Review – Bones: Harbingers in the Fountain

The fifth-season premiere of Bones opens six weeks into Seeley Booth’s recovery from a brain tumor that, among other things, caused him to see the ghost of his Army Ranger spotter, imagine The Family Guy‘s Stewie Griffin talking to him through a TV set, and put him in a coma leading to Season 4′s far-out finale. Just back from Guatemala, Brennan indulges in a visit to Angela’s psychic Avalon Harmonia (Cyndi Lauper), who not only sums up the climactic events of last season in a tarot card reading, but also puts Brennan on track to discovering the remains of twelve people buried under a fountain.

Bones almost lost me last season between the revolving door of quirky interns replacing Zack Addy (Eric Millegan) and the number of personal storylines distracting from casework. (Cam adopts a daughter, Brennan wants to have a baby with Booth…) Perhaps the writers saw this touchy-feely trend, too, and decided to remedy things by rebooting Booth and Brennan’s relationship. The Season 5 premiere is back to juggling a compelling case with brief character moments.

The mystery of who buried the bodies unfolded at a good pace. Early on, Brennan and Booth suspect Avalon knew about the bodies before having her “psychic vision” of them. This suspicion appears confirmed when Angela’s facial reconstruction of one of the victims closely resembles Avalon.

The twelve sets of remains turn out to be members of a cult called the Harbingers of the New Day. Sufferers of multiple chemical sensitivity, which effectively made them allergic to much of the world around them, the members believed they would find an underwater utopia sold to them by cult leader David Fargood. Even after Hodgins discovered a scientific cause for the members’ symptoms, throwing suspicion on the doctor who diagnosed them, I wasn’t sure Avalon was completely innocent. I was glad to see Booth and Brennan stay on the case and catch the person who hired the doctor.

I wondered whether I’d accept “the new Booth,” and I did rather easily. After four seasons as the super-confident leader of investigations in the field, it was interesting to see a more subdued Booth trying to exude the same confidence but believably gunshy at times–especially around Brennan. While this is something of a character reboot, it also keeps to the series’ dynamic in that Brennan is the focus and Booth takes a supporting role.