Bones: The Princess and the Pear (2009)
Season 4, Episode 15
5/10
I can't say "The Princess and the Pear" is a peach of an episode
18 May 2014
Warning: Spoilers
This one begins with Bones accidentally putting Booth's back out, and since he's flat on his back, he's AWOL for most of the episode. This story centers around a death related to the theft of a sword, a potentially valuable prop from an old movie. The investigation leads Bones and Agent Perotta, subbing for Booth, to a fantasy convention where the victim had been working. This of course provides ample opportunity to make fun of the geeks who inhabit a place like this. The convention provides an opportunity for Sweets and Fisher to go undercover and uncover their suppressed nerdy sides. Sweets even finds himself in the middle of the action although he has to rely on Bones to save him. (In a sense she is his white knight in the battle against the Black Knight. Oh the shame.) Fisher connects with a Goth conventioneer, and eventually discovers the murder weapon. And you won't believe this, but they solve the case and live happily ever after.

Fisher, the rangy squint, confesses to be a big fan of sci-fi, and names all of the shows he likes. Strangely, he makes the rare mistake of mispronouncing Star Trek, as he pronounces the last word as "track." Funny how nobody caught this mistake during filming, although mistakes are a common problem on this show. This episode had more than its normal allotment.

One of the oddities of this show is that Bones is supposed to be a know-it-all who constantly corrects people on the smallest detail, even if she has no way of knowing if she's right, like on the existence of God, or when she apparently doesn't know what she's talking about. This particular episode has her doing this a number of times. At one point she corrects the diagnosis of Booth's doctor; her qualifications of being a forensic anthropologist doesn't mean she can correct the diagnosis of a medical specialist. After she had successfully beat off of an attacker (how does she know the proper fighting technique with a sword against an armored knight?), Sweets says that, "my heart was pumping (very fast)." She replies, "Well, technically your adrenal glands were secreting." Of all of her pointlessly stupid "corrections" she has ever made, this might be her dumbest. Then when Hodgins asks if Bones thinks she was attacked by a real knight she chides him by saying that time travel is impossible (it actually isn't, but that's another story). In this instance she not only is wrong but she looks foolish while doing so.

But Bones is not the only one behaving oddly. When she asks Dr. Cameron if she can match the DNA from the sword, Cam says she has nothing to match it to. What?? Why wouldn't she automatically check to see if it matches someone in the national database? This is another instance where no one connected to the show was paying attention.

The title, in case you hadn't already guessed it, is based upon the old fairy tale about the Princess and the Pea. But in this case the murder weapon is a medieval torture device (the Pear of Anguish) used by sexual deviants. Just the thing to have on TV when the kids are likely to be watching. (I can see it now: some kid asking his mommy why someone would put that thing up their anus, and asking what an anus is. But that's the world we live in today.)
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