- Title: Bones – The Party in the Pants
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The Jeffersonian investigates the murder of a stock broker who spent his free time moonlighting as a stripper after his remains are found at a construction site. Wendell (Michael Grant Terry) is able to ID the victim by a the serial number of his implant and Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) and Angela (Michaela Conlin) begin analyzing the singles stuffed in the man’s pants for prints or DNA, hoping it might lead them to the strip club where their victim worked.
In the episode’s B-story, Booth (David Boreanaz) is thrown by the sudden reappearance of his mother (Joanna Cassidy) after abandoning Booth and his abusive father 24 years ago. Despite Sweets (John Francis Daley) and Bones’ concern, Booth appears thrilled at his mother’s return at least until he learns of her impending wedding and the years she has spent as a mother to another man’s children. In her own awkward way, Bones uses the “Jesus myth” to help Booth begin to find forgiveness, attend his mother’s wedding, and meet her new husband (Robert Pine) and his children.
Booth and Sweets talk with the victim’s boss (Jeremy Kent Jackson) who was unaware of his employee’s second career, the man’s girlfriend (Hayley Marie Norman) who left the victim a threatening voice mail the night that he died, and a rival stripper (Brandon Barash) whose clients the victim stole weeks before his death. With Cam’s (Tamara Taylor) help, Both also uncovers a violent man (James Harvey Ward) who had an ax to grind after discovering the victim slept with his fiance at her bachelorette party. However, the real motive for the man’s murder had nothing to do with his more to do with his day job than taking his clothes off for money.
I have no problem with the show taking a closer look at Booth’s relationship with his estranged mother, but running the entire gamut of emotions in a single episode feels rushed and more than a little half-assed. The episode also contains an unfortunate sequences of Hodgins stripping for Angela at the Jeffersonian and an awkward moment between Bones and Wendell who the anthropologist tries to sell on a career in stripping. Although the murder mystery itself is okay, although hardly anything special, these other questionable elements make the “The Party in the Pants” another forgettable episode.
