This week’s bizarre romp through anthropology, FBI murder investigations, unrequited love and drawn-out sexual tension begins with a gaggle of Woodchucks, a girl scout-type group. They have landed, and expertly preserved as evidence, a floating dead body. This bizarre inclusion of prepubescent girls in awkward uniforms doesn’t appear to have any further effect on the plot, so feel free to forget it as the teaser continues to unfold.
The intern of the week is Wendell Bray. He and Cam take over the investigation of the body to determine why, as the intern puts it, it smells like “farts.” During their examination they realize the body is missing fingers and intern is sent out with Hodgins to the river to see if the Woodchucks missed them. Intern and Hodgins bond in a non disclosed parking garage over a discussion of the body’s sulfur coating and noxious smell, swapping conspiracy theories: mainly suspended animation and super-soldiers.
Booth enters Angela’s office? (room?) and Bones overanxiously tells him that she would have called if there were anything to say. Booth, oddly enough, is siding with Hodgins for suspended animation. At the least military involvement seems possible, since a sergeant recently went missing from some specialized branch of the Defense Department that won’t give out photographs. Bones says Angela should give him the reconstruction of the murder vic’s face, which turns out to be even more bizarre than the Woodchucks: the man looks like a chicken. Pum-pum-PUM! Commercial.
Back in the lab the gang looks over the chicken man. They discover a gapeworm in the body, a parasite only found in chickens, putting the team back on Hodgins’ super-soldier theory.
Booth receives a call from the defense department. Apparently their missing sergeant looks like a bulldog and not a chicken. Good joke. However, the FBI database does get a hit on Angela’s picture, a manager named Nick Raven of Cluckston Farms, a rural poultry farm.
Outside the entrance to the farm Booth and Bones run into a protest against the Cluckston Farms operation. A security guard shows them in and leads them to Nick’s wife. Brennan asks his wife if he took the proper precautions at work, which he didn’t. Apparently the gases in the plant can lead to sinus deformation without the proper breathing apparatus. The pair tell Mrs. Raven that they think there was foul play in Nick’s death. She tells them that he was next in line to take over Cluckston and the people they want to check out are picketing outside the company.
Angela talks with Hodgins about the nearing end of her six-month sex fast. Hodgins says he won’t be the one to break it, and Angela retorts she might go for a year.
Back in the factory, the picketers are hassling employees as Brennan and Booth are entering. Booth asks the security guard escorting them if any of them had a particular “beef” with Nick Raven. Apparently Parsons sneaked in and made a damning documentary of the plant. Booth goes to question more protesters and they pour fake egg and chicken feathers on them.
Back in the investigation room, Booth and Sweets team up to get Parsons to give them the original footage he was anonymously given to make his video under threat of a two hundred thousand dollar fine and one year in prison for assaulting a federal officer.
Intern notices damage to the vertebra that were not post mortem, and therefore not from the river but instead linked with the cause of death. It appears the chicken man’s neck was wrung. Cam sends the intern to Angela to see if her imaging technology can come up with a scenario where this could happen.
Before intern teams up with Angela she is able to trace the serial number of the camera used by Parsons back to Nick’s wife. Angela gets upset over the way the chickens are treated on the tape and draws the conclusion that she must save a baby pig’s life – to the tune of $1,500. She even has a picture. Brennan won’t join her absurd bandwagon; Angela gets upset and questions the entirety of their friendship.
Then comes the Booth-Bones moment of the episode. At the diner Booth notices something is off with Brennan. He comforts her saying everything will be okay and taking her hand. The camera becomes obsessed with this fact over the rest of their conversation.
Brennan and Cam study the human fingers found in the Chicken restaurant and find that they all came from the same person, post-mortem. Brennan thinks they all came from Nick Raven.
Sweets returns to his office after the commercial break to find Angela. She claims she is there for a donation and not to discuss her fight with Brennan. Sweets feels that she should abandon her celibacy pledge early because she is focusing her energies on baby animals because her libido is being rerouted. Angela leaves with Sweets promising to revisit donating if she has sex.
Booth gets the wife to confess to having given the film footage to the activist in order to get her husband away from the company. She tells him that Roy Myers is the main activist trying to get rid of Cluckstons.
The intern meets up with Angela, FINALLY. She ignores his questions about the case and asks him to donate to save the pig. He confesses that he is a “meat eater” and total fan of bacon but empties his wallet for her. She decides to take Sweets up on his advice and macks on him.
Booth and Brennan meet up with Myers and find him waving around a cigar cutter that is sharp enough to cut fingers off.
Back in the lab Angela and Intern share post-makeout affection for each other’s brilliance while describing a light spectrum thing to Cam that led them to discover bruising on the skull. Hodgins comes in and lets them know that the cigar cutter did not cut off the victim’s fingers. The hookup, obviously obvious to those standing round, makes it all feel a little self-conscious.
Booth and Bones question the woman who runs the machine. She filled sexual harassment charges against the vic.
Brennan is called in to Sweets office for a “friendly conversation.” He convinces her that sometimes you don’t save the world, you just make your friend happy. Even if it’s irrational: like this whole episode.
Case in point: the next scene has the intern donning a bald cap while Hodgins and Brennan slap him with read paintbrushes to discover the murder weapon.
Booth rolls the chicken plucker machine into the lab. Brennan deduces that the victim’s necktie pulled him into the machine and wrung his neck, BUT there was another force at work. Someone’s hand had to push him in. Turned out it was the security guard. Pum-pum- …I don’t really care.
Booth feels bad because he couldn’t tell the security guard was lying about pushing the victim. He feels like he is ‘losing it’ due to his accident. I mean, he woke up that morning and couldn’t remember if he liked brown sugar on his oatmeal. Brennan says to call her next time cause he likes brown sugar on everything. Aw. Moment. Brennan asks Booth what he thinks about helping Angela save the pig. Booth tells her to go for it. She interrupts Angela from flirting with the intern to give her a check for all the money to save the pig. She returns to Booth’s table and tells him she trusts him, they clink glasses.
