Bones: The Man in the Mud (Episode 310)

A plot: While skinnydipping in a hot mud pool in the middle of the woods, a randy young couple's rendezvous becomes a bit less sexy when they find themselves sharing the pool with a skeleton. Which is more traumatizing: finding a skeleton while trying to get it on, or witnessing the littlest Lawrence brother, Andrew, stripping down and talking about his penis? I think I prefer the literal bone, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

After determining that the male victim didn't drown or boil to death in the mud, Zack finds two skull fractures, one to the back of the head caused by a weapon with a square edge and a different type to the front. He and Cam theorize that there were two assailants, and also learn that since no blood was found at the site the victim probably was killed somewhere else and dumped in the pool.

While Hodgins sifts through the mud, finding only beer cans, some loose change and a partially decomposed sharpie, Cam takes x-rays of the victim's skeleton. The squints boggle at the numerous healed and partially healed fractures and wonder why someone would want to kill the guy since he was already doing a good job of it himself. Later, Angela videoconferences with Booth and Brennan and says she's done a rendering based on the skull. When the drawing comes up, Booth recognizes the victim as Tripp Goddard, a motorcycle racer. Angela may not have recognized the face but she can tell Booth that Tripp won a race two weeks about, around the time he died, and he won after an accident knocked out the frontrunner.

Booth and Brennan talk to Phillipa Fitz and her father, Lenny, who run the team that Tripp raced for, as well as reporter Garth Jodrey. Phillipa says Tripp would routinely take off for a while after a big race so nobody thought anything of him disappearing for a couple of weeks, and they're all shocked to learn that Tripp was murdered. Lenny promised to give them the info about Tripp's truck and anything else they need to find the murderer. He and Phillipa say everyone loved Tripp but Garth disagrees. Garth is in a wheelchair and Phillipa explains that he was injured a couple of years ago during a race against Tripp. Booth and Brennan find this interesting, especially since they're still on the theory that there were two killers so Garth being in a wheelchair wouldn't cross him out as a suspect.

Later, Garth watches a video of Tripp's last race with Booth and Brennan and shows them the maneuver Tripp made that knocked his rival, Danny Fitz, Lenny's son and Phillipa's twin brother, out of the race. Booth asks if it's the same move Tripp made that landed Garth in a wheelchair and he confirms that's true. He says that Tripp and Danny left the post-race party about the same time and he left shortly after. When Booth asks if he and Danny were good friends, Garth sees where this is going and tells them he's not saying more without a lawyer.

Zack comes into the lab with a gajillion different types of pipes in his arms. After several moments of watching him drop one, then drop another while picking up the first one, Hodgins makes Zack drop them all, then tells him he can only pick one back up. After narrowing it down to the type that was most likely used as the murder weapon, Zack selects his choice. Hodgins praises him and Zack asks if he's now king of the lab. "We both are," Hodgins allows. Hee. Unfortunately, their pride is brought crashing down when they tell Cam what they've learned and she points out they still haven't narrowed down their lists of suspects, figured out what caused the blow to the front of the skull, or found the actual murder weapon. Defeated, they slink away to do more research, while Angela and Cam boggle over, to steal from Meredith Grey, boys and their stupid boy penises.

Brennan and Booth talk to Danny and his lawyer. Danny admits he and Tripp were never BFFs and says they once got into a fight because Tripp, who was dating Phillipa, cheated on her with a groupie. However, Danny insists calmly, disliking the guy doesn't mean he killed him. Later, Booth and Brennan are back at the garage and Hodgins calls, saying he's found traces of a solvent on the remains of Tripp's clothes. Booth is frustrated because it's a common solvent in garages, including the one they're in, but when Hodgins adds that besides removing oil, it can also clean up blood, Brennan realizes that Tripp was probably killed their. They have an FBI agent spray the drain with luminol and a huge pool of blood shows up while Hodgins patiently waits for Booth to tell him he's king of the lab.

Booth and Brennan head out to the track to talk to Danny, Lenny, and Garth again but they'll have to wait because Danny's taking Tripp's motorcycle out for a spin. Lenny admonishes him to take care of the bike, telling Danny that he's replaceable but it's not. And that's really going to eat at Lenny later, because when Danny fails to decelerate into a turn as he should, he and the bike go down in a fiery crash that barbecues them both. Lenny is horrified because he basically jinxed the shit out of his son, while Booth and Brennan are secretly relieved that their list of suspects has dropped by one, especially when they learn the bike was tampered with.

Hodgins cleans off the sharpie found in the mud and it reveals a few letters from a logo. Zack uses his giant brain to fill in the missing lettera and they figure out the pen is stamped with the website address of the site Garth runs. Hodgins calls Booth and Brennan with the info and also tells them that he and Zack found pieces of glass in the front of Tripp's skull, probably from a mirror. Shortly after, Tripp's truck has been found in the woods and the driver's side mirror has been smashed, suggesting that Tripp fell face-first into the mirror when he was clubbed on the back of the head. The murder weapon, a prybar covered in blood, was found with the truck and large pools of blood are also found into the truck's locker. Booth and Brennan figure out that whoever murdered Tripp used his truck to transport the body to the woods. They decide all of the evidence points to one killer, not the previously theorized two, and that knocks the paralyzed Garth out of the running.

There's a bit of misdirection where Lenny looks to be a likely suspect but he's cleared. Booth and Brennan do learn, however, that Lenny was offering Tripp ten percent of his lucrative beverage company in return for racing exclusively for him. Lenny says he signed the papers and gave them to Tripp, but Tripp disappeared before he could sign them and the papers weren't found in the truck. Discussing the case later, Booth and Brennan look at different scenarios but nothing seems to completely add up. Brennan wants to look at the murder weapon again, while Booth is going to figure out how those skinnydipping kids knew about the supposedly secret mud pool.

Even though Booth finds out that Andrew Lawrence learned about the mud hole from Garth, it's another bit of misdirection in an episode that already has way too many of them. Thankfully, things start to wrap up when blood flecks found on the murder weapon turn out to be female, making Phillipa the main, and final, suspect. She's brought in for questioning and Booth tricks her into admitting that she also knew about the mud hole from when she used to date Garth. Her lawyer advises her to keep her mouth shut and when Booth says they've got DNA evidence tying her to the weapon, the lawyer points out that all of the evidence was used up during the testing. He thinks that will help Phillipa, along with his belief that juries are retarded and can't tell the difference between DNA between identical twins, which Phillipa and Danny were not, and fraternal twins, which they were. Sadly, he's probably right about that. Brennan says they also have evidence that Phillipa tampered with Tripp's motorcycle before she decided to bash his head in instead, and she neglected to remove the tampering before Danny took a ride and got himself burned to a crisp. Phillipa looks guilty and cries but doesn't confess, and her lawyer says he's sure she won't be convicted. Booth agrees, but he's arresting her anyway so everyone, including her father, will know what she did.

B plot: Booth and Brennan can't stop talking about work during their therapy sessions and admit that work is pretty much all they talk about, all the time. Sweets wants to see them in a social setting and, despite their misgivings, gets them to agree to a double date with himself and his girlfriend, April. Booth balks again when he hears that they're going to a pottery class, but he backs down when Sweets calls him on not wanting to do something he might not excell at.

Apparently Booth took that as a personal challenge because Booth skillfully crafts a horse while the other three make generic pots. April, played by the same actress who plays Lizzi on Greek, is not quite as psychotically annoying as Lizzi, but she's still pretty damn perky and flaky, talking about fish souls and whatnot. However, Sweets comes off way worse when he patronizingly apologizes for his girlfriend being a New Age-y dingbat. April gets pissed off at him and when Sweets, wanting to join in on a fun little clay-tossing game Booth and Brennan are having, tosses a piece at her, she flings a handful of watery clay right in his face. Booth and Brennan are like, "...And why are WE the ones in couples therapy?"

Later, April comes to see Brennan in her office and asks if she thinks she and Sweets should be together. April and Sweets, that is. Brennan and Sweets might be hilarious in how it would drive Booth absolutely insane, but otherwise it is most squicky. Anyway, Brennan tries very carefully not to say what she thinks one way or the other, because that way lies madness, but she doesn't disagree with April comes to the conclusion that Sweets is just not man enough for her, although she does allow that the sex is great. Brennan and Cam, who has walked in with a test result and gotten to hear this last bit, both look really uncomfortable with the TMI.

After the case has been solved, Booth and Brennan are hanging out at the lab when Sweets trudges in looking like Charlie Brown. Booth immediately figures out that Sweets got dumped because "he's got the dumpee look on his face." Sweets says he saw the signs and prepared himself mentally for it but he looks like he's going to start crying and that unsettles Booth so much that he invites Sweets to go bowling with him and Brennan. "You wanna come with us?" Brennan asks. "To go bowling with us at the bowling rink?" "Alley," Booth corrects. Hee. Sweets still wants to mope, though, so Booth simply grabs him by the back of the chair and wheels him down the hallway, Brennan tagging along behind.