The Bones on the Blue Line

The Bones on the Line is the fifteenth episode of the fifth season of Bones.
== Synopsis ==
A subway train Sweets is riding gets derailed by flood water, and the overflow subsequently reveals human remains. While the team studies the remains back at the lab, Sweets suffers post traumatic stress disorder. Meanwhile, Brennan is interviewed by a Japanese journalist about her latest novel and learns some uncomfortable things about what people think about her books.
== Summary ==
The episode opens as Sweets rides the subway when a young man standing nearby gets a text message. He beings to cry, so Sweets asks if he is alright. The boy explains he has received great news: he is cancer-free.
Bones and Booth, meanwhile, eat dinner with a Japanese reporter, Riku, in town to interview our favorite author. Suddenly, the room begins to shake. Back at the subway, a water main breaks. A wave crashes into the subway that Sweets is on and knocking the boy into a pole and killing him.
Later, Bones, Booth and the reporter arrive on the scene. Sweets is distraught, as he watched someone die. While Booth comforts Sweets, Bones discovers a skeleton nearby. The man has been dead for at least a week. "He must have washed out of the tunnel when the main broke," she says. The reporter is excited and says this could be the start of another book.
Back at the lab, Daisy notices the victim's tooth has been removed and surgically implanted it in his scapula. It's apparently part of a rare surgery to restore sight. The victim might have been blind. Hodgins mentions he found rat feces on the body. He and Daisy then head back to the subway tunnel and discover a giant rat's nest under a street grate. Also: a white cane. The victim was definitely blind. Cut to the restaurant, where the reporter grills Bones about a character in her books called "Agent Andy." Sounds as if Andy is essentially Booth and pointing out the comparison makes Bones uncomfortable. She denies any connection between her fiction and reality.
Hodgins begs to differ. He is reading Bones' current bestseller and is shocked to discover a sex act he describes as "that thing I do." He confronts Angela, who admits to telling Bones about the special maneuver. Meanwhile, Bones has discovered "blowback" on the victim's skull, possibly from a gunshot. She also discovers blue polymer. Daisy pledges to figure it all out.
Cut to Booth, who interviews the dead man's partner in a letter-writing business. The FBI guy asks to see digital copies of all the letters the pair wrote and discovers a death threat. Sweets confides to Booth seeing the boy die in front of him "felt like a message, go ye forth and live life to the fullest," Sweets explains.
Hodgins has found bits of blue polymer, bits of the victim and shoe leather inside a pellet of rat feces. "This could have come from whoever killed Martin," Camille points out. Booth interrogates the former owner of a fast-food franchise. The victim had written a letter about the state of the restaurant and got it closed down. Stewart denies any involvement in the man's death and then asks for a court-appointed lawyer. Later, Booth and Bones discuss the latter's book. She admits Angela "helps" her write the sex parts, which explains why Hodgins' "move" made it into print.
Back at the lab, Hodgins examines love letters written by the victim. Angela discovers the letters were sent to Colin, the manager at the subway station. He explains to Booth about paying the victim to write letters for him, so he could give them to McKenna Grant, a subway security agent.
Booth theorizes the blind man wrote the letter and fell in love with Grant himself making Colin angry with jealousy. So Booth brings in Grant, who claims to have only gone out with Colin a "few times" despite leaving her old boyfriend Eddie for him. When Eddie found out, he came down to the subway station and knocked out Colin. She says that her ex owns a pawn shop above the station.
The rest of the team, meanwhile, examines a computer simulation of the exploding blue bullet. The bullet exited the victim and shattered a glass window behind him before disintegrating. Angela then points out blue residue on the wall of the subway tunnel. "He was lured into this tunnel and he was shot," Hodgins states.
Bones, Booth and the reporter head to the pawn shop to question Eddie. Booth quickly finds a box of ammo with blue bullets. Eddie, of course, denies any knowledge of the victim. He claims to believe Colin wrote the love letters. Eddie then admits he recently gave a gun with said bullets to agent Grant.
So Bones and Booth bring in Grant for further questioning. "If we can match this leather with your shoes, it will show that you were there when the victim died," Bones says. Sure enough, Grant is the killer. "Those letters were a lie," she says. "I should have been happy with Eddie. I should have been with what I had."
Later, Bones says goodbye to the reporter and then has a crisis of conscience. She decides to cut Angela into the proceeds from her books and hands her friend and occasional collaborator a check, stunning Angela. Sweets approaches Daisy and admits he has been doing a lot of thinking after seeing the boy die. "I don't want to spend any more time away from you than I have to," Sweets says. He then drops to his knees and offers her a ring. Daisy accepts his proposal.
== 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 the Week ===
*Daisy Wick - Carla Gallo
=== Guest Cast ===
*Riku Iwanaga - Seiko Matsuda
*McKenna Grant - Clea DuVall
*Colin Casey - Michael Trotter
*Eddie Ceraficki - James Madio
*Sophia Meade - Stephanie Childers
*Stewart Bonder - Page Kennedy
*Marco - Wyatt Fenner
== Notes ==
*The opening subway scene was filmed in the Earthquake subway set on the Universal Studios Backlot, which is part of the Studio Tour. The station itself was based off of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), which is the reason it differs in interior design than the other East-Coast based stations in the film. Those familiar with the film Beverly Hills Cop 3 will immediately recognize the set and events depicted.
*The train car and stations more closely resemble the New York City subway than the DC Metro.
*The creation myth that Brennan references in the denouement is from Aristophanes's Speech in Plato's Symposium.
== Quotes ==
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Category:Season 5
Category:Episodes