Bones episode 6.6: The Shallow in the Deep

*Originally published on 11/17/10



A slave ship is salvaged and brought to the Jeffersonian. Among the debris, the staff finds a skeleton that is coated in a bizarre pink substance. Hodgins refers to it as slime, but no reference to Ghostbusters is made. The paranoid scientist does posit the idea it's an NTI (non-terrestrial intelligence, which many of you may remember from The Abyss).

Further examination shows that the skeleton is actually far more recent. Bones tells Booth that it's only a month old, even worse is the fact that a wound in the jaw shows that it was murder.

One of Bones' major strengths is the character based humor. Without it, it just becomes another formulaic crime investigation show. This episode is lacking it to an extent. There's some, but not nearly as much as earlier episodes.

One of the show's peak moments comes when Booth, Brennan, and Sweets go onto a cruise ship where Cougars go to meet younger men. Sweets is, not surprisingly prime bait. Brennan adapts surprisingly well to the environment, flirting with some of the younger men who try to come onto her. Booth gets looks himself, but feels out of place. Surprisingly, there's no mention of Hannah.

There are several B-plots, one involves Cam dealing with the discovery that her ancestor was a slave. It doesn't really accomplish anything, I have to say. It could have been a moment for some character development, but it isn't given enough time to really show the revelation's effect. Take this with the fact that it's something of a downer and it becomes one of the weaker elements of the episode.

Another B plot follows Sweets as he wrestles with his will power in regards to Daisy as when they're together, they can't seem to keep their hands off each other.

When Sweets reveals that a "friends with benefits" setup doesn't work for him, Daisy tries to find things that they have in common. At first it seems like a lost cause, but the two do eventually find common ground and re-start their relationship. You could see it as sappy, but it's done fairly well.

Considering the lack of Booth/Brennan shipping in this episode, that scene acted as a nice replacement.

It wasn't a great episode, but it was decent enough. The cruise scene was enough to make up for the lack of humor in the episode, and it's understandable that they want to try to keep it semi-serious so that the show doesn't become a cartoon. Still, I find that the show works much better when it brings the funny, and while this does to a lesser extent, a little more certainly couldn't have hurt.