A decomposing body is found in the excess fry oil pumped from a seafood restaurant. At first, Brennan finds the remains too fleshy to require her expertise, but as the body is pulled from the grease, the flesh falls away. From early indications, Brennan and the team identify the victim as a mailman, and it turns out mailman-slash-video gamer Steve Rifton has been missing for twelve days. Meanwhile, Hodgins, Sweets, and Colin Fisher (Joel David Moore) juggle their work on the case with camping out for tickets to James Cameron’s Avatar.
Rifton was known as the only person to play a perfect game of Punky Pong (a fictional cross between Pong and Donkey Kong), but his record was disputed by dethroned champion Billy Gabel. A complaint had also been filed against Rifton by Keith Seeger, who caught Rifton harassing his autistic son, Dougie Seeger, whose only joy in life is apparently playing Punky Pong.
As someone who grew up not so competitively playing classic arcade games, I was easily sold on the theme of this episode. More than the theme, though, I enjoyed seeing the characters at their most informal. Hodgins, Sweets, and Fisher’s rushing through work to get back in line for Avatar made them seem more like regular guys than ever before. I was also glad to see Hodgins’s arm tattoo of Angela, forced on him last season by Angela’s father—a sign of continuity that momentarily rekindled things between Jack and Angela. Last but not least, Brennan and Booth’s banter continued to become more familiar. The episode began, for example, with Brennan and Booth arguing over whether fishing and chess should be considered sports.
In the course of the episode, Brennan determined that Rifton could not have played a perfect game because he had developed chronic pain in his hands. Brennan also keenly observed that the Punky Pong machine put on display as the one on which Rifton played his perfect game was not the same machine shown in the video Rifton sent as proof of his score. The machine and the accomplishment belonged to Dougie Seeger.
The ready availability of the murderer, Keith Seeger, was the only thing I didn’t like about this episode. I can’t help wondering why Booth didn’t realize Seeger was hiding something earlier. Are we still blaming Booth’s dulled deductive skills as a result of brain surgery? All in all, I have to say a somewhat predictable killer wasn’t a bad tradeoff for the sense of fun and relaxed camaraderie in “The Gamer in the Grease.”
