The Daredevil in the Mold

Spoiler Alert!: This review gives away all of the events of this episode, and some of them are big.
by Courtney Hilden

In this episode of Bones, Booth and Sweets get drunk and decide to propose to each of their girlfriends, while Cam struggles with her own love life, and the rest of the team investigates the murder of an extreme sportsman.

The theme of the episode, extreme biking, was fairly well-d0ne. One scene involved the coordination of several bikers doing stunts amongst the actors, all of which was handled flawlessly and looked fluid and natural on the screen. The subject also gave us the chance to enjoy some fun guest actors and their characters, including Naul (with possibly the weirdest name of all time). Anglea chasing people down to interrogate them was also fun to watch. (Can we please have more of the squints go out in the field to interview subjects, espeically the otherwise-annoying interns? There's something fun about their reactions to the world outside the lab.)

In terms of goofs, Cam would never have had a problem with a discussion of dog vomit slime and bed bugs, since she works with dead bodies all the time.
And finally, the most important thing about the episode: Booth's proposal to Hannah. So much of the proposal was rushed, from Booth's decision to while drunk (which felt totally false and far-to-pat) to Booth buying a ring with Sweets. On a normal episode of Bones, all of this would be drawn out enough that everything would feel genuine. Usually on this show, a case gets one of the characters to change their point of view, like it did when Bones saw herself in a victim. If the writers were not in such a hurry of getting rid of Hannah (who really has grown on me), she would get sucked into a case (another gang deal gone bad? a hostage situation?) and then Booth would realize that he loved her so much he wanted to marry her. And then, of course, she'd let him down.

It seems obvious that Hannah is not the right person for Booth. I hate to reference a certain line, but: Booth loves Hannah but is not in love with her. What a relief that Hannah said no, but not really because it gives Bones a chance at Booth. I love that Hannah knows herself well enough to know that getting married is a bad idea. But Booth was totally acting like Hannah was the problem, instead of recognizing that making her marry him would never work.
This is not to say the Bones is really a good choice for Booth. As this season has gone on, it seems clear that Bones, despite the occassional pang of lonliness, doesn't really need anything at all, and I'd rather like to celebrate that instead. Booth increasingly doesn't deserve her, and I'd much rather see us move on from that.

The montage at the end of the show, after Hannah rejected Booth's proposal, featured Booth getting drunk at the Founding Fathers, was totally boring and unnecessary and just filler.

Given the events of this episode in terms of the long story arc, this was all big stuff, yet it felt thrown together instead of the event that it should have been.