The Blackout in the Blizzard

The Blackout in the Blizzard is the sixteenth episode of the sixth season of Bones
== Summary ==
A severe blizzard causes a city-wide blackout, adding to the obstacles the team must overcome in order to solve a murder case that could be linked to a potential viral outbreak. But when Booth and Brennan find themselves trapped in an elevator during the power outage, Sweets is on hand for outside assistance, but does more than what's asked of him when he initiates a touchy conversation about Booth and Brennan's relationship. Meanwhile, Angela and Hodgins get worrisome news about the health of their unborn baby, and Hodgins and Wendell Bray get creative in the lab and put their scientific skills to use to identify the victim and the rare disease.
== Synopsis ==
We open during a snowstorm. Sweets, Bones and Booth eat at the diner while pedestrians slip and slide outside. Sweets wants the partners to talk about their relationship, but neither is willing. Booth, meanwhile, notices someone across from the diner has put seats from Veterans Stadium out on the curb. He begs Bones to delay a visit to another dead body so they can take the seats to Booth's bachelor pad. Bones reluctantly agrees. Back at the lab, Hodgins and Wendell examine the 12-day-old dead body. Meanwhile, Angela returns from the doctor and is acting weird. It turns out she is a LCA carrier (Leber's congenital amaurosis), but is Hodgins?
Bones and Booth meanwhile, are trying to wedge the Vets' seats into an elevator when the power goes out. Across town, the power is out at the Jeffersonian, too. Hodgins discovered the victim was strangled while she was suffering from Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever. If the killer got the virus onto his hands, he would become contagious right about now. "We have to find the killer before he spreads the disease," says Bones from inside the stalled elevator. Unfortunately, she is trapped for the time being with Booth. Sweets, however, is on the outside.
Back at the lab, Angela, Hodgins, Wendell and Camille work by candlelight. They trace the disease on an old-school map. Wendell notes the victim was at least partially Native American. The map indicates the victim was also a traveler - she had to contract the disease somewhere. Wendell and Hodgins then use a rudimentary method involving electricity and photo negatives to get an X-ray of the victim's bone. Meanwhile, Booth and Bones get cozy in the elevator as Bones tries to sit on her partner's shoulders to reach the hatch at the top of the elevator. Sweets appears and raises his eyebrow.
Bones then receives a picture text from the lab: foreign objects were embedded in the femur for at least four years. "Shrapnel," Booth observes. "The victim was probably around an explosion." Back at the lab, Wendell and Hodgins have found remnants of coins in said shrapnel. Wendell and Hodgins must then analyze the coins without electricity. In the elevator, Sweets, who has Booth and Bones trapped in a steel cage, tries to talk about their complicated relationship. He brings up Hannah, which causes Booth to throw a bag of frozen peas (which he was using to ice his strained back) at the young shrink. "It is over!" Booth yells. "Don't ever mention Hannah again!"
Back at the lab, Angela asks to borrow Hodgins' phone. If she inserts the SIM card from the victim's dead cell phone into a charged device, she might be able to figure out who the victim called. But Hodgins resists. He is waiting for a call from the doctor to see if he is a "carrier." Hodgins pretends not to be scared, but Angela isn't buying it. Apparently, if Hodgins is a carrier, then there is still only a 25-percent chance the baby will be blind. "I like those odds," Hodgins says in an unconvincing manner. Wendell, in the meantime, prepares to soak the victim's bones in a liquid dye on Bones' suggestion.
Unfortunately, Hodgins tries to remove a battery from an emergency light, sending sparks flying. Hodgins is knocked backward -- and kicks the dye into Wendell's face. And that was the last of the dye. A covered Wendell gathers himself and suggests Hodgins use his beetles. Later, Hodgins gets a call from the doctor. He is a carrier. "Angela is a carrier, too," he tells Wendell while testing the coins. "I have to tell Angela," Hodgins says. "She's going to hate me." A crying Hodgins then identifies the coins as Russian Rubles.
Angela enters -- and Hodgins hugs her tightly. In the elevator, Booth admits trying to transfer the chairs was a bad idea. Booth then explains he is so attached to idea of owning them because he went to a baseball game at the Vet with his temporarily sober dad. It was a good day. "Best day of my life," Booth says. "It's our one perfect day." Bones then gets a call from Hodgins: the coins are Rubles. Booth suggests looking for an American who got blown up in Chechnya four years prior. Back at the Jeffersonian, Angela looks through microfiche and comes up with the victim's ID: an American aid worker, Anne Marie Weston, injured by an IED. Wendell, meanwhile, examines the bones and notices consistent markings which might be consistent with a wire mesh window. This raises the question, did the victim try to escape from captivity?
Later, Wendell shows Angela boxes and boxes of potatoes. He connects a bunch of potatoes together, with plans to generate enough electricity to get the victim's cell-phone operating. "Totally spud-tacular," Hodgins notes. Booth and Bones, meanwhile, get cozy in the elevator. The topic of their "past" feelings for each other arises. "I always thought we'd be very compatible," Bones notes. "We both have excellent stamina. Making love would be quite satisfying." Booth agrees, but asks "What then?" Bones says they would never work as a couple. Sweets enters with news: the victim was investigating human trafficking when she was injured. She then returned to D.C. to investigate further among the local Albanian population.
At the Jeffersonian, the potatoes generate enough electricity to get the victim's cell phone working. Angela furiously writes down numbers as the power threatens to go out. Finally, the cell phone dies...but not before she finds a call to a nearby building just before the time of death. Back in the elevator, Bones suggests breaking the Vets seats in half to escape the elevator. "Let's do it," Booth says. The pair kicks seats until they break, springing open the trap door at the top of the elevator. Moments later, the partners are racing through the snowy streets. They arrive at a building featuring security windows matching the wire mesh marks on the victim. Booth shines his flashlight into the window ...and sees many young women, victims of human trafficking. Just then, a sickly looking man emerges from the building. "Careful, Booth," Bones warns. "He could be infected!" He attacks Booth, and Bones hits the man with a 2X4. He falls to the ground.
Back at the lab, Camille confirms the man killed the victim -- and is indeed sick. The authorities are trying to find anybody the sick man might have come in contact with. Later, Hodgins talks of teaching his child piano and sculpture if he/she ends up being blind. "We can handle it -- me and you together," Hodgins tells Angela. Later, Booth and Bones sit in the Vets seats inside Booth's apartment. They banter before it turns serious. Booth says he just "needs time" before he "gets back out there." Bones says she is becoming stronger. "When you and I met I was an impervious substance," she says. "Now I am a strong substance." In other words, she is more ready than ever before to be with Booth. They then each write down the dates that they guess they will be ready to be together, and burn the pieces of paper -- in order to "release them into the universe," Booth explains. Bones laughs, but does it anyway.
== 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 ===
*Wendell Bray - Michael Grant Terry
=== Guest Cast ===
*Tariq Grazdani - Benjamin Byron Davis
*Captive Girl#1 - Rafaella Biscayn
*Businessman - Ryan M. Lee
== Featured Music ==
*"Drunk Spelunking" - Junkie XI
==Notes==
*The penetrant test that Bones asks Wendell to perform is the same test that Clark Edison did in The Verdict in the Story for Max Keenan's trial.
*The seats from "The Vet" that Booth struggles to get up the elevator are from Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. It was the home of both of the Phillies (baseball) and the Eagles (football). Like many of the multi-purpose stadia of its time, it used an artificial surface, which was regarded by everyone as the worst of any stadium in the U.S. It opened in 1971 and closed in 2003. It was demolished the following year.
*On the season 6 DVDs, Emily Deschanel stated on the commentary that it was during the filming of this episode that she found out she was pregnant with her first child.
*Goof: When Cam gestures to the map she borrowed from the Cold War exhibit she says to ignore the fact there’s still a Czechoslovakia and a Soviet Union but makes no note of the third major country that no longer exists on that map: Yugoslavia.
== Quotes ==
Category:Season 6
Category:Episodes