Tonight's episode was fun but not stellar (no pun intended). The highlight for me was recognizing several of the guest stars from other favorite shows. The story itself was well-served by the unusual occupation of the victim, but I felt the ending was a bit too obvious. And if they're going to have an obvious ending, they should at least have Booth take his shirt off to distract us so we don't notice.
Anyway. A body lands in a cow pasture and makes a crater. I'm not sure what it says about me that that quick opening scene made me laugh myself right off the chaise. Seriously. Hysterical.
The body is really smushed. I mean extremely smushed. Luckily for me, I remembered not to start snacking during the show this week.
Back at the Jeffersonian, everybody feels the need to razz Hodgins about his conspiracy theories involving space people. And then Brennan discovers significant demineralization on this body--enough to indicate the body is either 130 years old, or came from outer space. Hodgins is all over that, but Zack thinks the victim was an astronaut. Since that makes a little more sense than a space alien, Cam decides to go with that theory.
The body's identified as a Colonel Calvin Howard, who spent six months on the International Space Station. Howard had been training other astronauts. They think he might have been tossed out of his own plane. And when they go to look at the plane, PsiCorps shows up--no, wait, wrong show. But it is Andrea Thompson (Talia Winters of Babylon 5) as Equivalent-to-a-General Sandborn.
Booth consults Hodgins as a conspiracy nut expert, while Hodgins asks Booth for advice on proposing to Angela. Apparently he tried this before and it didn't work. Maybe in the episode that was pulled from the schedule, because I don't remember it. Either that or I'm having short-term memory problems again. Booth takes on a straight-to-business attitude when approached with this question--also hysterical.
Hodgins suggests they question Commander Adams (Ian Anthony Dale, Day Break), the astronaut Howard was training to be his replacement. Booth and Brennan interview him on board the Vomit Comet, the zero gee testing plane. Adams insists nobody would want to kill Howard. Booth and Brennan get to be weightless for a while. It strikes me as highly unlikely they'd be blithely allowed on that plane, but Booth looked kinda funny trying to catch his pen.
More strange evidence rolls in. Cal had been planning to fly for the Space Tourism Coalition, an organization made up of alien abductees who want to return to space. Cal had previously sighted something unusual when he was in space, and refused to withdraw a formal report, providing a nice red herring to send us off into government conspiracy land. Then we discover he was undergoing experimental surgery to correct bone loss, and that he was going to attempt to go back into space, taking the mission Adams was being trained for. In the end, it proves to be Adams and his wife who killed Cal, to keep him from supplanting Adams on the mission. See? Kinda too obvious. Maybe we were supposed to not notice because Ian Anthony Dale is hot?
But after that, we're treated to a sweet denouement in which Hodgins proposes to Angela. And she says no. Angela, sweetie, STOP THAT!
Another guest star of note: Lisa Waltz--Cal's wife--played Lauren Kyte in "Shadows," a first season episode of The X-Files.
Next week, the interactive episode, clues to which can be found at fox.com.
Shane Alexander--Shipwrecked
