'Bones' Season 8, Episode 15: 'The Shot in the Dark' Recap

‘Bones’: season 8, spisode 15: ‘The Shot in the Dark’

The team at the Jeffersonian is presented with a new body, which Bones determines is a male in his late-30s/early-40s. He was found on the rocks under a bridge, indicating he either jumped or was pushed. Bones hasn’t seen damage like that on a body since a skydiving accident where the diver’s chute didn’t open. Hodgins says the time of death was 5 or 6 days ago.

Bones dismisses herself and heads home while she waits for the bones to be cleaned. At home, Booth proposes a vacation for their family. He mentions an elaborate camping trip, but Bones points out that Chrstine, their baby, wouldn’t remember any of it at 14 months old, so she doesn’t see the point.

Booth gets angry that Bones cannot be spontaneous and has to resort to asking experts and referencing studies before doing anything, and Bones interprets that as him calling her a bad mother. She leaves, heading back to the Jeffersonian to finish her work.

In the lab, Bones works through their argument in her head what she’s interrupted by Hal, the security guard. He asks about the body, and she says she thinks the victim was murdered and then thrown from the bridge to cover it up. He leaves.

As she’s working, she ignores calls from Booth. Focused on her work, she hears someone approach, thinking it’s Hal. She tries to dismiss him, but the person shoots her in the stomach with a dart of sorts. She collapses to the ground, bleeding.

Booth and Christine pay Bones a visit, hoping to apologize when he finds her on the floor. He puts pressure on the wound and calls for an ambulance for the barely conscious Bones.

In a dreamscape of sorts, Bones meets her mother, who embraces her happily.

Bones is rushed into the hospital, and Booth tells her she has to fight.

In the dreamscape, Bones realizes that she’s hallucinating. Her mother congratulates her, mentioning that most people in similar situations believe they’re actually in heaven. Bones rationalizes that it’s just her body’s way to making sense of the situation. Her mom asks her about her life, but she says that her mother is nothing more than a projection of her mind and she already knows everything about her life. Her mother asks her to humor her.

She reveals to her mom that she has a daughter, Christine (named after her mother), and Booth, and that she loves them. She realizes that she has to get back to them, but when she tries to leave the fantasy house, the door won’t open. She prys it open with all of her might, and flies off into the abyss, stabilizing Bones who is on the operating table.

Dr, Saroyan is helping the team of surgeons work on Bones. They can’t find the bullet. As they are trying to figure out what’s happening, her heart stops.

Bones finds herself back with her mother, who said she told her so. It’s not Bones’ decision. She goes back to the door only to find there is no doorknob. She looks down at her clothes and realizes she is in the outfit she wore when her mother left. Bones tries to justify why her mother left.

In the waiting room of the ER, Dr. Saroyan tells Booth that Bones is stable and reveals that her heart stopped twice. She’s out of surgery, but still critical. He reveals that they don’t know about the shooter, but Hal the security guard was also found dead. Dr. Saroyan needs to go back to the lab, and wants to autopsy Hal, because they can’t find the bullet in Bones, maybe they can find it in Hal.

In the lab, Dr. Saroyan reveals to Hodgins and Clark that they can’t find a bullet in Bones or Hal, so whatever Bones found on the victim’s body will be their only clue, a small metallic fragment.

In the hospital, Bones wakes up, and Booth is at her side. Bones reveals it was very cold where she got shot. Max, her father, walks in with coffee. He tells her that she flat lined, she was dead for 2 minutes.

In the lab, Angela tells everyone Bones is awake, and they are relieved. Hodgins suggests it could have been an ice bullet, however unlikely it seems. Sweets and Olivia, in the meantime, interview everyone who was in the building that night, but got no leads.

Sweets visits Booth in the hospital and gives him the rundown on the case: lots of nothing. Booth reveals they fought before it all happened.

In the lab, Clark finds a mark in the victim’s sternum that matches the Tasers that Hal was issues, and Dr. Saroyan expands that a Taser could have caused the victim’s heart attack. Angela shows up and says she IDed the victim, Johannes Groot. Saroyan wonders if Hal killed Groot, but they wonder who killed Hal.

Sweets and Olivia investigate Groot’s apartment, and find that he had very expensive tastes, yet his income wouldn’t support it, and he didn’t have family money either. Olivia finds signs of a struggle, and finds confetti on the floor of the apartment.

Back in the hospital, Angela visits Bones and tells her that they traced the confetti found in Groot’s apartment back to Hal’s Taser. Hal shot Groot with a Taser, causing him to have a heart attack and die, all before throwing him over the bridge. As they are talking, Bones flat lines once again. Angela calls for help.

In the dreamscape, Christine asks Bones the last time she saw her; when she was 15. They fought before she disappeared. They fought because of a boy, because he made Bones irrational and emotional, and caused her to stop thinking rationally.

Bones comes to in the hospital once again, and Max tells her to stop scaring them like that. The doctor reveals that she had a negative reaction to the antigens in the blood they gave her, but she shouldn’t have. Max and the doctor leave, and Bones tells Booth that it’s him who keeps calling her back from this “other place” she keeps going with her mother. Booth thinks her mother is helping her, but Bones laughs about it, calling it an obvious hallucination.

Hodgins runs into many problems getting an ice bullet to work, mainly because it melts or isn’t strong enough to penetrate. He suggest it’s something that isn’t a gun, and something that isn’t water. A blood bullet. If you freeze blood cells in liquid nitrogen and fire them with compressed air, they can penetrate the body and leave no trace. This is what caused Bones’ antigen reaction earlier.

Saroyan and Clark take another look at Hal’s body and find a wound on his head. They find flecks of something shiny embedded within the wound.

In the hospital, Max visits with Bones and asks about Christine, her mother. Bones shrugs it off, that it was just her brain chemistry causing hallucinations, but reveals that Christine misses Max.

In the lab, Hodgins finds that the flakes were gold and 12th century wood, from an artifact. It just so happens the Jeffersonian as an artifact like that and storage, and it’s very valuable.

Olivia and Booth realize that Hal, Groot, and the shooter were all in it together, and they took out Bones because they knew she’d be able to figure it out. Booth says that means the shooter must have also worked at the Jeffersonian.

In the lab, they find that the artifact they had in storage was actually a forgery, the real one missing. They determine that Dr. Batuhan is the only one able to restore such a piece, and go and visit him, to find him working on the real artifact. They also find a small container of liquid nitrogen and a spray gun that could easily be modified into a projectile. They arrest him.

In interrogation, Booth points out that there are many fakes discovered in their collection suddenly. Some of the originals have found their way into the hands of collectors. Olivia shows them surveillance video going in and out around the time Bones was shot. She also points out that Batuhan spent a lot of time with Groot on his private jet.

Booth gets angry and pins him against the wall. Not saying anything useful, Booth lets him go, but he is to remain in custody for 24 hours. They might not have enough evidence yet, but Bones is going to get them the evidence they need.

Bones volunteers to undergo another surgery to biopsy her wound and try and get proof of Batuhan’s blood in her system.

In her dreamscape, she sees her mom again, packing to leave. She is sad because she’s never going to see her mom again, and doesn’t want a repeat of when she was 15. Her mom urges her to find her inner-child, and to lower her guard and be impulsive and emotional once again, in order to thrive. Her mom leaves a final note for Bones to give to Max, and then walks out the door.

Bones wakes up and learns that the blood was a match, and that Batuhan was arrested for murder and attempted murder. Bones gives Max the message, and it shakes him up. Booth and Bones share an embrace.