jared’s features are even more symmetrical than those of his older brother. Bones starts to see the failures in her partner, criticizing him for constantly maneuvering his way out of the role of the alpha male . . . until she realizes that Booth sacrificed his credit on a big case (and thus the bonus he would get to buy himself a trip to Hawaii) in order to keep a DUI off his little brother’s record.

At Booth’s birthday party, he tells his brother that he can’t bail him out anymore on advice from Sweets and Bones, to whom he finally opens up about his relationship with his alcoholic father and his constant need to protect Jared.

This is not at all how I invisioned my trip.

This is not at all how I envisioned my trip.

And then there’s “The Passenger in the Oven,” which returns us to our normal Bones antics. Only zanier. And on an airplane. Because Bones is flying to China to look at the remains of some really old dead Chinese guy and speaks of it as though she’s returning to her true passion, Booth begins to doubt her place in his life and her commitment to working with the FBI. And then a flight attendant finds a cooked human body in one of the galley ovens. For the record, cooked human flesh smells something like roast pork, a fact which will keep me away from pork until the day I die.

Because of the murder, the Jeffersonian team gets called back in to work on their weekend off to help solve the case. Sweets comes straight from karaoke with Daisy (in Bermuda shorts and a polo), and Angela and Roxie have to cut their weekend at an artist’s retreat short in order to come back to work.

Booth and Bones proceed to solve the murder using MacGuyver-esque methodologies from Brennan’s forensic crime novels, with which Booth’s seatmate (an elderly woman with a penchant for murder mysteries) is incredibly familiar. The victim, Elizabeth Jones, was a travel writer who was working on an expose about DUIs in the airline industry, of which the airline featured on the show was allegedly the worst offender. But more than any professional enemies Miss Jones may have made, she was also having an affair with a married man . . . who happened to be sitting in the same section of the plane that she was . . . and whose son was suspiciously wasted and missing a video game chip that was conveniently embedded in Jones’ baked chest.

I was really amused by the good, pulpy mystery that was this episode. As Booth’s seatmate remarked, it was just like one of Dr. Brennan’s books. Good detective work all around, and funny Booth/Bones/Passenger repartee. Clearly, the best of which is the fact that Bones simply does not understand sexy librarian fantasies.

The Husband:

Interns of the Week:

Dr. Clark Edison (Eugene Byrd) (Re-judging): 5 (-0.5)

Pros: As with most of the interns, he is no-nonsense and good is at doing his job. Keeps the employees on track and wisely ignores their personal lives.

Cons: The good people of the Jeffersonian are nothing without their personal lives, and Dr. Edison’s attempted separation of the two misses the point completely. Even more unmemorable the second time around.

Secretly, she really wanted to be Jessica on Murder, She Wrote and hates the fact that Angela Lansbury got the part over her.

Secretly, she really wanted to be Jessica on Murder, She Wrote and hates the fact that Angela Lansbury got the part over her.

Airline Passenger Charlotte Utley (Peggy Miley): 7.5

Pros: Encyclopedic knowledge of mystery novels and their stories, perfect for those cases where the Jeffersonian employees are just thinking either too hard about simple matters or not being imaginative enough about how horrible and evil murderers can truly be. Worships Brennan and her writing. Carries everything she’d ever need to solve a mystery right in her purse. (Good call on the wooden probe, legally permissible on planes.) Should, as CliqueClack TV pointed out, get her own Murder She Wrote-type series.

Cons: Not an actual intern. Is probably dying of diabetes or something.