‘Bones’ Recap Season 7 Finale: "The Past in the Present"

When ‘Bones’ announced a shortened season, I was very distraught about it. I wanted a full, action-packed season with tons of excitement and danger, guts and blood. But I sucked up my sadness and decided to appreciate what we would be given – 13 episodes; episodes that would soon disappoint me extremely.

I soon spent 12 weeks watching episode after episode hoping that they would eventually get better . I mean there are only 13 episodes. There has to be something amazing to bring me to my feet clapping like every other ‘Bones’ season. But there was no such episode until last night.

I expected the season finale to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be great!

“The Past in the Present,” directed by David Boreanaz who plays Booth, centers around none other than Christopher Pelant (the serial killer who got away with murder in the mid-season finale) and how he frames Bones with the murder of her friend, Ethan Sawyer. There is a small sub-plot about Christine’s christening throughout the episode, but it falls short of the main plot. A main plot that kept me on the edge of my seat.

The episode begins with Bones, Booth, and Caroline attempting to prevent Pelant from being released on parole from his ankle monitor. They are successful, but as soon as they are their phones go off and we hear wolves howling as their ringtones. They are surprised as they look at Pelant who is smirking. Uh-oh. Something is amiss.

They arrive at the murder scene and find a man eaten by wolves (interesting, no?). It isn’t long before Bones recognizes the victim as her good friend Ethan Sawyer , a friend she had seen two weeks prior to the murder. She is immediately a person of interest since it is revealed she was using Ethan Sawyer’s expertise with the Pelant case, she borrowed the plant from Hodgins that was used to make the poison, there was a hair found in her trunk that matches the victims, her motive (Ethan threatening Christine), and TONS of evidence. Everything is pointing at Bones as the primary suspect. Oh no!

Obviously, the squints and Booth believe that Bones is innocent and fight with everything that they’ve got to make sure she’s proven innocent, but nothing seems to go in their favor. Despite their efforts, each one is slowly removed from the case. Booth gets a phone call from “Bones” saying she was kidnapped by Pelant and is being held at his house. Booth runs to Pelant’s house and busts the door down. He begins beating Pelant up and looking all over the house , she isn’t there, Pelant smiles as Booth knocks him out with his foot. (A really intense scene).

When Booth is removed from the case, a new agent is assigned. Agent Flynn. From the very beginning I got a weird bad guy vibe from him.

You then see Sweets talking to the new agent about Bones and her ability to commit such a murder. Sweets then sides against the new agent leading the case by saying that Bones is innocent which gets him removed from the case. Caroline messes up the address for the warrant on Bones/Booth’s house and she gets removed from the case. The only ones left to help Bones are the main squints, who stop at nothing to try and stop her from being arrested. When the evidence gets stacked the highest and they begin to slowly doubt, Angela steps up and put them in their place. I really loved her intensity in this scene.

When Cam discovered the matching hairs, I nearly lost it when she started crying and said, “You either believe in the system or you don’t” (referring to reporting the evidence to the new agent, Flynn). She does her job and a warrant is issued for Bones. She has a few hours left before she is going to be arrested. Things are not looking good.

Throughout the episode they had discovered that Pelant had checked out around 80 library books and watched a gazillion movies on pay-per-view. Angela sets out to try and discover a pattern with the books, ANYTHING to try and stall Bones’ arrest. Nothing seems to add up until Bones realizes that the book she borrowed from Ethan had a message written inside of it. She sends Hodgins and Cam to Ethan’s cell and tells them to look for a message. They discover that Ethan had written a message on the entire wall of his room in his saliva. That’s right, tons and tons of computer code with SALIVA. Totally cool! Angela then sets off to try and put the code together and figure out what it could mean.

Meanwhile, Bones agrees to go to Christine’s christening with Booth before she is arrested. It is such a sad scene watching them together knowing that she will probably be taken away from her daughter afterwards. The one thing I did NOT see coming was Pelant going to their house while they were gone. If you remember, he had been released on parole and is now able to walk around freely. He walked around their house, (while being videotaped on their baby monitor although I don’t know if that will come in handy later). He replaced their alarm clock with a different one, (I’m suspecting a bomb?), and took a picture of Christine’s crib and then turned and looked at the baby monitor and smiled. TOTALLY CREEPY.

Angela figures out that the code is due to Pelant adding his own code to library’s code so it implants viruses every time it is scanned. A little different and far-fetched but I’ll take it. She then complains to Caroline about Cam and how she could have prevented all of this by hiding the evidence against Bones. Caroline puts her in her place and says that Cam is still on the case because she did her job, “Cam is the hero so far.”

Cut back to the church – Booth and Bones have a wonderful moment/kiss together as she tells him that she loves him no matter what and he leaves to go get the car. While he is gone, Max appears and helps Bones get into his car?! This scene is so sad because Booth sees her drive away and chases after her screaming. You can see the pain in his eyes as he watches his family drive away. He gets angry at Max, but Max tells him that the safest place for both Christine and Bones is out of the system. Bones sits on the church steps and looks upward. We then see Bones driving her and Christine on the highway.

Overall, this episode had everything that the previous episodes have been lacking love, drama, and high stakes. It was great. It brings together everything I’ve loved about Bones and jam packs it into one episode. Although I am eternally grateful for the exciting episode, I am a little overwhelmed. I feel like they tried to pack everything into one episode. Although it makes for a fantastic season finale, it really is a shocker considering the rest of the season was so blah.

I give props to David Boreanaz for directing this episode. Outside of “Crack in the Code,” it was my favorite episode of the season. They should have David direct more episodes in my opinion.