BONES Recap: ‘The Master in the Slop’
January 25, 2014 by Sarah Curtis
Hello BONES fans! How did you like this episode, “The Master in the Slop”? We had murder, mechanical malfunctions, a Canadian, and the possibility of Brennan, Angela and Cam becoming Calendar Girls for science. All of that and more make for a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it.
THE CASE:
The Scene of the Crime: A body is found in a pig farmer’s troughs, dismembered and partially eaten by pigs. Brennan, Cam and Dr. Filmore examine the remains the lab and determine the victim to be male, around age 29-35. Booth questions the farmer, who admits he didn’t report the dead body on his property and just fed it to the pigs. This makes him suspicious, but he has an alibi…and the ability to provide a description of the victim.
The Victim: Angela is able to take the description and pull up an ID, leading the team to Albert Magnuson, a local chess master. Sweets recognizes him, as he was part of the chess scene in his youth.
Primary Suspects:
• Suzanne Levitt, Albert’s chess promoter and fiancée. She stands to make a lot of money if Albert is dead, but insists she’s innocent. She points Sweets and Booth to Albert’s ex-wife.
• Ingrid Magnuson, Albert’s ex-wife. She was very religious and burned down his apartment after finding out he was in a relationship with Suzanne.
• Tim Levitt, Suzanne’s son and Albert’s protégé. He is fiercely dedicated to chess and his mother.
• Mr. Wakefield, Tim’s previous chess teacher and a somewhat disgruntled man. He has no qualms admitting he didn’t like Albert, insisting almost no one did. But his alibi seems to check out.
• Ann Ni, another chess player in the tournament. She points out a picture of Albert to Sweets, in which Albert has a broken hand, caused by rival Olin.
• Olin, Albert’s principal chess rival, who was kicked out of the tournament after the incident with Albert’s hand.
The Case Progression:
As Sweets re-enters the chess community and tournament, Brennan and Dr. Filmore work with the Jeffersonian team to identify cause of death. When Sweets and Booth find blood in Albert’s parking spot, the J-team is called in to analyze. They find smashed lights, a busted security camera, water markings and evidence that Albert was slammed against the garage wall. The camera was fried at 2:30 AM, and Albert’s body was dumped on the farm at 3:30 AM.
Booth visits a park where Olin is participating in a more informal chess tournament. Olin insists that Albert was crazy and that he hated him because he was his real, true competition. His alibi is embarrassing to him, but the fact that he was in jail for soliciting a prostitute/undercover cop the night Albert was murdered clears his name.
Booth brings Ingrid in for questioning; she insists she is innocent of his death, but admits burning down his apartment because it needed to be cleansed by fire after his unholy acts.
In the lab, Brennan and Dr. Filmore realize that the victim’s feet tell an important story — Albert was likely electrocuted, which also explains the water stains in the garage and how he hit his head on the wall.
Meanwhile, Sweets continues to play his way through the chess tournament. He has great success and wins many games, until his opponent is Tim. Tim is awkward and intense, and Sweets grows suspicious of his movements. When Tim refuses to sacrifice his queen but ultimately wins, Sweets arrests him on the spot.
Booth is less than pleased with this, but Sweets insists he should have the chance to question Tim, to keep the metaphorical chess game going, so to speak. Booth gives him one chance, and he and Brennan watch as Sweets interrogates Tim. Sweets suggests that Tim was trying to protect his mother from Albert, by getting close enough to him to get rid of him. Tim denies it all, somewhat convincingly.
At the lab, Angela tells Cam and Hodgins that there were two electrical charges — one at 12:30 and the second at 2:30. The first killed Albert and the second is what fried the security camera. This means Tim’s earlier alibi doesn’t hold up.
Sweets is convinced Tim is guilty, and Booth tells him and Brennan that they need to team up to get a confession.
The Verdict: Sweets and Brennan tell Tim that his mother has confessed to killing Albert. Sweets apologizes and offers to help him deal with this. Tim is shocked, especially when he sees Booth bringing Suzanne in for questioning. She is as surprised to see him. He immediately confesses — he was only trying to protect her.
THE SQUINTS:
It’s been a while since we’ve had an episode where Sweets was involved because of something from his past (see the Death Metal and Trekkie episodes from season four) but I thought the whole chess master world worked as a storyline for him. It matches up with his analytical mind and need for acceptance. It also made for a nice plot, some quirky side characters and good interrogations. If it can’t be B&B doing the interrogating, I guess I like Sweets doing the questioning with B&B watching and analyzing from the observation room.
The only part I didn’t care for was how Sweets reacted to Ann Ni. The whole name thing was a running gag that didn’t quite work, and after he beat her at chess, he failed to notice her obsessive tendencies and just looked at her like she was weird — something Sweets wouldn’t normally do, in my opinion.
I like quirky Canadians, so Dr. Filmore usually makes me laugh. This episode was no exception, though I don’t think the “writing an article about multinational cooperation” was a strong enough hook for his character to be in this episode. As for the rest of the squints, they focused mainly on the case (including a great mechanical process from Hodgins!), with the exception of Cam’s receiving an award of honor as a scientific woman of the year, somewhat to Brennan’s annoyance. It was kind of a fluff storyline that didn’t do much for me (including some condescending Angela), and while I’m not 100% convinced those three ladies would actually do a pin-up calendar, I absolutely can see Booth wanting to be there when Brennan is being photographed.
BOOTH AND BRENNAN:
Speaking of Booth and Brennan, the opening scene with the waffles was fairly cute, and I liked how, while they didn’t work much of the case together, there were still a couple of scenes of them talking at the diner, etc. And I liked the end scene where they were competitive with one another at the child’s game, but also in their flirty, bantering way.
Okay, enough from me. Did you like this episode? What worked for you, and what didn’t? The comments are open, so speak up!
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I thought this was a really good episode-Bones once again demonstrated how successfully it balances humor, character back stories along with the mystery of the week! I’m so happy and proud that ratings have increased even more up to 7.4 million! Time and time again Bones proves that it can be switched from day of the week, timeslot, go on a 2-3 week break and still it’s fans are there! On to season 10!