The Shot in the Dark is the fifteenth episode of the eighth season of Bones.
Synopsis[]
When Brennan is shot while working late at the Jeffersonian lab, she is rushed to the hospital in critical condition. While at the hospital, she struggles with visions of her mother that defy her usual logic. Meanwhile all evidence suggests that Brennan's attacker may be linked to the Jeffersonian.
Summary[]
The Jeffersonian staff is ID'ing the corpse of a man found underneath a very, very tall high bridge. As Cam proceeds to de-flesh the body, Bones heads home to put her daughter to bed. "Perhaps she will enjoy Humpty Dumpty," she quips.
Bones and Booth argue over her lack of spontaneity at home because she isn't spontaneous enough. Bones angrily storms out, heading back to the lab to finish her work. As she is examining the remains, the Jeffersonian security guard Hal Bennett enters her lab. She tells him the victim was pushed from the bridge.
Later, Bones is alone, examining the bones with a pair of magnifying headgear, when she is shot in the stomach by a projectile fired by a blurry intruder figure and collapses. Booth and Christine arrive at the lab and find their wife/mom unconscious. He frantically calls an ambulance as Bones drifts into unconsciousness. "Bones, stay with me!" Booth barks. "You have to fight!" Bones is rushed to the hospital. We then go inside Bones's head, where the excellent doctor dreams of her old family home and is greeted by her mother. In this dreamscape, the two are about the same age. "I'm hallucinating," Still, Bones tells her all about Booth and Christine before trying to flee. "You're still the most stubborn girl on God's green Earth," mom says. Yells Bones: "I don't believe in God!" Again, very, very stubborn.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Cam and the doctors are operating on Bones and are struggling to bring Bones back to consciousness on an operating table save Bones's life. It looks very dire. They cannot find the bullet inside her with the x-rays, and there is no exit wound. Bones' heart stops, and she's shocked back to life. Will Bones ever wake up? Camille, in her scrubs, goes out to the waiting room and explains to Booth that Bones is stable. "Her heart stopped ... twice," Camille says. "Any word on the shooter?" No, but it turns out Hal was found dead on the second floor stairwell. Back at the lab, the team, including former-intern Clark Edison, gathers to examine the crime scene and hunt for Bones's attacker. As with Bones, Hal's body has a large entrance wound, no exit wound, and no bullet. None of it seems to make any sense.
At the hospital, Bones wakes up and tells Booth that she felt cold at the wound site where she was "shot." Max arrives, joins Booth and his daughter, too, and tells his daughter that she flatlined. Booth then informs his lover that she was dead for two minutes. They explain that she was shot, but there was no bullet, and she attempts to struggle out of bed to help the investigation. At the lab, Hodgins suggests an ice bullet. "It's technically possible and would explain why no bullet was found in her body," he explains. Back at the Jeffersonian, Sweets is working with FBI Agent Olivia Sparling. Unfortunately, the security guard's card was used to access the lab, and the cameras were disabled. Sweets, in the meantime, interviews everybody inside the Jeffersonian at the time of the attacks but finds no leads.
Angela then arrives with exciting news. Clark and Cam discover that their bridge victim was shot with a taser weapon, and It turns out that marks on the dead body found under the bridge match those of the same model of taser carried by Hal. So did Hal kill the man on the bridge? "Ok, but then who killed Hal?" Clark asks. Good question. Angela's facial reconstruction helps identify the bridge victim as Johannes Groot, a sales rep for a jet leasing company. Sweets and his former lover Olivia search and examine the dead man's apartment. They find evidence that the man had costly tastes -- far too expensive for his salary -- and that there is evidence of a struggle. Olivia, who says that her one-night fling with Sweets was no big deal, finds numbered confetti on the floor near the broken coffee table.
At the hospital, Angela tells Bones that the confetti was discharged from Hal's taser. So Hal went to the apartment and tased the man, who had a heart attack and died -- before he was tossed from the bridge. Just then, Bones flatlines. Once again, she sees her mother. They recall the last time they saw each other. Bones was 15. She went to bed and never saw mom again. "We had a fight, you and I," Bones says. "We fought before the night you disappeared." It turns out that they argued over a boy. They'd fought; Bones' mother felt she was changing herself too much for a boy. When Bones woke up the following day, her parents were gone. Mom told their daughter not to be so emotional. "You took my advice and never changed yourself for another person ever again, so you'd never be hurt," mom observes.
Back in the hospital, Bones's heart is back to beating. When Bones' comes to, she's surrounded by Booth and her father. "Will you stop scaring us like that?!" Max says. A doctor explains they'd used the same blood they'd matched to her during surgery. However, she had a bad reaction to the antigens. So there was some mishap with the medicine and Bones's blood. Bones then explains that she saw her mother but that Booth keeps calling her back. "I went to another place," she says. "You really think I could actually be seeing my mother?" Says Booth: "Yes, I do." Hodgins tests the ice bullet back at the lab, but it doesn't work. So he tries a blood bullet -- frozen blood that would mix with the victim's own. It works and leaves no exit wound. It would also explain Bones' bad reaction to the blood administered by the hospital. Camille is so excited she kisses Hodgins. "You're welcome!" Hodgins calls as Camille exits.
She heads to Clark, who is taking another look at Hal's body. Clark has found a small cranial fracture on the left side of Hal's head. They shave away the hair and spot what looks to be a small infected puncture wound behind the security guard's ear, several days old. They find several flecks of shiny splinters, which Hodgins determines are gold paint and wood flakes from a 12th-century artifact gold icon of the archangel Gabriel in the Jeffersonians' collection found right there in the Jeffersonian. It looks like Hal, the dead man, and the shooter was all in on it together and after the artifact. Booth and Sparling posit that Hal, the security guard, informed the shooter that Bones was working on Groot's remains and turned off the cameras. Knowing she was the only person smart enough to put it together, the killer then attempted to murder Bones. The Jeffersonian staff examines the artifact used to bludgeon Hal and finds that it has been replaced with a fake. Booth and Olivia head to head to the conservation department where the relic is housed to interview Dr. Batuhan, the only person on staff capable of restoring antiques of the icons' caliber. They find the equipment needed to create a blood bullet and fire it among all the restoration tools. The doctor says nothing.
Booth and Olivia interview Dr. Batuhan. The doctor has been stealing original artifacts and paintings for some time and replacing them with carefully crafted fakes. Hal would give the artifacts to the unnamed dead man/conspirator, who packed them in his private jet to avoid customs. Then Dr. Batuhan would fly with the unnamed dead man to authenticate them before selling them. That's a good theory but they lack proof -- a smoking blood gun, if you will. So Bones volunteers to have surgery to see if they can find evidence of the killer's blood inside of her. Under sedation, Bones sees her mom one more time. "We're never going to see each other again," Bones says. Says mom: "We will." She then encourages Bones to lower her guard and find that impulsive little girl again. Following her head allowed Bones to survive, but following her heart will allow her to flourish.
Bones awakens to find the blood matches, and Batuhan has been arrested for murder and attempted murder. He cut all ties, killing his co-conspirators. He killed the unnamed dead man with Hal's stun gun and killed Hal by bludgeoning him. Booth and Bones embrace.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Temperance Brennan - Emily Deschanel
- Seeley Booth - David Boreanaz
- Jack Hodgins - T.J Thyne
- Angela Montenegro - Michaela Conlin
- Camille Saroyan - Tamara Taylor
- Lance Sweets - John Francis Daley
Intern of Week[]
Recurring Cast[]
- Max Keenan - Ryan O'Neal
- Christine Booth - Ali and Susanne Hartman
- Christine Brennan - Brooke Langton
- Olivia Sparling - Danielle Panabaker
Guest Cast[]
- David Batuhan - Harry Van Gorkum
- Dr. Art MacGregor - Don Franklin
- Quentin Mayhew - Paul Schackman
- Dr. Jennifer DePaul - Paris Tanaka
- Sam Eagan - David Kagen
- Leonard Foot - Jonathan Runyon
- Lita Lisko - Emily C. Chang
- Hal Bennett - Richard Augustine
- EMT #1 - Estella Gabriel
Featured Music[]
- Can you help me - Hannah Peel
Notes[]
- Clark Edison reveals his middle name is Thomas.
- Angela informs Cam and Hodgins that Bones had woken up, which was their first time hearing it. Cam says that Bones had said the area around the wound was cold, however, Angela had not mentioned that.
- This is the second time Bones and Booth got into an argument as couple, the first being The Partners in the Divorce.
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