- Title: Bones – The Pathos in the Pathogens
- tv.com: link
The murder of a journalist becomes personal for the Jeffersonian team when Arastoo (Pej Vahdat) is accidentally infected with the mutated RNA virus that killed her while examining the remains. Sweets (John Francis Daley) talks with the victim’s fiance (Kenneth Mitchell), a travel blogger who was out of town and isn’t helpful in piecing together the victim’s whereabouts over the past three days to discover where she might have come in contact with the virus. Angela (Michaela Conlin) tackles the victim’s encrypted laptop to discover he latest story involved talking to a scientist (Laura Kai Chen) at a biohazard facility and an expose about the dangers of scientists mutating pandemic diseases such as SARS and Yellow Fever.
Over Cam‘s (Tamara Taylor) objections, Arastoo volunteers to be isolated and observed in the Jefferonian rather that being taken to the hospital, possibly offering the clues needed by the team to learn more about the virus. With security tightened, Booth (David Boreanaz) is barred from the Jeffersonian and is forced to work his side of the case without Bones‘ (Emily Deschanel) help. After identifying the virus, the Jeffersonian team works to try and slow its progress in Arastoo, but their only real hope is to find the person responsible for the mutated virus and hope they also thought to create a cure.
Based on more information from the victim’s laptop, Booth questions a thoroughbred stable owner (Robert Mailhouse) who not only was sleeping with the victim but was about to be exposed in her story about his involvement in doping horses. But when neither her horse owner lover nor her boyfriend, both with motive, turn out to be their killer the team turns its attention back to the labs which could have manufactured the virus. Booth and Sweets talk with the head (Lennie Loftin) of Simatech Biolabs who points the finger at Dr. Burke (Chen), who was fired by the company for taking unnecessary risks in the lab, but it turns out he knows a hell of a lot more about the virus than he’s letting on.
When the CDC’s serum to treat the infection in Arastoo proves unresponsive, Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) decides to whip up a folk remedy of his own, with the unexpected help of Bones. Over the objections of the CDC (Mackenzie Astin) scientist helping on the case, Cam agrees to allow Hodgins and Bones to administer their concoction to their friend who only has hours left to live. The herbal remedy helps slow the spread of the virus, but the team has to get inventive to force the creator of the virus to give up the cure by threatening to infect the scientist with his own deadly disease.
The tension is certainly amped up with the lives of one of their own on the line and provides an old school crazy Bones moment as the scientist lets the consequences be damned to save one of her own team when it matters most. The episode also gives Tamara Taylor one of her most dramatic storylines as she watches helplessly as the man she loves slowly fades away before his eyes. Bones’ last second gambit saves Arastoo’s life, but things might take a dark turn in next week’s season finale with the return of super-genius serial killer Christopher Pelant (Andrew Leeds) and his vendetta against Bones and the Jeffersonian.
